Sunday, June 6
We tried to gin around and get away from the house early this morning, but even our best efforts couldn’t get us out of the house at our appointed time. Our church began a new summer feature this morning, breakfast for everyone at 9:15…a time to eat and fellowship with other members before beginning the Sunday school classes and other Sunday morning activities.
We obviously weren’t the first ones there, but we also weren’t the last, and had time to share in the meal that others had cooked. We brought a loaf of Barbara’s world famous (at least in our house) zucchini bread as our contribution.
We had a good lesson in Sunday school and then went to church where David preached a tremendous sermon on what Christians believe. It was an overview of a series of sermons that he has planned for us during June and July and if the individual topics are as fiery and educational as the overview, we are indeed in for some wonderful preaching and teaching this summer.
We returned to Big V for lunch and to spend the afternoon. Luckily, we had taken time before going to church this morning to stop by and turn on the air conditioner, so it was very comfortable for most of the afternoon. However, as the temperature got closer to 100 (with what felt like 200% humidity) and the sun moved around to start hitting the front of Big V, it became warm enough that we moved outside to our patio area for a while and then just got ready to go back to the church at 4:30 for a Vacation Bible School volunteers meeting.
The church’s VBS program will be in late August, just before school starts, and after the meeting Sunday it looks like I will be either a paper-cutter-outer or a bus driver – or maybe even both, depending on how things are going here in Mineola at the time.
From the meeting I went to choir practice and then we went to the evening service and from there we returned to Mineola to settle in for the evening.
Monday, June 7
I entered the wonderful world of Medicare this morning at 8:15 when I rode the motorcycle over to Dr. Bankhead’s office for my first complete physical exam in about five years. I took the cycle in case I needed to be there very long and left the Vibe so Barbara could take Mother to a physical therapy evaluation.
The doctor visit went well enough, I suppose. For the last week I have been taking blood pressure readings three times a day, and three times a day my readings have been off the charts; hence the real reason for my visit with Dr. Bankhead. All of our friends have started greeting me by saying, “What is your blood pressure today and when are you going to do something about it?”
I inadvertently gave Barbara a scare when Dr. Bankhead was trying to get some family history. I knew that Daddy’s mother, Grandma Little, had died of some kind of cancer, but I didn’t know what it was; so, when Dr. Bankhead stepped out of the office for a minute, I called Barbara and asked her to ask Mother what kind of cancer Grandma died of. Of course, it never dawned on me to think of how Barbara would react to that kind of question, but considering that Henry once went to a doctor by himself and was told he had cancer and later died from it, I guess that was pretty insensitive of me to just blurt out something like that.
Anyway, Dr. Bankhead gave me a month’s supply of Benicar to start to work on the blood pressure issue and ordered the usual blood and urine tests to find out if anything goofy is going on in those areas. She also gave a prescription for chest x-rays and said she’d set up appointments with a dermatologist and someone to check out my innards…looks like I’m going to be one of those folks who schedules their days around doctor appointments.
I did get finished with all my stuff in time to get back to the house and help Barbara take Mother to her physical therapy appointment. Both Dr. Bankhead and the neurologist had advised a regimen of PT for Mother some time back and we’ve just been waiting for the appointment for a rehab evaluation. The evaluation took about an hour and at the end, Mother had two appointments for later this week.
Since Rob, the head of the rehab program, told us we didn’t need to stick around for the evaluation, Barbara and I took the time to take care of some running around that needed to be done and then I took her back to the house to take care of laundry while I went back to rehab to wait for Mother.
This afternoon we drove up to the Quitman hospital to get my chest x-rays taken. I had called to see if I needed an appointment and they said to just come on in. It wasn’t really all that simple (for those who haven’t entered the world of Medicare, there is a world of paperwork involved each time one goes to a new medical facility, and that take lots of time). But, I eventually got the x-rays taken and we returned to Mother’s house to finish out the day.
Tuesday, June 8
Today was just plain busy from beginning to end. We’ve been communicating with Cathey and Jaycie for several days to set up a time for Jaycie to visit us for a few days. We finally settled on tomorrow as the day we would meet in Wichita Falls and bring Jaycie back with us. But, before we could have a visitor, we had much to do around the house. We spent the morning doing a complete top-to-bottom cleaning of the house and the afternoon mowing, trimming, and weeding the yard. When we weren’t doing those things, we were busy posting the latest journal/blog entry.
