By Jack Canson © April 11, 2021

This was a bird we had happily observed since he was a fledgling, just out of the nest and flitting about experimentally, learning his wings.  He was instantly recognizable.  If we had been presented with a lineup of ten similar juvenile Cardinals we would have picked him out in a heart beat.

The perky little crest atop his head, the way he cocked his head this way and that, checking things out, the way in a split second he could bound up and away in perfect, swift flight from the roof of our porch outside our bedroom window into a clutch of trees and bushes in front of our house.  Zip, he was a streak, effortlessly darting from our porch to tree limbs and beyond.

He had character.  He was unique.  He was interested in us.

We are assured he was singularly recognizable because we had other Cardinals in our front yard from time to time.  But none had ever alit on our front porch close to our bedroom window.  This one had, several times.

We felt sure around a year earlier we had seen the mating pair of Cardinals who had produced this young male.  They didn’t hang around but we saw them often enough, high in our front yard trees that we knew they were nesting there.  When we first observed the fledgling male, our Cardinal, his less colorful mother was always close by, and watchful.

Around this time our interest in this specific and beautiful young Cardinal began to increase.  We were mildly aware and began to reflect on the belief many have that Cardinals may represent the spirit if not the persona of a loved one who has died.

We were in that sad category.  Our son had died at the age of 27 four years earlier. Our grief had never subsided although we strained day by day to carry on in ways we thought appropriate to his memory and to family and friends.

And then, after this time of unrelenting grief, often to the porch roof outside our bedroom window came this beautiful young bird.  The Cardinal. The Red Bird.

He came often enough that we could recognize and register his development from a fledgling to a juvenile and now to a young adult.  First just learning to fly, with his mother close by.  Then alone, spirited, eager.  He would hop along the top of the front porch, pecking for seeds or insects, then of a sudden propel himself up with a flutter of wings before shooting off over the lawn and into the trees and bushes so quickly we couldn’t see where he lit.  His every movement was a fascination to us.

More than a few times he approached the exterior window in our bedroom, alighting on the sill of our double-paned glass and screen looking out over our porch and front yard.  My fascination with him became more mysterious when I came to believe that this young Cardinal was intent on making some kind of connection with us.  Again, I reflected on the commonly held belief that red birds, Cardinals in particular, might represent in some unfathomable way the spirit of a lost loved one.

I did not dwell on that concept.  Our son was precious, powerful, a genius, a very special person.  We are open minded about what might constitute the afterlife.  But I did not see any way to connect this beautiful young bird’s behavior to the wonderful young son we had lost.

Then one day something happened that caused my attitudes and beliefs to tumble astray.  I went outside early one day to get into my truck to drive to the grocery store.  My truck was parked adjacent to my wife’s car, off the driveway and shrouded on one side by shrubs and bushes. I had backed my truck up toward the garage in order to load some refuse for the dump.  When I went to open the door I saw the young Cardinal flitting around in the bushes on the other side of my truck.  It was the closest I had been to him without a window between us.

Again, he seemed to be inquisitive, not wary.  Before getting in my truck I held out my hand and fingers, gently beckoning him to come to me. I remembered my grandmother and her parakeet Petey who would perch on her fingers and peck a kiss on her lips.  Although he would not perch on my hand, he didn’t fly away but continued to hop around the bushes by the driveway.  So I got inside my truck and lowered the window to continue watching him.  I sat still without starting the engine.  After a moment or two, the Cardinal hopped out of the bushes and perched atop the rear view mirror on the passenger side, his head cocked, his eyes looking straight across the seat at me.  I thought, My God, he’s going to come inside the truck.  He wants to go for a ride the way our dogs do.

I held out my finger at arm’s length, reaching within a foot or two of him, hoping he could see it as another perch and hop on in.  He turned his head from side to side as if reconnoitering the situation, as if considering whether to come to me.  But after a few seconds, the Cardinal flipped off the mirror back onto the bushes, then flapped his wings as if to dust them off, rose clear of the bushes and flew into the branches of a large tree in the front yard.  He still seemed to be watching me as I quietly opened the door and got out to get a better look at him.  Then he dove out of the tree and sailed away.

As I drove onto the street I was troubled by wondering if I should no longer doubt the idea that in some way, large or small, there was some afterlife connection between this Cardinal, this Red Bird, and our lost son.

During the several winter months that passed we saw our young Cardinal often enough that we could recognize his growth and development.  From the window in our second story bedroom we looked out over the roof of the front porch.  There were often a few sparrows pecking at seeds and insects that fell from the limbs of a large gum tree nearby. Occasionally, our young Cardinal would alight on the porch roof too, hopping systematically from one end to the other, pecking the gravelly rooftop, even drinking from small puddles after a shower.  He was no longer accompanied by any other Cardinal, and he seldom lingered.  Squirrels would also sometimes bound across the roof, making acrobatic leaps from the roof to tree limbs.  But twice, while I was stretched on our bed reading or watching television, I was surprised to see our Cardinal perched on the window sill looking through the glass at me.  He would take a look then hop off the sill and fly back into the trees.

