The Evening Rambler for the New Year’s Eve 2013

As we finish out the year, I thought a quick summary of the Christmas season here was in order.  Yeah, I had a list of a few small gift ideas, but the thing I’ve looked forward to this year was gathering my scattered family under one roof.  That was Christmas for me, that and the Christmas Eve service at church which was good as always.

We picked up my son Daniel at the airport on the 22 nd, and my eldest daughter Erin, son-in-law Mark, and granddaughters arrived on the 27 th, after spending Christmas in Denver with Mark’s family.  It’s so good to see them all!  We took Daniel to the airport this morning, and have since heard that he’s safely back in Michigan.  The rest of us are going to have a board game night soon, so like I said, this will be short.

Oh, and since I mentioned church earlier, this Bible verse has come to mind all season…

“...the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned." - Matthew 4:16 (NIV)

In addition to the decorations, presents, snack food and general visiting, one thing we did yesterday was go see “The Hobbit (part 2):  The Desolation Of Smaug”, in 3-D.  Without going into a lot of details, I’ll say I think this was definitely a better movie than part 1 a year ago.  I plan on seeing it again.

So, it’s been kind of an up and down year, a real mixed bag.  A bit better on the whole than 2012 was, for me anyway.  Here’s hoping for more good things in 2014.  Have a healthy and Happy New Year, everyone!

The Evening Rambler for the last day of November 2013

I'm making this up as I go along, so I don't know what direction it will take.  Welcome to live blogging!

We had a good Thanksgiving, my family went to my mother-in-law's and we had a good visit.  Traditional food was the order of the day, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, cole slaw, rolls, cranberry sauce, celery stuffed with creamed cheese, and of course pies.  Two choices this year, pumpkin and chocolate.  As I do every year, I asked for a small slice of both since I couldn't decide.  And that's not a lie, I didn't want to pass one of them up.  One of these years I might just choose one, and everyone will look at me funny and ask if I feel all right.

There's an old saying, "You can't have your cake and eat it too".  No cake though, as I mentioned Thanksgiving was a day for pie.  The early results are in, and it seems like the old saying applies to pie as well.

So I've been trying to come up with more stories.  A few days ago, I thought of a dialogue that could happen between just some average guy, and an alien.  It went on for a while, and I thought it was pretty clever.  At the last, the alien starts to walk off (presumably to his spaceship), and said, "You won't see me again".

It had possibilities, and now I sure wish I could recall their conversation.  I have got to start carrying a notepad at all times and write this stuff down while it's fresh.

It was a nice fall day today.  The fall season ran kind of late here, but by now all the colors are over and most of the leaves are down.  Except for the big pin oak tree in my front yard.  It will release leaves a few batches at a time, and it's liable to still have some old leaves to drop through the winter and maybe as late as the first of spring.  It does that most every year.  What are you gonna do?

Tomorrow December begins, and it seems like a clean break between Thanksgiving and the Advent / Christmas season this year.  For me, anyway.  I know shopping and running around will happen, but I'm not in a panic about that.  We have our tree up and the lights put on; the boxes of ornaments have been brought up from the archives.  We're poised to begin.

A micro story

All the big fans were accounted for, he had put the last one in the shed and taken a quick inventory before he walked out and locked the door.  He dreaded to think of the electric bill, but there was no help for it.  This had to be done.

It was a nice sunny afternoon; the last of the seasonal rains were well past.  He walked back and looked over the site, the pond was as dry as he could expect.  He opened the door to the truck.  “That’s the last one”, he said.  “It’s time to go now”.

Trunk or Treat 2013

Happy Reformation Day, and Happy Halloween!  For the past several year (seven?  eight?  - something like that) our church has had trunk-or-treat in our parking lot.  We get to enjoy watching the kids in their costumes, and the kids and their parent or parents have a safe place to go get candy.  We've been to this before and this year as always, a good time was had by all.

Highlights...

The weather cooperated, thankfully.  We've had rain here pretty much constantly for 2 1/2 days now, something like three or four inches total.  It all stopped around four p.m., and the sun came out for a while.  The bonus to that was the illumination of the leaves.  I think the fall colors are peaking now through this weekend, and while I wouldn't quite call it a spectacular fall, there are some really nice trees around the suburbs.

Costumes:

I think the cutest costume was an owl costume worn by a little boy, maybe 2 1/2 or almost 3 years old.  My words can't do it justice, you would have had to have seen him.  A couple of girls, maybe seven or eight, had a cowgirl and indian princess theme going.  I could tell a lot of effort went into the costumes; nicely done.

My favorite though was a girl maybe nine or ten, who was dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.  The costume was first rate, and she was carrying a dog that looked a lot like Toto.  And I don't mean a stuffed animal, this was her well behaved pet, just looking around, apparently enjoying himself or herself.

And a lot of the kids wore superhero costumes, mostly store bought.  Batman was there of course, along with Iron Man, Superman, Spider-Man, and at least one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

One of the cars...

...was interesting.  With the trunk open and lined with big teeth, and with the dorsal fin on top of the roof, it had a "land shark" look to it.  Sitting in the trunk ready to hand out candy, was a young lady in sweats (going for a wetsuit look, I think), and she had goggles strapped across her forehead and also a snorkel.

We handed out four bags worth of candy, and only saved back a few candy bars for ourselves.

The Evening Rambler for about as late in August as you can get

This year will be remembered locally as one of the hot Santa-Cali-Gon festivals.  Last year was the "downpour on Friday" S-C-G, and 2011 was the "microburst blowing some of the tents down" S-C-G.  There have been other hot Santa-Cali-Gon weekends in years past, in fact, one was quite a bit hotter - like 105 or 107 degrees or some such insane thing.

I can almost hear you now, "What's with all this Santa-Caloo-Whatever"?  Well they had to call it something, and "Big Fall Festival" was already taken.  Actually, a big part of the local history here in Independence were the three trails west, the Santa Fe, the California, and the Oregon trails.  The Santa Fe trail started over 100 miles to our east, in Franklin, Missouri; Independence was one of the last two stopping points (the other being Westport) where people could make repairs and stock up before taking the long drive west across prairies and mountains.  At some point just west in Kansas, near Olathe or Gardner, the trails split apart.

The S-C-G festival for short (to save keystrokes, but I just blew that), has settled into a pattern over the years of a few carnival rides (always set up on the south end), food (funnel cakes, kettle corn, hot dogs, pickles, fried Pepsi doughnuts and the like), and crafts and clothing items (if any article can have a child's first name on it, it will be so).  There's also a few music venues out in the open, and today I happened by one band who was playing some good blues.  I also saw that a dulcimer club had set up under a tent, playing for all they were worth.  They had a good sized, appreciative audience.

One thing you don't see there anymore are the re-enacted gunfights; that seems to have gone by the wayside here.  Come to think of it though, I don't think we have a history here of shootouts, I always got the idea that was more of a Dodge City or Tombstone pastime.

And of course there are always crowds of people ambling along, though I think it was a bit less crowded than some times in the past.

Did I mention it was hot?  Brutally hot?

My wife and I came with a bottle of water each, and it was a good thing too.  We stopped by our church's booth for Fried Pepsi Doughnuts, and then began a search for a friend of mine, who helps his mom and dad sell some really good pickles (be forewarned, they have a bit of a bite).  We finally found where Blake was set up, and found out that unfortunately his dad had fainted from the heat and dehydration, and had been taken to the hospital.  We're still praying for Blake's dad, but we got an update that he's gotten good treatment and is doing quite a bit better now.

I hadn't planned on this whole Rambler being about Santa-Cali-Gon, but I think this has gone long enough.  I'll save the other stuff for another time. 

How about a slide show?

I've got the projector and screen all set up and ready to go!

"Bob, you're not going to show the old Colorado trip slides again?  Everybody's seen all those!"
"No, no...just a few slides in honor of Mike's birthday."

(Click of the power knob being turned to ON, the soft whirring of the cooling fan, and the sounds of the projector being adjusted so the picture's in the center of the screen.)

"Okay, this is actually a card we got from the Scowdens one Christmas."

"Aww!"

(Cli-CLICK!)

"This one's from Thanksgiving 1973 at our place."

"Look who's right out in front?"

"Yep.  That was a fun time."

(Cli-CLICK!)

"Ha!"

"Oops, gotta do that at least once.  Hang on, I'll get it."

(Sounds of the projector mechanism being opened manually, and the slide holder being removed, the slide being taken out, turned, and being re-inserted, and everything being put back right.)

(Cli-CLICK!)

"So okay, that's Mike and Kathy at the...wait, that must be from a few years ago.  That looks like a different house than the one they're in now.  I think."

(Cli-CLICK!)

"What's he doing here?"





"I think he was explaining to Victoria how McDonald's gets the eggs round for Egg McMuffins.  Mike knows all kinds of stuff like that."

"What I want to know Bob, is how you remember trivia like that years later."

"Not sure.  Kind of scary, huh?"

(Cli-CLICK!)

"This...and the one before too...were taken at Aunt Timmy's 80th birthday celebration."

(Cli-CLICK!)

"Well, not quite as bad as the other one.  Wait a sec."

(Sounds of the projector mechanism etc., etc., etc.)

(Cli-CLICK!)

"There we go.  Dave and Mike, same evening."

(Cli-CLICK!)

"The gang!"

But you know, what's weird is that I couldn't find any of Mike on one of his birthdays.

************

Mike, I hope you had a Happy Birthday!  With cake.  And all.

New July friends

We met in a tent of all places.

I was so excited,

So I paid the price and took them home.

Later one evening, we put on a show.

They sang their brief song.

But then they were gone.

Happy Father's Day 2013 - a short and different blog

Happy Father's Day to anyone reading this who is a father...or who has celebrated with his or her father today!

It's become a tradition for me to write a Father's Day blog entry, so I thought I'd do something a bit different this year.  For those who don't know, one of my big passions is genealogy.  For many years I've been fascinated by this treasure hunt, not to mention all the enjoyment I've gotten looking at old letters, old photos, and retelling old family stories.  Now, I've not neglected my maternal line, but here's something for my dad, his dad, and so on.

I've done some research on my paternal line, and one thing I did for interest and amusement was commit these first names to memory.

So, I am,
Robert, son of
Albert, son of
Harry, son of
Jacob, son of
Isaac, son of
John, son of
Isaac, son of
Henry, son of
John, son of
Philip, son of
Thomas, son of
Thomas, son of
John, son of
John.

And that John Wingate is as far back as I've been able to go so far; he was born in Scotland in 1602.  I still think Wingate is basically an English name (there is a town of Wingate in northern England, near Durham), and some branches of the Wingate's moved to Scotland.  Or it's possible my family is more Scottish than I think.

Anyway, my line came through Scotland, back to England briefly (one of the Thomas'es I think, though I'd have to look that up), then across the Atlantic to Maryland, Delaware, then Ohio.  My Dad was raised in Ohio and Michigan, and came to Missouri to work as a pilot for TWA in 1942.

Now what I ought to do is follow this up in a few days with some scanned photos of my Dad.  Maybe I can find one of him in his TWA uniform.

Books of maps

We here at the Porch do like a good map. And so, we are interested in any blog post that lists 7 must-read books on maps.

Like this one.

Proof

Last year when my main computer needed to be replaced, the new box came with Windows 7, which I like.  One problem, the Cannon scanner software doesn't communicate with the new system.  I considered upgrading the scanner software, but have decided to move it to my other computer instead, which is still using Windows XP.

Which means it's about time to pack away the old HP scanner, which is slow, noisy, sometimes balky, and not that user friendly.  I'd have jettisoned it long ago, except that:

A.  It still works, and
B.  It has a transparency adapter so I can scan in 35mm negatives and 2" x 2" slides.

All that preamble to tell you that I've started a massive project to scan all my slides.  I'm not very far into the project; I'm up to about 1956.  I had a rather exciting "Aha moment" when I noticed something in this slide, for the first time yesterday; and I've seen it many times over the years.  This is from my first birthday.

On or near November 12, 1954, and appropriate to this blog, this was in Grandma and Poppy's kitchen.  Left to right, my Uncle Bud, me, and my sister Connie (I'm not sure why she's staring at the wallpaper).  Now Cousin Mike, see if you notice anything...interesting about this picture.  I'll give you a few moments...

Hint:  I've mentioned this here before (paragraphs 17 & 18), it's an old family story.

What we have here is photographic proof of waaaaaay back when I started out as a lefty, before my dad trained me out of that, and made me mixed-handed.  Before yesterday, I didn't realize there was any evidence.  It's neat the things I discover when I look through old stuff.

Oh, and another bit of trivia.  The windowpanes slid into the walls, and you'll notice the one on the right side is open.  I'm sure this wasn't too late in the evening, but it was already dark.  And though this was in southern Missouri, November evenings are usually cool there.  But this was 1954, an unusually hot year, or so they tell me.

While I'm in the mood, here's a few more pictures from that evening.

This one was actually taken just before the one at the top.  I don't know if Connie's trying to get my attention or Bud's.  And I don't know if Bud just sampled some of the cake, or if he was prompting me what to do next.  Well, we can see the story, even if we don't know the dialog.  This next image I cropped...seemed to improve it, I think.

I hope you enjoyed those!