We got a call from Jimmy Clint this afternoon. He has been in the UMC ICU for several days and was released this morning for a court hearing. He said that the assistant district attorney was not willing to combine the charges against him in the current 150-day sentence and wants to tack on another 100 days for the two incidents that constituted the probation violation that got him the current sentence. He did say that nothing is definite yet and that shorter time and probation might still be in the picture.
Late this evening we did some work in the back yard, cleaning out some of the flower beds. I cleaned out around the base of a large rose bush and piled in a bunch of mulch to help control the grass and weeds and try to keep the ground moist (it’s right next to the air conditioner unit and dries out pretty quickly). We also cleaned out the bed that has the zinnias in it and found that they are now blooming. Hallelujah, Mother’s handiwork is now being displayed!Wednesday, June 9
Mother had her first rehab session this morning, but since we had to be on the road, TJ took her to it. We left early enough that we could get in some shop-looking along the way. I’ve been needing to find a Home Depot store (there aren’t any around the Mineola area unless we take the dreaded drive to Tyler) and found one in Gainesville, right on the way to Wichita Falls.
We met Cathey and Jaycie at the Market Street store on West U.S. 82 in Wichita Falls, had a short visit, and then we transferred all of Jaycie’s things to the Vibe and we headed east while Cathey returned to Lubbock.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen Jaycie, so there was lots of catching up to do, as well as many photo opportunities of silly situations (as our constant readers can tell from the pictures below showing the many faces of Jaycie).
The rest of the evening was spent in getting Jaycie squared away in the living room. She was a great help in moving furniture around so we could put two couches together for her bed. She also decided to play a little practical joke on me when I went out in the garage. Seems as though when I got ready to return to the house, I found the door was locked. I wondered how that happened, but since Grams captured the deed in action, I now know the whole story.
It stormed during the night and the showers continued this morning, so the possibly of lobbing tennis balls with Jaycie was out of the question. Instead, after having breakfast and getting the house straightened up (Jaycie was a big help with moving the couch around and putting the living room back together), we decided we’d drive the thirteen miles to Grand Saline to check out the famous Salt House that we heard about from Gene and Michelle a couple of weeks ago.
Grand Saline, in addition to being the home of Wiley Post, world famous aviator and aviation-related inventor, is home to a huge salt dome, one of the largest in North America. Once the home grounds of the Caddo Indians who lived on the great salt plain, Grand Saline is now home to one of the Morton Salt Company’s largest mines and packaging plants.
From its opening in 1931 until the early 1960’s, tour groups were allowed to descend on the elevator and get a close-up look at the mining processes; but due to new government safety restrictions, only workers and inspectors are allowed in the mine. Mother’s class at Quitman High School took a class trip through the mine in 1939.
Our first stop (after going to a convenience store and getting directions) was at the Salt Palace, the current home of the local museum. The first Salt House was built in 1936 for the Texas Centennial Celebration and was patterned after the Alamo. Constructed of pure salt rocks and crystals, it weathered out and deteriorated and was finally torn down.
In 1993 the tiny salt building was melting away and was replaced by the present building. Changes were made in the design which included an overhanging roof to help protect the salt exterior from weather.
Before entering the Salt Palace, we stopped to feel the slat rocks and the mortar (and yes, I had to lick my finger and run it over part of the surface to see that it really was salty). Inside, the curator was very friendly and helpful in providing information about the Salt Palace and the mining history and operations. There was even a 15-minute instructional film that we watched to get some good background.
As we prepared to leave, the curator told Jaycie to take one of the sample crystals. As Jaycie was going through them, the lady then told her to just look in the box behind her and help herself to some of the larger crystals that had just been delivered from the mine. Jaycie picked three large crystals and was happy as a lark when we left the building.
Before driving out to the mine site, we walked across the street to a shop that specializes in manufacturing different flavors of peanut butter (and has them available to sample). Unfortunately, there had been a rupture in a sewer main right on Main Street and the businesses were temporarily closed. Oh well, we’ll have other visitors this summer and will just have to go back again.
