October 8, 2020 - P.T Barnum was right when he said that “there’s a sucker born every minute.” I am living proof of that, having been taken for a sucker while on a vacation trip in 1965. I hope that my experience will be a warning to others who let their eyes overpower their brains.
August 27, 2020 - I need to make this perfectly clear at the outset, I did not play with dolls or doll houses when I was a young boy. However, when I was in the sixth grade at San Augustine, Texas Junior High, our homeroom teacher decided that we needed a class project to work on during the semester. Mrs. Dan Lowe decided that our class should build a doll house, or a model home. So, she drew up some plans, much like an architect would do.
August 20, 2020 - If you are like me you have heard this phrase most of your life, but probably not thought much about it. On the surface it appears to have a finality about it as it can be translated “that’s all there is,” “it’s finished,” “it’s over,” or “there’s no more.”
August 18, 2020 - Every neighborhood needs a nurse, a woman who is always there to doctor the kids’ skinned knees, insect bites, minor cuts, and abrasions that are a part of life in the ‘hood’. When our family lived in Houston, Texas in the early 1970s, a Mrs. Whatley performed this activity in the Westbury neighborhood in which we lived. Through this “asphalt jungle” snaked a drainage ditch which attracted kids of all ages. My pre-teen son, Doug, loved to play with his buddies in this drainage ditch.
August 7, 2020 - “Cecil, I think someone is in our house!” my mother exclaimed as dad drove our 1941 Chevrolet into the driveway to our house. It was dusk on a summer day in 1946. I was ten years old at the time, and we were returning from an exhausting road trip to Los Angeles, California. My brother, Richard, who was stationed at the naval base in San Diego, had been quite ill, and we had made a hasty trip to check on him. Now we were back in San Augustine, Texas, our home, but things did not look quite right.
July 31, 2020 - Teenagers today don’t know much about pay telephones. They have telephones in their room at home, and cell phones to take with them everywhere they go. They are never without the means of communicating with their friends. It was not that way when I was in college in the mid 1950s. Dial phones were relatively new, and a cell phone was just something in the mind of the writer of Dick Tracy. The pay telephone was about the only means of communicating with friends, family, and significant others during my stint in a boarding house near the campus of Stephen F.
July 23, 2020 - I suppose than anyone can get addicted to anything. People get addicted to alcohol, drugs, shopping, and all kinds of other things. My addiction happens to be to popcorn.
It started at an early age. My parents used to popcorn in a deep skillet with a lid. They usually put a bit of butter in with the oil and shake the skillet until the corn was all popped, except for a few “old maids.” I got addicted to that wonderfully tasting corn which has lasted a lifetime.
July 21, 2020 - Clara Murphy could not have the traditional recitals this spring due to the pandemic. Four private piano recitals were held in the studio in Murphy’s home in the Butts Addition. Masks and social distancing were utilized.
On June 29, 2020 Charlisa Teagle played her pieces for friends and family. Prelude in C by Bach and Canon in D by Pachebel were played on the piano. Tarantella was played on Murphy’s large church organ in her studio.
July 16, 2020 - Well, I finally gave in to the urging of all our public officials – I am now wearing a mask out in public. I resisted for a time as my mind flew back to the 1940s when, as a kid, I watched movies at the Augus Theatre of cowboys who sometimes wore masks. It seemed that every cowboy had a large silk rag around his neck. The ones who robbed banks and stage coaches pulled their rag up over their noses while committing their dastardly deeds.