Then came bad weather.  Snow and ice and sub zero temperatures that are rare in our part of northeast Texas.  Pipes burst, we went without water in the house for days.  We saw very few birds for weeks and we did not see our Cardinal.

To make plumbing repairs, portions of the walls in our laundry room and a bathroom were removed.  A three foot square of tile flooring in the kitchen was also taken up.  Several parts of the exterior brick outside the kitchen were knocked out.  A ten foot wooden chase covering water pipes leading to an upstairs bathroom from the patio had to come down.  Many houses in town suffered similar difficulties and plumbers were hard to come by.  It was an agonizing four weeks before finally all the busted pipes were replaced and hot and cold water were restored throughout the house.  Then repairs to walls and floors began.

Some of these repairs I was able to undertake myself after acquiring a few necessary tools.  Others, such as replacing the flooring over the hole in the kitchen floor would have to wait until a craftsman was available, and all were booked up for weeks.

Late one afternoon I was installing new shelving in the laundry room after having patched the wall and moving the washer and dryer back into place.  This is not a room, actually, just a nook off the hallway, only a few steps to the door to the garage.  Much of the prep work I was doing in the garage, with the garage door open.  When I finished screwing the last of the shelves into the wall, it was twilight time, and rapidly growing dark.  I pressed the button to lower the garage door and when it began to move I noticed a flutter of wings and the Cardinal flew off the rail it had been resting on and perched atop the frame of a large topographical map of California hanging on the back wall.  I raised the double wide garage door to full open again and waited to see what the Cardinal would do.

Usually, if a bird is inside the garage or the house, when a door or window is opened and you stir around, the bird will dive outside and fly away.  But not this time.  Our Cardinal was in no hurry to leave and I was in no particular hurry for him to do so.  At least, not until Nancy had seen him.  I closed the hallway door and went upstairs to get her.  She followed me into the garage and we watched the Cardinal and he watched us.

Like many people, we’ve had small birds become semi-trapped in the garage and inside the house more than a few times in the twenty-odd years we have lived here.  Because we sometimes leave the door from the kitchen to the back yard open for our dogs to come and go, it was not too unusual for a sparrow or a finch to get inside.  Before Nancy blocked the chimney in the unused fireplace, swifts would sometimes get inside and flutter about.  Typically, when we realized a bird was in the house the bird would try to hide.  They would tuck themselves behind blinds or curtains.  We always followed the same procedure.  While they were hiding we would close all the doors to the room they were in, then open a door or window to the outside.  Then we would sneak up on the bird where it was hiding.  Sometimes we could catch it in our hands and take it outside before turning it loose.  When we were unable to catch the bird, our movements would stir it up enough that it would fly around the room and eventually find the open door or window.

Because the garage door is so large and wide, when it is opened birds seldom need more than a few seconds to find their way out. We had this experience dozens of times with other birds. But our Cardinal refused to fly lower than a foot or so from the ceiling when he made his way around the garage.  He did not seem stressed or injured and we felt a responsibility to get him outside instead of staying  trapped in our garage all night.  We tried lifting broom sticks and waving a towel to encourage him to leave.  But nothing worked.  I puttered around in the garage, putting up tools, waiting for the Cardinal to decide to leave.  He remained perched on either the map frame or atop the garage door motor, watching me.

It was now quite dark outside.  In every case I could remember when a bird was trapped inside the house or garage, the bird would become panicky.  They would become stressed and bump into walls or the ceiling before finding their way out or getting caught by us.  This was not the case with our Cardinal.  He showed very little signs of agitation.  If anything, he seemed to express displeasure when I made movements to encourage him to leave.  So I gave up and decided to leave the garage door wide open and go inside and leave him alone.  I expected he would become bored without me meddling around and would depart within a few minutes.

Half an hour or so later I opened the hallway door to the garage and there was our Cardinal, perched on the map frame.  He didn’t move until I approached the back wall and then he only flew to the top of the open garage door, then back again to the frame. The ceiling of our garage is 12 feet high.  The garage is stuffed, cluttered with tools and boxes of stuff, impossible to move freely around.  I felt a strong necessity to coax him outside lest he injure himself.  But nothing I could do would cause him to fly below the top of the garage door.  When he perched to rest he seemed to look carefully at me and I looked thoughtfully at him.  The idea that Cardinals appear to represent the spirit of a lost loved one wrapped tightly around me.

Yet I knew that this beautiful young bird that we had been observing since he left the nest could not survive if he remained trapped too long in our garage.  As I looked through the open door to the darkness outside it occurred to me that the contrast between the bright fluorescent light inside the garage and the darkness outside the door might be an impediment to his escape.  I knew that he could see.  He didn’t fly into walls.  He always seemed to know where he was and what he was doing.  It could be that he didn’t like the idea of flying out of a brightly lit space into a dark one.  So I turned off the garage lights, left the garage door wide open, and closing the hallway door behind me went upstairs to prepare for bed.

Another half hour or so I figured the Cardinal had had enough time to find his way out, so I went downstairs, opened the door to the garage and reached for the wall switch inside and turned on the bright garage overhead lights.  There he was, still perched on the map frame.  It was getting late, I was ready to go to bed, I didn’t want to leave the garage door open all night because in our neighborhood we some times have coyotes, other wildlife such as raccoons and possums, and other creatures I didn’t want inside.   I needed some kind of net, like the big mouth fishing net I no longer had because it had gone with the boat when I sold it after our son died.  So I scouted around and found some plastic net-like material I had used in a project.  I tried to fashion an opening with baling wire and taped it to a broom handle.  It was not long enough for me to reach the Cardinal and my efforts to get him to fly within reach were unsuccessful.  I worried more now about stressing this beautiful bird.  I decided to turn off the garage lights and leave the door open again, hoping this time he would make his way to the outside.

About one hour later I was ready for bed.  Nancy was already asleep bundled up under sheets and covers.  I went downstairs again, opened the hallway door to the garage, and turned on the fluorescent lights.  All was still and quiet.  I moved around a little, scanning, searching.  No sign of our young Cardinal.  The open garage door and lights off strategy had worked!  He had found his way outside and all was well.

I closed the garage door and the hallway door, poured myself a nightcap and went upstairs to our bedroom.  I felt all was well and the Cardinal was nestled somewhere safely in the tree limbs, safe in the element where he belonged.  I felt good. I felt we had experienced something special, a prolonged visitation from a bird we had been keeping our eyes on.

I put on pajamas, brushed my teeth, and settled into my side of the bed with the lamp on while I took my nightly vitamins.  I picked up a magazine to read for a few minutes before drifting off to sleep.  As I tried to read, I found myself having to re-read a sentence I had just looked at.  Something seemed to be interfering with my concentration, even with my self awareness.  It was that feeling we sometimes get when we sense someone or something is looking at us.  I dropped the magazine and sank my head deeper into the pillow and as I looked up there was our Cardinal, perched on a blade of the ceiling fan above our bed, looking down at us.

There he was, in our bedroom.  How he got into the house from the garage and then upstairs into our room I had no idea.  Except that it was obvious that he had to have entered through the hallway door while it was open.  This is a narrow passageway and it was hard to imagine that a bird could have entered through that doorway while I was standing there or nearby without my noticing, but he had.  Even harder to imagine is why the Cardinal, once inside the house with access to five rooms downstairs and five more on the second floor should choose to navigate into our bedroom and alight on the ceiling fan above our bed.

It was beginning to feel surrealistic, supernatural.  Could it be anything but true that the Cardinal refused to leave the garage and then followed me upstairs to our bedroom because he wanted to be with us?

I woke Nancy and told her we had a visitor in our bedroom. She was a bit hazy for a moment, not sure what had caused me to wake her, so I explained that our young Cardinal was no longer in the garage (oh, good) but wait, he was in our house, in our bedroom, perched now not on the ceiling fan but on the frame of a painting I had made of our son, hanging above our bed.  As she looked up and saw the Cardinal, she smacked wide awake and stepped out of the bed to help me shut the doors to the hallway, the bathroom, and her office, confining him in our bedroom, although in retrospect that seems hardly necessary.  He was not interested in going anywhere.  We pulled up the blinds to a window, opened it, and removed the screen and storm window, opening a clear and wide path to the night outdoors. While we were doing these things, the Cardinal watched us, somewhat critically it seemed, cocking his head to one side and then the other.  I picked up a pair of pajama bottoms and stood on the bed where I could reach the ceiling, which is much lower than the ceiling of the garage.  Then he began a regular circuit around the room, always eluding me.  He would flit from the portrait of Barney to a door to Nancy’s closet, then to the curtain rod above the windows, then back to the ceiling fan, and again to the picture frame.  Every time I was close enough to grab him, he popped up out of reach and took another perch.  None of our efforts could coax him to fly out the open window.  Finally, when he alit on the curtain rod while I was standing nearby I was able to capture him in my pajama bottoms.  I held him softly in my hand a few moments while we looked him over, admiring his beauty and noticing how unstressed, how unworried he seemed to be.  Goodbye little Cardinal, we said to him, come back again to visit, but now it is time for you to go home and to sleep.  I extended my arms outside the open window, opened my hands, and he took off into the night.  We were relieved.  We smiled and congratulated each other and prepared to get back in bed.  But before I could close the window, our Cardinal flew back into the room.

Once again he perched on a blade of the ceiling fan, occasionally alternating to perch atop the frame of the portrait of Barney.  Again we tried a few times to encourage him back to the open window or to alight where I might catch him with my pajamas.  It could not have been more clear that he was determined to stay in our room.  So we decided to leave the window open, turn off the lights, and go to sleep.  If our young Cardinal wanted to spend the night with us even though the window was open, who were we to deny him.  As I dozed off with a small night light on next to the bed the last thing I saw before my eyes shut for the night was the beautiful young Cardinal perched above us on the ceiling fan blade.  Perfectly calm.  Like us, he appeared to be resigned to settle in for the night and leave things as they were.