The mine site is just off the highway about a mile south of Grand Saline. We pulled into the entrance way and stopped for some pictures before continuing our touring for the day. The salt dome in this area is about 2,000 feet deep and a mile and a half wide. In 90 years of mining operations, they have only cut down to the 750-foot mark. It is estimated that the company could continue mining for another 20,000 (yes, that’s twenty-thousand) years before running out of salt to mine and package. Now that’s a lot of salt!!!
Another thing we learned about the mine is that the temperature remains right around 75 degrees. Even though salt is a highly corrosive mineral, the equipment used for the mining operation shows little, if any, sign of corrosion because it is so dry in the mine. Equipment (trucks, loaders, scrapers, etc. are dismantled before being taken down the main shaft elevator and are reassembled at the bottom. The workers bore holes in the wall and pack the holes with explosive powder. After the last shift clears the shaft on Friday afternoon, the charges are set off and another wall of salt comes down; the next shift then returns to the process of scaling off the salt rocks (and boulders) that could fall and hurt someone and then the salt is loaded onto conveyer systems and sent back to the top for milling and packaging…very interesting tidbits of information!
From Grand Saline we drove across Highway 17 to Alba to check on Gene and Michelle’s new house. It was raining heavily in the area and Gene wanted us to check on the guttering and drain systems to see if they were working properly. I took time to take a few pictures to send to the Youngs and we happily reported that all was well at their new place.
We left Alba and drove across Highway 182 to show Jaycie the back side of the huge earthen dam that helps contain Lake Fork and then went to Holiday Village to check on Our Little Lot, where we found that we had an additional 1 ½ inches of water in our rain gauge (as well as a yard full of very green and very tall Bahia grass.
The rain finally stopped by the time we got back to Mineola, but the humidity stayed high and the temperature climbed back into the mid-90’s, resulting in a little nap time after lunch…way too hot and muggy to be out running around!
This evening we made a foray to Lake Holbrook to check out the swimming beach. We all went into the water, but Jaycie was the only one to really get wet. We decided after looking around at the condition of the beach that Lake Hawkins was far superior to Lake Holbrook for our needs and thought that even though Hawkins was 8 miles farther away, it would be well worth the extra travel and expense to go the extra miles in the future.
It was a really hot and humid day, but with so many activities on the schedule, we just ignored the weather and got busy early.
After a light breakfast, Barbara, Jaycie, and I drove over to the civic center tennis courts so Jaycie and I could do some light volleying. Jaycie is on the 7th grade JV tennis team at her school in Lubbock and wanted to practice as much as possible. It’s been years since I picked up a tennis racquet and played matches with Mike, but I found that I enjoyed the activity even more than I thought I would. Jaycie and I were both a little rusty at first, but soon got into the “swing” of things.
When we left the courts I drove to the parking lot of the housing complex and Barbara and Jaycie went into the yards and retrieved the ball for us.
After returning to the house, I got Mother and took her to rehab while Barbara and Jaycie stayed behind to visit and work on Jaycie’s vacation projects. It has become a tradition for the grandkids to do scrapbook/journals of their visits with us, so Jaycie was working on that and a friendship bracelet.
When Mother and I got back to from rehab, Barbara told us that Jaycie had found a new way to get into the house. She said she couldn’t explain it…Jaycie would just have to show us; so, we went to the sunroom and saw how Jaycie, with a lot of initiative and a little wriggling around, could crawl through the doggy door that Ernie had installed when Mother first moved back to Mineola…just goes to show what a little determination can do!
Tonight Jaycie worked on her projects while Barbara and I downloaded and organized all the pictures that we had taken so far during the visit.
Saturday, June 12
We had a huge day planned for Jaycie and us today. On the agenda were a few hours on Lake Fork with the Bagwells in their new pontoon boat and a Big V sleepover for Barbara and Jaycie tonight.
Once we were up and moving around (and had breakfast with Mother), we dressed in our “water gear,” said goodbye to Mother for a few hours and drove to the Highway 515 East Landing area to meet David, Lorrie, and the girls for our big adventure. We were all a little later than planned, but soon David, Lorrie, Allison, Ashley, and Amber arrived and after introductions, we were on the boat and backing into Lake Fork.
“Old age is when you still have something on the ball, but you are just too tired to bounce it.” – A. Nonny Mus
From Mineola and Our Little Lot,
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams
