Sunday, February 15
It was wonderful to be back at the Sunday services at Liberal First Baptist Church this morning. Leah and Ryan joined us as we attended our separate Sunday school classes and then we sat together for the church service. Pastor David Bagwell was in his usual great form as he delivered a stirring message about the importance of church membership as opposed to just church attendance.
Since we mention this church and our Sunday school class whenever we write about our visits to Liberal, we decided to take a camera with us this morning to take pictures of so
me of the folks who have been so very important to us for so many years. Even though we have moved our membership to the church in Artesia, some of the church members in Liberal still informally consider us as active members who are doing mission work to the rest of the country as we travel around.We had planned that Leah and Ryan would join us, along with Danny and Charlene Plett for lunch at El Amigo Chavez after church, but Ryan got called out on a job, so Leah took him home and then came to the restaurant, where we enjoyed a great Mexican meal and got caught up on the latest news about
Danny, Charlene, their jobs, and their boys. It seems that whenever we are with Danny and Charlene, we just pick up where we left off in our previous conversation.
When we had finished eating, we said our goodbyes and then drove across town to visit some other friends, Mr. & Mrs. George and their son, Livesy. They are a family from India that I helped hire several years ago, and we always enjoy catching up on the latest news of their family and work. Mrs. George has promised to spend a day with us to teach us to cook some authentic Indian dishes one of these trips…now all we have to do is figure out when.Since we have read and seen so much about some of the political situations with India and her neighbors, we were very interested in finding out where the Georges’ home was. Mr. George and Livesy got online and found maps of India and the region which they are from, and gave us a quick geography lesson. Did you know that the city of Bombay is no longer known by that name? It is now known as Mombai.
In addition to maps of India, Livesy also googled the area of Botswana in which they lived before they came to Liberal…he was even able to zoom in close house…pretty amazing stuff!
After leaving the George’s house, we made a quick trip to Wal-Mart and then returned to the house where we whiled away the afternoon and evening by napping, packing, working on the journal, visiting with Leah, watching TV, playing Scrabble, and watching a movie. Whew…it wore us out!
Monday, February 16
Happy Presidents Day!!!
The first part of the day was just travel, travel, and travel. We were up at 5:00 and out of the house and driving out of Liberal by 5:50. We got to say goodbye to Leah (didn’t feel too bad about waking her up since she didn’t have to go to work today).
The trip to Lenexa was uneventful, which is always good. Since we got there too early to check in at the motel, we just goofed off until we could get moved in for a couple of days.
We went over to Jim and Whitney’s house around 5:00 and visited with them until time to go eat. Whitney suggested that we go to Red Robin for dinner tonight. We went to one in Garland, time, but had fo
rgotten what the experience was like.The restaurant we went to tonight was fantastic. In addition to the great atmosphere and wonderful burgers, we were also entertained for a short time by a lady who, it seems, can make any creature out of balloons. When Jim (Whitney’s Jim) asked if she could make a dinosaur for Little Jimmy, she just smiled and told him it as no trouble; and, in just a couple of minutes, she had balloons blown up and twisted into a remarkable little dinosaur. We’re pretty sure Little Jimmy liked it, but he didn’t get to play with it very much because the rest of us were having so much fun with it.
The kids both had to work tomorrow, so we broke up the party around 8:00 to let them go back home and do the nightly routine of getting themselves and Little Jimmy ready for bed.Tuesday, February 17
Happy 61st Birthday to Ernie Little in Mineola, Texas!!!
We just took our time getting around this morning. I woke up the first of four times at 6:00 a.m. and finally crawled out of bed around 8:30. By 10:30 we were out and about, checking out places of interest in the Kansas City area.
We came back to the motel around 3:00 and rested until Whitney and Jim got home from work and let us know that Little Jimmy was up from his nap. Little Jimmy must have been off his schedule, since he normally goes to sleep a little before noon. They said he didn’t drop off until nearly 3:00 today…must have been a really busy day for him.
When we got to the house, we found that Whitney’s dinner was almost ready. She had whipped up a crock pot meal of Hungarian Goulash, along with some French bread, peas, pasta, and corn fritters…none of us walked away from the table hungry!We spent the rest of the evening playing with Little Jimmy, watching movies, talking, laughing, and taking lots of pictures. Little Jimmy is growing so fast that we want to fully document every visit we have with him.
Everyone was winding down by 8:30, so we said our goodbyes and went back to the motel to get ready for tomorrow’s travel and get a good night’s sleep.
Wednesday, February 18
We guess that Little Jimmy must have worn us out last night, because our plan to get up early and beat the traffic rush out of the Kansas City area didn’t materialize. Instead, we slept in late and it was a little after 10:00 before we got checked out of the Days Inn, gassed up the car, and eased onto I-35 to make our way south.
The next seven or so hours were spent in the traveling mode as we drove south to Coffeyville, Kansas, and into Oklahoma, making our way through Tulsa, down to McAlester on the Indian Nation Turnpike, and then down U.S. 69 to Durant, where we decided we’d had enough driving for one day and stopped for the night.
Thursday, February 19
It was another “sleep in” morning for us, since we weren’t going to have too long a drive head of us today. After having a nice breakfast at the hotel, we got the car loaded and got away from Durant a little after 10:00.
By shortly after noon we had arrived at T.J.’s house in Mineola, where we unloaded everything from the car and moved it into the house. The first order of business was to try to make sense of all the different bags and bundles; then, Barbara made a beeline to the washing machine and started getting several days worth of travel clothes cleaned up.