It was our hope, if not expectation, that with all the lights off in our bedroom and adjoining rooms, and with three dogs sleeping in Nancy’s office, and with a large window wide open to the front yard, that young Mister Cardinal would at some point hop to the window sill and fly away.  As I fell into sleep it occurred to me how odd it was that during all the tussling around we had done and with the Cardinal fluttering from one place to another in our room, none of our dogs had shown any interest at all.  I was sure that when we woke in the morning he would be gone.  He had been outside that window once.  It was familiar territory, a familiar escape route.  He had been out a short distance, looped, and flown back inside.  He was determined to remain with us for a while, clearly.  Perhaps he simply was waiting to see us go safely to sleep before he left.

To our surprise, both Nancy and I slept soundly the entire night.  No bathroom breaks, no stirring around to see if our Cardinal was still in the room.  We are early risers, but this morning we slept until half past six.  When we awakened and turned on the lights the first thing we saw was our Cardinal, still perched on the fan blade where he had been when we went to sleep.

We had things to do, places to go.  Weather was changing.  The temperature outside was dropping as a cold front moved in and rain was expected.  We couldn’t leave the window open all day while we were gone.  As much as we would have loved having our Cardinal in our house all the time, we knew we could not keep him as a pet.  His world was outside.  We had watched him from his fledgling days, watched him grow into a healthy, beautiful juvenile on the cusp of adulthood.  His colors were striking.  He was sleek and healthy and obviously could make his way on his own outside.  Had he appeared to be injured or sick, that would have been a different matter.  But he was a perfect specimen of a young Cardinal.  Our obligation was to get him safely outside where he belonged.

But there was still the metaphysical element to our Cardinal’s persistence in staying near us inside our home.  He had had numerous opportunities to fly out of the garage.  Instead of following me from the garage and up the stairs to our bedroom, he had numerous other paths to take.  Any other bird in any other situation such as this one would have darted here and there throughout the house, not found his way up the stairs and across the upstairs hallway to the one of three bedrooms that was ours.  It was impossible to deny that every action our Cardinal had taken from the moment he first appeared in our garage while I was working there was intended on being around us.

In spite of this deep feeling of affection and wonder, in spite of the thrilling experience of how he seemed to connect with us and our departed son, we knew that the only correct thing for us to do was to catch him and set him free outdoors as the morning sun began  to rise.  I thought about the net I had tried to fashion in the garage the night before.  Where it failed, I thought, was in the flimsy opening I had made out of thin baling wire.  My eyes fell upon an old coat hanger, a wire one, in the closet.  Perfect.  I got the netting and found a shorter stick in the garage and made a much better, short handled net using the bent coat hanger and duct tape.

With this newly perfected net, it turned out to be not so hard.  Or perhaps our Cardinal realized the time had come for him to leave.  My new net resembled a wind sock.  At first the Cardinal resisted efforts to coax him into the net.  So I held the net still at the top of the curtain rods and we talked to him, talked to him as we would talk to a human being, and he hopped off the ceiling fan and fluttered over to the curtains and into the net he went.

Because of our earlier experience when I released him outside the window only to see him fly back in, we pushed the net outside the window as far as it would go and let the bottom of the netting where he was contained rest on the porch roof.  By holding the top of the net up, I created a clear passageway out of the net.  He hopped to the clothes hanger rim, cocked his head at us as if to say farewell, then popped up, fluttered his wings, and zoomed off into the bright sunlit morning into the trees across the lawn.  Later that day, I saw him briefly fly across the lawn, looking every bit like a healthy, happy bird enjoying life.  We have not seen him again, four days later, but keep looking.  He is a very special Cardinal and the experience he provided us was as magnificent as it was inexplicable.

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

GIVE US YOUR FEEDBACK.  CLICK ON “COMMENT” TO TELL US WHAT YOU THINK or use one of the alternative methods for providing feedback.

Click here to submit feedback.  Let us know what you think.

click here to CLOSE THIS PAGE

http://iEXPOSED.us

PO Box 721

Scottsville TX 75688

 Pioneer Days Festival Update

Plans are underway to have the biggest and best 3-day holiday event that Jefferson has ever seen.

A committee was formed some weeks ago as an off-shoot of the Opera House Theatre Players board to formulate plans for the fist-ever Pioneer Days Festival to be held on the long Labor Day 

weekend occurring Sept. 4,5 and 6.  Committee members are Sara Davis, Doug Weir, Jim Blackburn,  Hollis Shadden, and Gary Endsley of Jefferson;  Bob and Lana Shaw, Ann Tyrina of Marshall, and JoeTodaro and Lisa Daye of Shreveport.  Players president Marcia Thomas serves as the committee chair.

According to Ms. Thomas, “everything is shaping up nicely for a very original and quite different event in town where no motorized vehicles will be used in the parade that kicks off at 10 am the morning of Saturday, September 4.  We are still looking for horse-back riders in groups or  as  individuals to participate in the parade and will offer a prize for the one looking most like an early citizen of Jefferson in the 1850s to 1890s when horses and buggies were the transportation. We are taking this back to the early days before the riverboats really became mainstream.  We are, in fact, trying to replicate much of those periods in all the events we have planned which includes a cowboy dance that early Saturday evening where a prize will again be given to the person who  is decked out most closely to the period,  and then a river-front Dutch Oven Cooking demo with cooks that dress the period and offers visitors a chance to sample the good food they have just cooked up!  In addition, there will be entertainment on site as well.  It will be situated in the area of the boat launch on the riverfront. I’d also like to add that the community has been so generous  as to help fund this event by donations to our 501(c)3 community theatre. Response has been excellent and we expect more to come in as well. We are thankful and excited!”.

Ms. Thomas went on to say that there will be plenty of time for visitors to walk around Jefferson and visit the stores and restaurants as well as take the train ride, the boat ride, or pay a visit to the Safari Park. Several times during Sat and Sun the re-creation of a violent confrontation between one of the Marion County’s early Sheriffs and a man who killed another is going to be held in the  exact spot where it occurred, the old wagon yard which is smack in the middle of the town.  The staged confrontation is being put together by Players board member Jim Blackburn, a retired investigator from Collin County.

Highlight of the 3- day event will be a  concert performed by the famous Sons of the Pioneers singing sextet that will serenade the audience with the grand old songs of yesteryear including “Cool, Cool, Waters” and “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” among others.  According to Thomas, the first two-row VIP tickets are sold out but general seating tickets are still available.

The concert will be held in the City-owned Visitor Building near the riverfront.  Tickets may be purchased at The Willow Tree, 903-601-4515 or online at: http://www.JeffersonOperaHouseTheatrePlayers.com.  

More information on any of the activities is available by calling 903-665-8243.

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

GIVE US YOUR FEEDBACK.  CLICK ON “COMMENT” TO TELL US WHAT YOU THINK or use one of the alternative methods for providing feedback.

Click here to submit feedback.  Let us know what you think.

click here to CLOSE THIS PAGE

 Pioneer Days Festival

When the Pioneer Days Festival gets started on September 4 with a parade, the streets of Jefferson may not be this crowded as the one pictured in the old photograph of the bygone days of the city,, but it will be a lot more fun.

Jefferson’s Opera House Theatre Players has put together a 3-day festival that will, hopefully, bring lots of visitors to the city on the long weekend of Labor Day.  Starting with a parade at 10 am the morning of Sept. 4th, the parade will be a parade of all pioneer-suited horseback riders to depict the

earlier days of old Jefferson which was founded in the 1840s along the Big Cypress River. The Players are currently seeking more horse-back riding groups and individuals that will participate in and be willing to dress in the garb of the pioneer settlers of that day.   A prize will be given to the entry that is judged the most authentic of the bunch. Board member Hollis Shadden is trail boss for the entries.

Also on tap for Saturday, is an Old Fashioned Street Dance, located on the brick covered streets of downtown Jefferson specifically Austin Street.

Everyone is invited to attend the dance that will feature entertainment by Sheila and the Caddo Kats Band of nearby Karnack..  The band will play for boot-scootin’ dancin’ from 6 to 8 pm on Austin Street between Polk Street and Walnut Street.  A prize will also be given here for the most authentic “cowboy or pioneer” outfit in the group of dancers.  Dance-manager is board member Joe Todaro.

Sunday, Sept. 5’s event will be centered on the First Annual Port Jefferson Dutch Oven Cooks, a group that dress in period costume and make tasty Vittles and Grub for hungry visitors that you can sample at no cost.  Also scheduled are several entertainers including Johnny RiverRat and Miss Ann Leslie, both singers of note who will perform either original songs or songs that recall the past pioneer days of early Jefferson. It is expected

that several square dance groups will demonstrate square dancing as members of the East Texas Square and Round Dance Association.

A very unusual bit of entertainment will occur at odd times during the 3-day event when new OHTP board member, Jim Blackburn, and friends re-create a true-life shootout that once happened in the wagon yard of downtown Jefferson.  The hombres will be dressed in cowboy gear and armed with authentic-looking guns and will stage the shootout complete with dialogue at least four times during the weekend event.

According to OHTP president, Marcia Thomas, the first two days of the Pioneer Days Festival is free for all to attend.  There will be no cost to participate in the Parade, the Street Dance or the Vittles and Grub Dutch Oven meal where samples will be served.  Individuals may also patronize the many restaurants and shops for drinks and souvenirs as well as ride the various amusement rides available during their free time.  There is also a drive-through 

safari ride available on the outskirts of town that will be open where exotic animals, including a Texas Longhorn Steer, can be seen.

