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

Left To Sweat It Out

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I was a sophomore in high school and still small for my age. All the big boys liked to pick on me, but I’m sure I provoked a lot of it. I was in the building trades program where we learned about carpentry and actually built a house during the school year. It was a rowdy class. Our teacher was Robert Woodard, but we called him Jake. Our shop/classroom was in the old bus barn. It was just a big tin building with no insulation. The temperatures in that building could be extreme, both directions. We had caused enough trouble … Continue reading Left To Sweat It Out

Crazy Times, Funny Happenings, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

Jake The Building Trades Teacher

lewisotr

Robert Woodard was his name but his first year teaching Building Trades, the year before I was old enough to take it, some of the boys starting calling him Jake and it stuck. “Hey Jake what are we doing next?” or Hey Jake can we take a break?” I always considered Jake pretty easy going, very knowledgeable and an all round good teacher. But if you got him riled up, you better watch out. Some of the older guys and a few of the younger ones were real hoodlums. They would always try Jake on for size. He swung a … Continue reading Jake The Building Trades Teacher

Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

Ever Wonder How A Mosquito Bite Works?

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I got bit twice the other day. One on each leg down right above the kneecap. One puffed up real big while the other one did little more than left a red mark and was gone in a day or so. Trying to figure out what the reason was I did a little looking around. It seems Mrs. Mosquito lights on you and spits some salvia on you to deaden the spot, so you don’t swat her immediately, the she goes to work trying to jab into you. As she moves around she spits more salvia on your skin and … Continue reading Ever Wonder How A Mosquito Bite Works?

Marble Falls and the Area Around it., Texas History, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

Rice Culture in Colorado County

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Marker erected: Intersection of Main & Commerce Streets, Eagle Lake Marker Text:The rice industry did not spread into the coastal plains region west of Houston until the very end of the 19th century. In 1898, Captain William Dunovant (1845-1902), a local plantation owner and entrepreneur, planted 40 acres of rice at the southeast corner of Eagle Lake (2.5 miles south) as an experiment, using convict labor from a nearby prison farm to construct levees and harvest the new crop. The small tract produced such encouraging results that in 1899 Dunvovant built a pumping plant on the lake and irrigated 250-300 … Continue reading Rice Culture in Colorado County

Amazing Things, Texas HistoryLeave a comment

10 South Texas Windmills by Atilano Salas

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All but two of the windmills on the ranch were built to the same design, but no two were alike when the wind put them to work. Visible for miles jutting above the chaparral, each sounded out a tuneless melody, an almost unbroken clanging, slow and comforting and rhythmic, coupled to the occasional metal-on-metal squeal of the tail adjusting to a shift in the breeze, its blades slicing air with a tempered whoosh, pulling up clear cool water flowing steadily into the cistern through the long galvanized discharge pipe. It was as though these lone sentinels scattered in a sea … Continue reading 10 South Texas Windmills by Atilano Salas

Aging, Crazy Times, Grandchildren, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

Pulling A Tooth

lewisotr

Sofia is getting to the age where she is starting to lose teeth. She came over the other night and wanted me to pull her loose tooth, her first. I sent her to get a handkerchief from my chest of drawers to aid in getting a grip. She pointed to the tooth. I worked and worked with the tooth and it wouldn’t come out. It was bleeding a little but would not come out. I finally told her we needed to wait and give it a little more time. She went on her way. She got over to her house, … Continue reading Pulling A Tooth

Aging, Crazy Times, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

A Good Deed, That May Never Go Away

lewisotr

This story goes back several years. It all started when an old gal I know needed some help. She desperately needed some help. She lives in a very decrepit old house. I got word that the City (an unnamed city) was going to condemn her home that had been in her family for many decades. There was junk piled up higher than an Elephant’s Eye. (I finally found a way to incorporate that line in a story. It was included in a nasty letter I received from a homeowner years ago that we had installed a wastewater line adjacent to … Continue reading A Good Deed, That May Never Go Away