Embryonic/Fetal Me

Gram got pregnant with me in 1946.  I am a baby boomer by accident.  My dad was born in 1903 which made him too young for WWI and too old for WWII.  I came along by chance, not as a result of a soldier coming home from the war.

My parents lived on the outskirts of Houston in an area known as Almeda.  This was southwest of downtown Houston on the Missouri Pacific railway line.  Since my father was a cattle buyer who shipped cattle by rail to feedlots, this must have been a convenient location.  From Gram's point of view, it must have been out in the middle of nowhere.

Gram was 37 and Pop was 43 when I was conceived.  I was very much wanted, but Pop was sure I would be a boy, and I was known as Tomcat.  Lorette, who came along six years later after two miscarriages, was also supposed to be a boy.  Alas.  Gram, however, was very happy to have girls.  She felt that Pop would have been very demanding of a boy.  One of his stories was how his father had disciplined him with a toy buggy whip.  Pop didn't sound like he felt that a real whipping was inappropriate.

Gram weighed about 100 pounds when she got pregnant with me and weighed about 150 when I was born on February 8, 1947.  At that time women were advised not to gain too much weight then since it was believed that a smaller baby would be easier to deliver.  However, I was a planned C-section from early on, since it was determined that Gram's pelvis was too small for a vaginal delivery. Thus she could eat as much as she wanted, and I weighed 7 pounds, 14 ounces.  I think the decision to plan a C-section was greatly influenced by fear on Gram's part because her mother died when Gram was only10 days old.  Gram had been a very difficult forceps birth, and all her life the scars from the forceps were visible, on one temple and behind the opposite ear.  Given the location of the scars, I think Gram's head was at an angle to the birth canal, making her birth much more difficult.

Little was known about the effects of the prenatal environment on babies in the 1940s.  Gram smoked a couple packs of unfiltered Camels a day, drank plenty of strong coffee, and sipped cooking sherry for morning sickness since she had read that rich pregnant women sipped champagne, but it was much too expensive.  I can't help but wonder if I would have a better memory without the nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol.  At least I wasn't starved.

Maddy Dog (October 11, 1998 to June 19, 2013)

Maddy Dog (October 11, 1998 to June 19, 2013)

Dr. Mary came to our house tonight, and helped Maddy on her way to the Rainbow Bridge.

I wrote the following earlier today:

This is Wednesday afternoon, and Maddy is spending much of the day on my lap. I have just fed her a banana, her absolutely favorite food. She is no longer interested in dog food.

She arrived at our house in November, 1998, several weeks after her birth, a tiny Schnauzer puppy with a lot of energy, especially at night. That November was the same month my mother celebrated her 90th birthday. Every time I talked to Mom on the phone I told her I had a puppy which delighted her. I also told her each time that I was in law school, and she was always very proud. I returned to Texas to visit her in December, and she passed on in January, 1999, just two months later.

Maddy loved to travel with Harry, and Julia, and me. She was the consummate car dog. Her first trip was to the beach. I’ll never forget her expression when she tasted sea water. 

Her favorite outdoor game was to chase and fetch frisbees. It the frisbee landed right side up, she would flip it over to make it easier for her to carry back to me. Indoors, she was an excellent soccer dog, chasing balls all over the house and begging for more, whining her “please help me” whine if the ball went out of her reach under furniture.

While I was in law school and studying for the bar exam Maddy sat in my lap and held me down and made me study.

She was the first dog I had as an adult, and the only puppy I will ever have. Julia, Harry, and I will miss her so much.

Moms and Guns

I have just been invited to become an instructor and a volunteer at the Shooting for Women Alliance.  Susan, one of the owners, is an old friend of mine, as well as someone I introduced to working in a law office.  Poor thing.  Although she has since married a lawyer, and she (and he) seem(s) to be prospering.

So, back to the beginning:  My dad had rifles and revolvers.  The rifle(s), at least the one I remember, was a lever action 22.  This was the rifle that I first shot at tin cans under my dad's supervision.  He was adamant about gun safety.  This was after we had left Bernardo, moved into Columbus on Preston Street, and was at pastureland he had leased south of town.  This was the same pastureland in which I learned to drive, but that is another story for another time.

A long hiatus follows.  The next time I did any shooting was at Aegis in Michigan when I was visiting Elizabeth in Ann Arbor.  It was February of 2006 (I think), and COLD, as winter in Michigan can be to someone who has lived in Tennessee since 1984, but I had the opportunity to shoot a 9 mm Czech handgun at a paper plate target outdoors.  I'm not too bad, and I still have the paper plate somewhere.  I not only shot at the plate, I also picked the brass up out of the snow so it could be reloaded.  Hot brass leaves a distinctive trail and can be found at the bottom of the snow, or if missed, can be found in the spring.

I am very grateful to my shooting mentors in Michigan since their input made me feel much more competent when I trained to get my HCP (handgun carry) permit in Tennessee. NOTE:  the Tennessee permit is not about concealed carry but about carrying a handgun.  Thus, open carry is legal, if not all that common in Tennessee.

Tales of Christmas Past

When I was a kid we always went out to the woods near Columbus, woods which were a part of someone’s pasture land, to cut down either a fir or a pine.  I loved these excursions.  We were all together and on the same mission.  My dad would cut down the chosen tree and load it into the horse trailer behind the pickup. [The horse trailer was one he had welded out of pipe.  It was open and small, able to hold two horses.] Then we headed home, and it was always the same; the tree which looked so modest outdoors was always too tall for the living room, even the 11' ceilings we had at the house on Travis.

Decorating it was the next big event.  The lights had to be laid out on the floor and untangled and checked for burnt out bulbs.  Next we had to get the angel on the very top of the tree with a white light inside her (him?).  Then the glass balls, aluminum bells, and a couple antique ornaments (a fragile church and lamp which I still have).

My dad, a serious procrastinator, would wait until what Gram considered “the last minute” to go on the tree expedition.  She loved to decorate and wanted plenty of time for getting things perfect.  I didn’t care.  I loved it.

Here Rests Ike Towell

We moved from the ranch in Bernardo into Columbus, Texas, when I was ten and Lorette was four.  I spent much of my free time exploring and otherwise entertaining myself on my bicycle. 

In a small town in the 1950s, no one worried about kids running away from home or being kidnapped.  No one locked their doors and people often left the keys in their cars, permanently.  Lost keys were not a problem.  Theft was not a problem.  The rule for children was to be home by dark.  Gram had an extra rule which was not to go down by the river because there were bums camping there, but I never could find one.

One of my favorite haunts was the Columbus City Cemetery where Gram and my father are now buried.  Under the live oak trees were civil war veterans, families with a row of infant headstones, familiar local names with graves going back a century or more, and the one most fascinating to me was the headstone of Ike Towell who wrote his own epitaph before he died in 1934.

I have since wondered if Ike Towell's influence helped shape my own religious and political beliefs.  I certainly didn't get these notions from the textbooks approved by the Texas Board of Education which populated not only Texas schools but most of the schools in the country, books which were deadly dull and free of anything even remotely thought-provoking, and in the recent past have completely rewritten American history.

Thanksgiving, magic turkey stuffing, and home made ice cream

Long ago and far, far away (actually early 1970 something in Evanston, Illinois), John and I had Thanksgiving dinner with his fellow graduate student, Jim, and Jim's wife Alice, and other friends, in Jim and Alice's shotgun apartment which was either in Rogers Park (north Chicago) or in Evanston.  At any rate it was not too far from where we lived at 800 Main Street in Evanston.

It was a dark and stormy night (actually just dark and well below freezing) in the Chicago area.  I learned, coming from Texas, that it gets dark VERY early in winter the farther north you go.  When we arrived, we found that Jim and Alice had been cooking both a turkey and magic turkey stuffing in a separate dish in their oven.  They left the magic turkey stuffing in the oven for several hours, the same amount of time as the turkey.  Upon opening the oven, it was discovered that the stuffing was somewhat overcooked.  Actually scorched would be a good descriptor. However, the brave participants in the dinner were unwilling to throw away the magic in the stuffing and thus it was eaten anyway.  We then spent about three hours at the dinner table.  We were moving rather slowly, and there was so little space in the apartment that getting up from the table was a major undertaking, regardless of anyone's mental state.

Someone eventually remembered that homemade ice cream was scheduled for dessert, and the hand crank (non-electric)  ice cream maker was taken out onto the porch so that any spills of salt water would slop over onto the porch.  Jim and Alice's apartment was on the second floor of the building, and their porch was actually the roof over the porch on the first floor.  Practically speaking, this means that the porch sloped toward the street.  Given the time of year, the porch was covered in a thin but nevertheless menacing sheet of ice.  The ice cream makers kept sliding toward the street, but luckily no one tumbled off the porch, and the ice cream was eventually frozen (not too hard given the ambient temperature), and VERY cold ice cream was enjoyed by all.

Oyster and Celery Stuffing

A family recipe contributed by Julia

4 c finely diced celery
2 c boiling water
1/2 c minced onion
1/2 c butter or oil
4 qts lightly packed day old bread cut into 1 inch cubes (20-24 slices)
5 tsp poultry seasoning
1 Tbsp salt
1 tsp pepper
2 cans oysters
1/2 lb mushrooms

Simmer celery in boiling water, covered, 20 min. Drain, reserving 1 c liquid.

Saute onions until soft, then add mushrooms and saute until brown.

Mix bread & seasonings, add celery, reserved liquid,  butter, onion+mushrooms.
add oysters (if you want to make stuffing more oyster-ish I would displace some of the celery liquid with the juice from the canned oysters. 

Mix.

Stuff in bird, or put into pan to bake. bake at 350 until warm (usually about 30 minutes).