Pioneer Days will culminate on Monday, September 6 with a performance by the famous singing instrumental group, the ‘Sons of the Pioneers” in the Visitor Building at 3 pm.  Tickets for the show may be purchased online at $35/pr for VIP tickets (only 20 of these first 2-row tickets are left) or a general seating ticket at $25/person.  They may also be purchased at The Willow Tree, 211 N Polk, in Jefferson.

For more information regarding the festival, please contact JeffersonTheatre@aol.com or call 903-665-8243 and leave message if no answer.

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

GIVE US YOUR FEEDBACK.  CLICK ON “COMMENT” TO TELL US WHAT YOU THINK or use one of the alternative methods for providing feedback.

Click here to submit feedback.  Let us know what you think.

click here to CLOSE THIS PAGE

Instructors and Staff at Josey Ranch

By Ron Munden

In 1967, Martha and R.E. Josey  entered the world of education.  They provided barrel racing and calf roping instruction to 100 students.  On May 30, 2021 they welcomed 150 students  to Josey Ranch for the first class of the year.

For this class, the students came from 10 different states.  The students range in age from 5 years old to high school-aged students.  Most students stay in the boys and girls dorms located in two buildings on the property. 

Many parents stay for the week.  There is a large area on the ranch for RV parking. Some younger children stay with their parients.

During the opening meeting on Sunday, many members of the staff gave a brief bio. Many of the instructors, ranging in age from 30 to 50 years old, recalled first coming to Josey Ranch as a student when they were 7 or 8 years old.

When you are at the ranch you get the feeling you’re attending a family reunion. 

R.E. and Martha both have a list of awards much too long to list here.  What is even more important is how they relate to students.  They interact with each student as if that child is the only student on the ranch.

Many of the speakers on Sunday talked about the ranch being a “very special place.”

I agree with them.

On Saturday the week ends with a closing ceremony, barrel racing or roping In the main arena.  Martha encourages people from Marshall to come out Saturday, look around and enjoy the event.

The event starts at 1pm.  Josey Ranch is located at:  8623 SH 43 N.  Karnak Texas.

Just take Highway 43 toward Karnack and you can’t miss it.

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

GIVE US YOUR FEEDBACK.  CLICK ON “COMMENT” TO TELL US WHAT YOU THINK or use one of the alternative methods for providing feedback.

Click here to submit feedback.  Let us know what you think.

click here to CLOSE THIS PAGE

I spent the first 16 years of life in the woods of northern Virginia. I loved the woods. Without fear I played in them, made teepees, went fishing and hand fed a skunk. I milked cows, fed the pigs and chopped the head off a chicken because mama said we didn’t have anything to eat and company was coming. You get the picture. I was a country girl.

Twenty years ago we moved to the country. Tall pines that seemed to touch the sky, spider wart growing wild in the meadow, the wild daffodils and narcissus  followed by the white iris. It was unbelievably beautiful.

And then one day I breached the first rule of East Texas 101. stuck my hand under a shrub to get some dead leaves. Company was coming and I was making a final inspection of the property. The next second I was facing a white, open mouth  attached to the body of a rather unattractive snake with a nasty attitude.

We know the rest of the story. I survived but almost got my head bit off by my loving husband. 

I learned about fire ants. I rescued an abandoned pointer that could smell a pit viper 50 feet away and destroy it in minutes.

I’ve learned so much and my performance has reflected my progress.But today was the last straw.

I have been around ticks, probably fleas too. We picked them off the dogs when they looked like a real, black, Tahitian pearls. Now we don’t worry about  pests such as those. We simply give our dogs meds. 

I spend a lot of time outside and walk my dogs thru the woods. I do a tick check on myself, otherwise the dogs would not let me get into our bed.

Yesterday evening my belly button started itching.  We have mosquitoes by the thousands so I assumed it was a mosquito bite. During the night I had to retrieve calamine lotion which didn’t help.

This morning I went to my official source of health care and asked, “why is my belly button red, itchy, hot and swollen.?” The possibilities ranged from bad to nauseating.

However much advice suggesting looking inside the belly button. With tweezers in hand I pried open my inny belly button looking for fluid, scabs, anything. And then a spotted a tiny thin brown piece of a scab. I pulled on it and the scab was bigger. I checked the scab under a magnifying glass and the scab had legs. It was a (bad word, bad word) dead tick.

Not covered in East Texas 101. I went to my husband’s office, told him it wasn’t covered in the class and pick out the moving company. Dead ticks in my belly button are not acceptable.

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

GIVE US YOUR FEEDBACK.  CLICK ON “COMMENT” TO TELL US WHAT YOU THINK or use one of the alternative methods for providing feedback.

Click here to submit feedback.  Let us know what you think.

click here to CLOSE THIS PAGE

By Ron Munden – 2/18/2021

2021 has proved one thing – Texas is unprepared for cold weather.  I am one of the lucky ones. I have power currently.  I do not have the internet, so I have lots of time to write about the past.

