February 3, 2021 - In 2010, Pam and I took a three-week vacation to the West Coast. After Yellowstone, Wyoming, Idaho and California, and Oregon, we were returning home through Colorado and turned on a road leading to the peak of Colorado’s tallest mountain, Mt. Elbert. We were pulling our old Red Dale Travel trailer and failed to read the sign that forbad our entering this steep mountain road with our truck and trailer. It didn’t take long for us to realize we were not equipped to climb the super steep road.
January 25, 2021 - Before Toledo Bend Reservoir was ever built, the Bayou Seipe near Huxley, Texas was a ten-mile “no boat” creek- fisherman’s paradise and when my friend Hollis Peavy and I heard about it, we were soon addicted to it. Busy little Harris Branch … spring-fed and ever-flowing … intersected the Bayou Seipe on its ten-mile run to the Sabine River. And this gorgeous branch/creek stretch of water became a favorite for Hollis and me.
January 11, 2021 - San Augustine actually had a beautiful snow last night. Our backyard birds flew into their suet and grain in numbers I had never seen. I am sure there were fifty or more. I took a lot of their pics this morning and I am glad I got an early start. It is ten o’clock and the snow is quickly melting.
January 4, 2021 - "My cup runneth over…." Psalms 23:5
"Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." 1 Peter 1:8
When I was five years old, we moved to a house on the Henrietta Road north of Center, Texas. My memories about it are few: bitter weeds, bitter cow milk…. roasting hickory nuts in the fireplace…. our dog "Nellie"… and the yellow jackets that covered my brother Bill and me with stings.
December 7, 2020 - In 1950 at the age of 18, I hitch-hiked to Springfield, Missouri with three dollars in my pocket. I persuaded the college to let me enroll with the promise to pay as I could for a room in the dormitory. I was given a room shared with Don Walker of Tyler, Texas. It was complete with a lavatory, a Panel-Ray Heater, a washcloth, a towel, a broom, and two bunk beds.
November 30, 2020 - Pam and I got into a discussion about hot peppers yesterday. I was telling her how my Dad could “chew up and swallow” the hottest peppers without batting an eye. “Since he grew up around Louisiana Cajuns, he ate the hot ones just like they did” I said. But Pam would not be outdone. “My daddy (Oley Ledoux) could best your daddy any day,” she said, “because he didn’t just grow up around Cajuns. He was a Cajun.”
November 16, 2020 - In 1946, Daddy moved our family to a rent house on Arcadia Road in Center, Texas. Behind the house was an old chicken house where our “Banty” chickens roosted every night. My brother John and I often crawled on top of it to swing on one of the two high line wires that ran to the house.
November 9, 2020 - Many families who lived in the Post WWII days (in the mid-forties) lived in rent houses and were no exceptions. We had lived in a total of seven rent houses in my hometown of Center, Texas before I left for college in 1950. One of our rent houses was located in East Center and Daddy told all eight of us that it was very old and “needs a lot of work."
“For they shall feed and lie down, and none shall make them afraid…” Zeph. 3:13
November 2, 2020 - Along with Castor oil, Castoria and Birdseye diapers, Mother always kept several cans of Carnation Evaporated Milk in our house. All ten of us were raised on a mixture of Carnation Evaporated Milk, water and Karo syrup.
October 26, 2020 - I watched the brown headed Cowbirds pair off so sweetly again this year, but as usual they didn’t build any nests. When birds of smaller species build theirs and lay their eggs, the cowbirds sneak in, roll their eggs out, replace them with their own, and then let the smaller mother hatch their eggs. If an egg from the natural mother is allowed to hatch, the mother cowbird will come and push it from the nest.