Later, we drove on over to Mother’s house to let her, Ernie, and Billee know that we were back in town. We visited with them for a few minutes and then made the obligatory trip to Wal-Mart for some essentials for a meal that we were planning for tomorrow for the family.
Ernie and Billee brought Mother over to T.J.’s house around 4:30 and we had a little hamburger and hotdog cookout for our evening meal. Since we weren’t here for the February birthdays for Mother and Ernie, we took the time tonight to have a little celebration.
Tonight we just shared in a time of rest, relaxation, and visitation with T.J. before calling it a day and heading to bed.
Friday, February 20
Let’s begin by saying that today was nothing at all like we had planned. Our intent was to do some yard work around Mother’s house and go through some of the boxes we had moved down here in July to see if there was anything we might need for the summer-type weather ahead of us in Artesia.
While I was having my morning coffee, I asked T.J. if she had a Mineola newspaper that I could look at. We have talked since we moved Mother down here that someday we might need to look at a little piece of land to park Big V on whenever we came down to visit…this would be the base for our travels. In fact, T.J. found an ad right after we left during our Christmas travels that listed two acres just outside of town with necessary utilities installed; but, by the time she read it and called about the property, it was sold. I thought I’d just give a quick glance at the most recent paper to see if anything of interest might be listed.
Well, to our surprise, we found an ad for two acres just south of Mineola. T.J. called the number and found that the property was some old family property that was listed because the parents had died, the daughter was in her seventies and had moved to Kilgore, and the son has cancer and will never be able to come back and develop the land. It was, as she said, “Kind of growed up.”
We got the directions to the place and went for a drive to find it, and sure enough, it was more than “growed up.” But, it was along a tree shaded dead end county road and had obvious potential. It would take a lot of work to clean it up and put in a septic system and water lines, but it could be done. In fact, it kind of heated up our blood for a little place to call our own, the first time we’d even had that thought since selling our property in Liberal and hitting the road.We came back to town and I called the lady again to ask some more questions about the property, but, we needed to get busy cooking the Mexican dinner we had promised the family, so we put talk of being landowners on hold.
When Mother, Ernie, and Billee came over to eat, we told them about what we had found and asked if they wanted to take a look at it after lunch. They were excited about it too, so after eating enchiladas, tacos, and heaping helpings of my world-famous refried beans, we washed the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, and drove back out to the property.
We stayed for quite a while, checking out the boundary lines and discussing what would be the best way to start clearing “our land”…we were already thinking of it as ours, before even making an offer to the lady.
We knew that we needed some more practical information (like the cost of installing a septic system), so later in the afternoon we set out to find a local septic systems installer. It turned into quite an adventure, but we eventually hooked up with a man who followed us out to the place to see what we were looking at and give us some ideas on what we could do.
Armed with that information, we returned to T.J.’s house to discuss all the possibilities of becoming land owners again, even if we still didn’t have any immediate intentions of settling down in Wood County.
Saturday, February 21We woke up still excited about the land we had been looking at, so we took an early morning drive to a local equipment rental place to see if they had the tools and equipment we would need for clearing the brush that had flourished over the last several years. Then, we drove out to the property to see what it looked like in the cold, gray light of dawn.
After looking it over and talking about the possibilities, we returned to town and went to Mother’s house to visit with them until T.J. came over. We had arranged to drive down to Edom this morning to lunch at a restaurant that purported to have “the best hamburgers in Texas.”
It was a nice drive, about 50 or so miles southwest of Mineola, and we found Edom to be a quaint little “artists haven,” but the burgers, as good as they were, failed to live up to the grandiose claim. Still, we had some great family time (and a pretty good meal).
When we got back to town, Barbara elected to stay with T.J. at her house while I drove over to visit with Ernie and try to get the motorcycle started. I had hoped to do some riding this weekend, but found that the battery was too low to start the engine…two months of cold weather and the constant drain of some of the electronic features had worn it down.
Neither of us had a battery charger at the house, but Ernie had a set of jumper cables that we attached between the Vibe and the cycle, and after a few minutes, the Voyager was roaring just like always. We disconnected the cables and I hopped on the cycle to get out on the highway and charge up the batteries the “natural” way, but when I stopped at a stop sign before even pulling onto the highway, the engine died...just not enough juice to keep it going.
I called Ernie and he came to me with the jumper cables and we got the cycle started again. This time, though, I rode it back to the house, parked it, and asked Ernie if he wanted to make a Wal-Mart run to buy a trickle charger just for the motorcycle. It’s something I’ve read about and that a number of riders have suggested, but I always held off…until now.
As we were leaving Wal-Mart, Barbara called and said that she had been reading some real estate brochures and had found a lot in a little retirement community up on Lake Fork, about 30 minutes away. So, Ernie and I rushed back to Mother’s house, installed the trickle charger on the cycle, and I drove back over to T.J.’s to pick up Barbara and head up to the lake.
We arrived at the site a little before sundown, a really good time to see the place, and we found that it, too, had some great possibilities, even though it wasn’t exactly what we wanted. We drove all over the little village, checking out the community center, the swimming pool, the boat docks, and the fishing piers. We knew we needed some more information before making any kind of decision, so Barbara called the listing realtor and made arrangements for us to see her tomorrow after church.
We left the lake, drove back to Mineola (after a quick stop at the Sonic in Quitman) and tried to get some sleep after mulling over all the things we had seen and discussed the past two v-e-r-y busy days.
“Seven days without prayer makes one weak.” – Church sign in Gladewater, Texas
With Family in Mineola (after Liberal and Lenexa),
Jim & Barbara
Upper right: Lynette’s kids – Marcus and Madison (front) and Dominick and Daniel (rear).