I don’t dream often.  At least I do not remember my dreams very much.  When I do dream it is often the same dream.

In the dream – I am always carrying a football going for a touchdown.  I take a hit and go down just inches short of the goal line.  The outcome of the dream never changes.

My football career started on a Saturday afternoon in June 1954.  That was the day for Little League tryouts in Marshall Texas.  I have been practicing baseball with my friend Charles McIntire for weeks prior to this day.  At noon Charles’ dad drove us to sign-up for the tryouts.  He dropped us off and drove home.  All was going well until I found out that it cost $2 to register.  I had no money.  I panicked, put my baseball glove under my arm and ran home from the Little League park to 902 East Burleson.

By the time I arrived home my dad had come home from work.  He ask me why I was home.  I explained.  He seemed concerned but not mad at me.  He just said, “Get in the car.”

I assumed he was driving me back to the Little League park, but I was wrong.  Instead, he drove to Logan and Whaley Sporting Goods Store and bought a football.  The rest of the afternoon he and I passed the football in the backyard.

During one of our breaks my dad told me what my future was going to look like.  He said that he did not have the money to send me to college, but I was going to college on a football scholarship and I was going to be an engineer.  He then said that if I did not do this, I was going you spend the rest of my life working in the body shop.  Since I have been working summers in the body shop since I was 9-years old, I knew exactly what that meant, and I also knew I did not want that life.

While it might be blind luck, what dad told me happened just like he said.  However we lived in a railroad town, I had never met an engineer and I really did not know what an engineer was, I spent the next couple of years thinking I was going to spend my life driving trains.

My father telling me that I was going to play football came as a surprise.  I had never thought about playing football but that fall my dad took me to sign up for midget football.

My first year of football could not be rated as a big success.  Football is a contact sport and I hated hitting and being hit. I have always been blessed with speed, but I used that speed to run away from action, not toward it.  So that first year I played bench warmer.  I hated playing football but I hated thought of telling my father I was quitting much more.

I continued holding the well-deserved position of bench warmer through the 7^th and 8^th grade.  But something happened in the 8^th grade.  I changed from hating contact and hitting to loving it. The high point of my 8^th grade year was overhearing a 9^th grade player let his friend I really hit hard.

I was an undiagnosed dyslectic throughout grade school thru graduate school.  I only found out later in life.  Now I understand why school was so difficult for me during my early years.

Though grade school and the first two years of junior high I hated school.  I dreaded going to school every day.  I was at the bottom of my class and my twin sister Carol was at the top.

Finally, in the 9^th grade I found something I was good at – algebra. I had always understood all of the concepts and processes of arithmetic, but I often got the answer wrong because of transposing numbers.  In algebra it is hard to transpose an “x” or “y”. 

In football, after three years of bench warming, I made the starting lineup.

My high school football years were good but not great.  I played a lot and I did make all-district my senior year. I got to play because I was fast not because I was big.  I ended my high school senior at 6 foot 1 inch and 142 pounds. 

I never thought about where I would go to college.  I knew the school would choose me by offering me a scholarship or I would not go to college.  I quickly found that very few schools wanted to offer a football scholarship to a 142-pound halfback.  Because of my speed I did get track scholarship offers from some major schools but at that time track scholarships were only half-scholarships and that was not an option.  I also knew my father wanted me to play football.

That left the junior colleges, Kilgore and Tyler JCs were talking to me.

Fortunately, Bob Mason, a Marshall coach, took me under his wing.  No one in my family had been to college so I knew nothing about college and even how to apply.

Coach Mason was coaching at Marshall but had announced that he was leaving to take a coaching position at Austin College in Sherman.  He asks me if I would like to see Austin College.  Of course, I said yes.  He and his wife took me to AC for a weekend.  At the end of the weekend, he asked me if I would like to go to school there.  The rest is history.  He helped me complete all the paperwork and I was off to Austin College in the fall of 1961.

I arrive at Austin College in August to start two-a-day workouts.  I was probably in the best shape of my life.  I spent most of the summer building fence but quit two weeks before leaving for college.  I sent 8 to 10 hours each day working out at the old Mav stratum with other guys that were also headed off to college.

I was up to 152 pounds when I arrived at AC.  Even though I was small, I was the fastest player on the team and that earned me a starting position as defensive safety my freshman year.

Being a college athlete was a completely new experience for me.  I got to eat on the training table.  I got all the food I could eat and things that I had not eaten before. I don’t recall eating a baked potato before getting to AC but I had one every night after that first night. Between classes I would go to the gym and get high-cal chocolate drinks, I returned home to Marshall at Christmas weighing 195 pounds.  I was longer one of the small guys.

Coach Mason once told my father that he thought the more I played the better I played.  In track he registered me for the maximum number of events allowed in a track meet.  He must have passed that on to the head football coach, Coach Gass.

My sophomore year at AC, I continued to play defensive safety but also played running back on the offensive about half of the time.  I loved being on the field that much.  I reached 200 pounds that year which made me a more effective ball carrier.  Unfortunately, my ability to receive a pass did not improve.

