Category: Thoughts and Musings

Another Daily Happening, Crazy Times, Funny Happenings, My Family, The Early Days, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

Showing Off Our New Set Of Unbreakable Dishes

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Many years ago Madeline bought a new set of dishes. We hadn’t seen married all that long, but were beginning to have kids. It was Corel Ware. It was a good idea with the kids to get something that we wouldn’t be breaking every time we turned around. It was a good investment. My father in law came to visit. We were showing him the new dishes, when I flung one over in the floor to demonstrate how they were unbreakable. Well it just shattered into a thousand pieces . That’s when Madeline explained to me they weren’t unbreakable, they … Continue reading Showing Off Our New Set Of Unbreakable Dishes

Crazy Times, The Early Days, Thoughts and Musings

The Fire Alarms

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Within a year of Madeline and I marrying we had lived in a big mobile home, then moved next door to a little trailer house (rented from an old couple that meddled) and in an old motel in Burnet (because there was nowhere else to rent). Actually that all happened in the first 10 month of our marriage. Then we rented a mobile home in a Mobile Home Park in Oak Hill, in the western edge of Austin on Texas 71. When answering a knock on the door one evening we found a fellow there that had good news for … Continue reading The Fire Alarms

Aging, Crazy Times, The Construction Biz, The Early Days, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

The Martin’s, Father and Son Roadhands

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Uncle Bob Martin worked for me a couple of times in the 70s. He was slow and steady but was accomplishing something with every motion. He was my maternal grandmother, Nancy’s brother. Uncle Bob’s oldest son Butch Martin worked for me several times. We was opposite of his Dad. He was fast and all over everything, but man could he move dirt. You just always knew it wouldn’t last long, before he’d twist off and not show up. Each time I’d swear that was the last. But he had an uncanny way of arriving when you most needed someone in … Continue reading The Martin’s, Father and Son Roadhands

Crazy Times, The Construction Biz, The Early Days, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

The Unfortunate Incident With The Motorola Radio’s

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Things are so different today than when I first got into the business some 49 years ago. When people were out on a jobsite and you needed to tell them something, you drove out and delivered a message in person. Austin was a much smaller then, but a message could be delayed several hours at times. I think we had better planning skills then or our expectations for getting much done was a lot less. Somewhere along the way voice pagers came into vogue. But when you were out on a job with machinery running, if you heard the thing … Continue reading The Unfortunate Incident With The Motorola Radio’s

Crazy Times, Funny Happenings, Kenny Lewis, The Early Days, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

Writing Letters To My Brother

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I never was much of a writer when I was younger. But I told myself that I’d stay in touch with my brother, Kenny by writing him often while he was away in Vietnam and also when he was stationed in Germany. Telephone calls were not possible in Vietnam, and much too expensive when he got to Germany. I would write and tell him what all was going on in my life. I’d tell him about everything crazy happening in Smithwick. There always seemed like something Cec had gotten into that needed to be told. He wrote back to me … Continue reading Writing Letters To My Brother

Aging, Amazing Things, Crazy Times, Funny Happenings, Thoughts and Musings4 Comments

How I Began My Woodworking Hobby

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We have a very unique table. We got it from Madeline’s mom, Maxine, many years ago. It was a coffee table brought back from Venezuela by Maxine and Ted in the 60s. It’s not just a regular coffee table, it is huge. It’s made for a crosscut piece of Honduran Mahogany that is approx 3 1/2″ thick by 4’/ 5′ oval diameter. It’s a very impressive piece. The legs are made from branches of same type of tree that have been turned down on the end to make a dowel that fits into a drilled hole on the underside of … Continue reading How I Began My Woodworking Hobby

Crazy Times, In and Around Austin, My Family, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

The Things We Find Out About Ourselves. (August 8, 2016)

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I attended a funeral today, along with many others. It was a funeral where tears were shed, but no real outward displays of the terrible sadness that you know many felt. That comes from deep faith. That comes from the knowing and understanding that there are more good things to come. I left that service a bit saddened by the loss of an old friend, but that’s a normal reaction. I had a completely different emotion that I felt going away from there today. A complete feeling of dismay. It stems from an incident that supposedly happened around 50 years … Continue reading The Things We Find Out About Ourselves. (August 8, 2016)

Amazing Things, Crazy Times, Meeting New People, The Construction Biz, The Early Days, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

Mrs. Lilly Mae Little

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Back in 76 we were needing something to do. (That is what we say in the construction business when our inventory of work has been depleted) An acquaintance of ours, a competitor, had landed a big project up in North Texas, in the Possum Kingdom Area. It was more work than his crews could adequately handle, so we contracted for part of the project. We would be laying a 10 mile long segment of 24” water line. I was only 24 years old at the time. Madeline, our not yet 2 year old son Matthew and I relocated to that … Continue reading Mrs. Lilly Mae Little

Crazy Times, The Construction Biz, The Early Days, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

More About G.K.

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I wrote about my drunken accountant a while back. “GK, My Accountant With A Drinking Problem”. GK may have been an old drunk, but I had a real fondness for him. Following is a story about the evening goings on for the crew when we were up building a 24” water line in Stephens County. Our office for the Stephens County project was in a small town of Ivan. Actually Ivan wasn’t a town. It was a beer joint and then our little office building. We were on a party line with the Kate’s Place.Ms. Kate was like our answering … Continue reading More About G.K.

Construction, Crazy Times, In and Around Austin, The Construction Biz, The Early Days, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

GK, My Accountant With A Drinking Problem

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Gk was my accountant for several years. I’ve mentioned him in a couple of my previous stories. I always called him Worley, his last name. GK was so fast on a desk calculator, you’d think the keys were going to fly off. By the time I got to know him, he was pretty much an old drunk. He would shake a lot. But when he would sit down and had a pen in his hand that man had the nicest handwriting of any person I’ve ever known. He had gone to a business school when he was young. He could … Continue reading GK, My Accountant With A Drinking Problem