mld, August 2, 2002 at 9:36:00 PM CEST

Opa

Today my dad turns seventy years old. We will celebrate Opa's birthday with a Gathering of the Clan. All six of his kids, all twelve of the grandkids, and assorted friends will meet out in Katy for a shrimp boil/birthday party.

My contribution to the shrimpapalooza was to run down to Galveston yesterday, and get fifty pounds of shrimp off one of the trawler. Along with corn and potatoes, a few kegs of beer, and buckets of margaritas, we should all get fairly sated.

We're lucky to have had him this long. About five or six years ago, I forget, exactly, an exam he'd been putting off discovered that he was 99% blocked in one artery. 95% in another, and I forget which in the third. His best artery was 88% blocked. This is much worse than what just recently killed Daryll Kile in his sleep. The doctors didn't even let him leave the hospital, of course, and they cracked him open and fixed him up the next day.

It's hard for me to put into words my admiration for my dad, and all he's done as a father.

He's the son of a Missouri tenant farmer, (one of thirteen kids) who was the son of a Kentucky coal miner, who was the son of an Irish immigrant. He was a Depression baby, grew up dirt poor on the farm. His dad, in addition to running the farm, was a legendary figure in the turn of the century stockyards in Kansas City. He was a sheep broker, and dad often traveled with him by train throughout that Midwest, to buy sheep, and tend them on the way back, watering them while they were in the railroad cars.

After high school, Opa did a stint in the Coast Guard, during the Korean War. He had wanted to join the Marines, but his dad forbade it, so, ever the dutiful son, he spent his tour doing harbor security and manning a lighthouse in New England. It was only later that Opa's oldest son, a bit less less pliable, joined the Marines against his dad's wishes, becoming the first Jarhead in the family.

While on leave, toward the end of his tour, he met his future wife, Nonna. They've been married forty-five years now. They had six kids, the first four, all boys, in five years. Then they bought a TV. :-) The two following girls were two years apart.

Nonna and Opa raised us on a working man's salary. His first job was driving a bread truck. Later he worked for General Motors, at a plant rebuilding tranmissions. After a tranfer to Houston, he worked for a auto dealerships, in a variety of jobs, from service writer, to parts manager, to the guy who fixed everything from the A/C to the broken locks to burnt-out lightbulbs.

Some men will have as their legacy great works of art. Others will have built businesses, or created laws, or discovered Nature's secrets, benefiting all mankind. My father has done none of those things.

He instead, built a family.

Nonna and Opa could have had any number of creature comforts in their life. She has always worked, too, at least after the youngest child was off to school, and between them they did OK. But it takes a lot of money to raise six stairstep kids. They've never owned a new car in their life - always bought used.

He started today, his birthday, at age seventy, by doing what he's always done - he went to work. Today he'll spend the day running around in the truck the company has for him, shuttling paperwork back and forth from the dealership to the local offices getting the license plates and such for the cars they sell. He's no longer as strong as he once was, of course, so the man that owns the dealership gave him this sinecure a few years back, when it became clear that hard mechanical labor in the Texas heat was wearing on him. He spends his days driving around in truck, listening to talk radio.

He's worked his entire life. I doubt, though he says he'd like to, that he'll ever quit before the day he can't. In the afternoon, he gets home, and goes out to his garage. There, he'll tend to his animals, (a horse, a dog, the cats, and of course a sheep - there used to be a goat, a pig, and for a short time, a deer) - you can take the boy out of the country, but... :-) My youngest brother, who lives with them, has taken over the heavier chores like mowing and watering, along with all the other attendant chores that are part and parcel of a ten acre property.

He'll spend the rest of the evening out there under the fan, watching TV, drinking a few beers, and smoking the cigarettes we've all given up on getting him to quit. During the week it's mostly TV news, Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. He'll cuss Saddam and the Democrats daily. On the weekends, it's Nascar and John Wayne movies, and, in the fall, Notre Dame football.

When it gets dark, he'll close up the garage, reheat the plate of food Nonna leaves out for him in the microwave, and sit in his reliner while he eats. He'll fall asleep watching the news, then get up and finally join Nonna in bed a few hours later.

He likes when his kids come to visit, and between us all, there's usually one of his boys out there in the garage with him. I'm out there at least two days a week, most tmes three. (The girls, both the ones she raised, and the ones that come along with her boys) tend to go inside the house and hang out with Nonna.

Tonight though, when he gets home, we'll drag him over to my sister's, less than a mile away, where he'll find out about the shrimpapalooza. After a few hours of eating, drinking, and opening presents - wer're getting him some tools and this AM radio that will pick up all the stations from the Midwest, so he can hear about pork belly futures in Iowa at four o'clock in the morning when he wakes up, he'll be ready to hit the hay, and one of us will drive him and Nonna home.

It'll be a Very Good Day.

 

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mld, July 29, 2002 at 8:38:00 AM CEST

Muh Haid Hertz

Folks, I gotta tell ya, this last week or so of essays has just about broke my brain. All of this heavy thinking about war, politics, sex, religion, the fate of mankind, yatta-yatta-yatta, is a lot of work.

The good news is that I'm feeling like I've pretty much got the bases covered - I've said what I had to say, and now I can just point people to it when the subject comes up.

So, for a few days at least, I think I'm going to stick to the lighter side of life, and just tell some funny stories. I've lived a bunch of them. There have been a lot of you coming here this week for the first time, judging from the logs, mostly from the links a few of the established high-traffic sites have been so kind to give me, so you may not have seen any of those types of entries yet. It's not all serious warbloogging around here. Try Wyrdgrl, if you haven't already.

See, those sorts of things write themselves about as fast as I can type, which isn't too fast at all, but still light-years faster than the other stuff - where I spend ten times as much effort researching the issues, reading news, and just plain pondering.

My brain needs the rest. :-)

 

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mld, July 17, 2002 at 8:15:00 PM CEST

Texas Sized Gator

This gator was caught a few weeks ago at Kitty Hollow Park in Missouri City, TX. on Highway 6. (suburban SW Houston)

A construction worker found it laying in one of the concrete pipes. The animal control officers said it weighed just under 2100 lbs and was 18 1/2 feet long. It was taken to Brazos Bend State Park, and released.

I'm thinkin' a coupla things here. First, I'm not gonna be taking the wolfhounds, Shelby, or any kids to that park anytime soon. In fact, I don't think I'll be planning too many trips there my own damn self. Second, that monster woulda made quite a few pairs of good-looking cowboy boots.

Actually though, I'm happy. Gators had a rough go of it there for a while, and the sightings of ones like this just reaffirms how well they've come back. There are success stories in wildlife preservation, though you'd have a hard time getting some of the more radical tree-huggers to admit it.

The gator was lucky. If they'd have nabbed him in Louisiana, he'd a been the all-you-can-eat buffet at the nearest Cajun eatery. :-)

 

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