How Uncle Henry Kept Order in the Classroom

Back in the early days of the 20th century in Texas, a person didn’t need to have a college degree to teach school. Such was the case with Uncle Henry. I think he must have been around 18 or 19 years old when he got a contract to teach in a one room school house in the West Texas town of Gouldbuske. He may have gotten the job because everybody had heard about the reputation of this school.

Gouldbuske was where a huge ranch owned by an Englishman named Gould Buske had been located. To sell the ranch, the owner, Mr. Buske, used a very clever marketing ploy. He hired a couple of men to arm themselves with a load of

[more...]

Share on Facebook

Uncle Ralph and Bonnie and Clyde

Uncle Ralph lived on a ranch near Talpa, which is near Coleman, Texas. There was a train, called the “Doodlebug, that went from Coleman to Talpa, then to Ballinger and finally, I think, to San Angelo. The Doodlebug consisted of one passenger car, one freight car and an ugly looking engine. It wasn’t a steam or diesel engine. I saw it one time in the 40’s and it looked like it was powered by gasoline.

Around 1933 Uncle Ralph rode on the Doodlebug over to Ballinger. When he got off the train, here came a railroad guard waving his arms at Ralph. The guard said, “Don’t go up to the café, that Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are up there!” Ralph said, “Aren’t you headed the wrong way? You need to go up there and arrest them!” The guard replied, “Not them two!” and headed off in the opposite direction.

Ralph, of course, headed right on up to the café (it was not often to get to see celebrities in West Texas). When he got up there he looked through the front window and between the window curtains he could see Bonnie and Clyde in a back corner where they could see anyone coming through the front door. Their guns were propped against their table.

Ralph didn’t hang around to see whether or not they paid for their meal. I would guess they did because Bonnie grew up in Rowena which is only six miles away and a local girl wouldn’t want to get a bad reputation. The railroad guard took the right course of action, retreat, which was a wise choice without having reinforcements. This couple managed to kill nine lawmen (not to mention a few civilians here and there) in their short career before they were ambushed and killed in their Model A Ford over in Louisiana. There were enough guns and ammo in their car to arm a small army in Central America.

Share on Facebook

Share on Facebook

Share on Facebook

Dad found some old reels of 8mm home movies. There’s no audio. Here’s a clip. Warning: contains short but very rare, very graphic Amphicar sinking. Some very wonderful footage of my brother Russell.

and here’s the rest of it. This one has a few seconds of Granddad. And of motorcycles on the beach. And Renee marching as flag carrier with the Roosevelt High School band.

Share on Facebook

I had posted this before but here it is again. Follow Kim’s reports from her travels.

Share on Facebook

Overnight Mashed Potatoes

5 lb bag taters (gold are best but russetts okay)
1 c sour cream
3 pckgs cream cheese (room temp)
1 c chopped green oniions
stick ‘o’ butter
1/2 c grated cheddar cheese

Boil then peel potatoes, throw into mixer bowl with the s cream & cr cheese & gr oinions. Add pepper to taste. Put in a buttered 9×13 baking dish. Top with pats ‘o’ butter & shredded cheese. Refrigerrate overnite covered with foil (don’t let it touch the cheese). Bake at 325 covered for 15 min then uncovered for 20.

Feast.

Share on Facebook

What you mean cutting the star shapes for the fruit salad?
Easy, I used a starfruit!

Share on Facebook

Jimmie’s famous fruit salad that she learned to make from Aunt Pat. This gets covered with a caramelized sweetened condensed milk cream sauce.

Pepper encrusted, smoked entire shoulder of a deer that, like every year, gets harvested off our property here in November by my buddy Lee. He only hunts with bow and arrow so that’s become the Indian part of our Thanksgiving. We have a real overpopulation of deer; a tasty overpopulation. That, of course, is the Thanksgiving turkey in the background. It was 13 pounds, about as good a turkey as we’ve ever had.

Share on Facebook

Have Fun Checking These Out!

Share on Facebook

[more...]

Share on Facebook

The previously mentioned anecdote about the planet Mars being mistaken for a ship’s red port running light should probably never have happened. We were standing watches during the night in rotation every three out of four nights. Out in the middle of the Pacific at night there was plenty of time to look at the stars and planets through the binoculars hanging around your neck. In addition, this was before global positioning satellites when navigation out at sea relied on taking sights on the sun, stars and planets with a sextant and then using the readings to work out lines of position with either the Nautical or Air Almanac. The sights were taken on the appropriate first magnitude stars plus the planets Venus and Jupiter. I don’t remember if Mars or Saturn were included.One needed to know which stars and planets were which. This could be done by someone pointing them out to you, by recognizing them by the constellations they were in or by using a small plastic calculator
issued by the Navy.

Using a sextant was a skill that required practice to get fairly accurate readings. There was a “window” of opportunity in the morning and in the evening of about twenty five minutes to get star sights. It was the time period when both the horizon and first magnitude starts could be seen. One sighted through the sextant’s telescope on a known star. Once focused on the star, because the sextant has a split mirror one can then “lower” the image of the star to the horizon by first sliding the

[more...]

Share on Facebook