My junior year at AC was my dream year.  It started with a bang – a bang I was not expecting.  Coach Gass always called the plays from the sideline and a player took the play to the huddle. The first game of the year, AC received the kickoff, and then I carried the ball the first 5 or 6 plays in a row, including a 45-yard run that was called back for clipping.  After the last play in the series, I was laying on the ground in the end zone and thinking “do I have enough energy left to walk off the field.”

After being on the sideline for a series or two, I was back in the game, but I never carried the ball two plays in a row for the rest of the game.  At half-time I remember sitting against the wall in the locker room sipping on coke from a cup.  The coach was discussing the game plan for the second half.  At one point he looked at me and said, “Horse can you keep running?”  When though I was so tired it felt like my arms were asleep, I said, “yes sir.”  I must not be very convincing.  I only got to carry the ball a few times the second half but still went over 100-yard rushing for the game.

Things continued going well for the season and I racked up more 100-yard plus games.  The last game of the season I did pull a groin muscle, but I just slowed me down for that one game.  All-in-all it was a good season.  I was lucky enough to be named to the Dallas Morning News All-Texas Football Team and even started getting letters from some of the pro team.  At this point I only remember the San Francisco 49s and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Even though I had increased my weight to about 210, I had a successful track season recording a series of 9.7-hundred-yard dashes.

I was honored to be selected as the athlete of the year at Austin College.

It was a very good year.

Austin College is a well-respected liberal arts school, but I went there because I could get my education paid for not because I want a liberal art degree.  Remember, I was going to be an engineer.  My plans called for me to transfer to University of Texas, Austin at the end of the year three to work on my engineering degree.  I considered my athletic career over.

In the late spring of that year, I was contacted by the Head Football Coach and he suggested I consider coming back to AC for one more semester.  He outlined some of the benefits.  Almost immediately after that my father called and said he had been talking to the Coach.  He said that he really wanted me to go back to AC for a semester and if I decided to go back, he could afford to buy me a new car.  At this point all of my cars had been cars that had been totaled in a wrench and repaired by us at the body shop.

So just like that my plans changed, and I was going back to AC for a semester and I would be driving a new car.

Maybe if I had been honest with people, they would not have pushed me to come back to AC.  I never told my coaches or my father that my groin injury had not fully gone away.  I could sprint because you don’t use the groin muscle but when I moved to the side, I could still feel it.  I just thought if I gave it enough time it would heal.

The 1^st of July was when I started training for football each year.  1964 was no different but the day after my first workout was quite different.  After running several sets of sharp cuts, it was clear that the groin injury was still there.  I knew I had a problem.  I called the coaches at AC.  They said to come up to Sherman immediately and they would send me to an athletic doctor.

After the doctor did his exam and a series of x-rays, he said that part of the groin muscle had pulled loose from the bone taking a piece of bone with it. He said it could be repaired with surgery, but I would not be ready by the start of the football season.  Surgery was out. So, they started treatment with shots and physical theory.

My senior season was not a good season.  I played every game, but my numbers did not match by junior year.  I could run but not without pain.  My senior year the routine became to play the game on Saturday and run like nothing was wrong.  By Sunday morning the groin was very sore and hurt with each step.  At 1pm each Sunday I met the trainer at the field house, and we began therapy. Therapy was mainly hot water, ultrasound and an occasion shot. This continued through the week.  My workout was limited to mainly running in straight lines.  By Friday I felt fairly good.  Saturday, we started the routine over.

No one ever said anything, but I know I disappointed a lot of people that year.

After the season ended there was one more chapter.  In December.  I was called by the Head Coach.  He said a scout for the Pittsburgh Steelers wanted to talk to me.  They gave me the number.  I called him.  The scout was a nice gay, and we had a series of conversations.  I kept wondering why anyone in their right mind would offer a free agent contract to anyone that had such a disastrous season.  Finally, during a conversation, he said that they were looking for a running back that was over 200 pound and had sub 10 flat speed.  So, at 210 with 9.7 speed, I got in the door.

I had a conflict.  Although the money was good, there were a lot of negatives – I would have needed surgery, I would have left college without a degree, and statistically the chances of me making the team were not good.  

My coaches did not try to influence me but my dad wanted me to sign the contract.  Finally, I told dad that I was going to engineering school and my football days were behind me.

I spent 2 ½ year at UT and 3 year at UC Berkeley and never attended a football game. During the past 50 years, I may have watched 6 games on TV.  I loved playing football but watching is just not the same.

I wonder why I keep having my dream.

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

GIVE US YOUR FEEDBACK.  CLICK ON “COMMENT” TO TELL US WHAT YOU THINK or use one of the alternative methods for providing feedback.

Click here to submit feedback.  Let us know what you think.

click here to CLOSE THIS PAGE

1/4/2021

You think Trump can lie his ass off?

RT is a Russian state owned and operated enterprise which conducts operations in the US and other Western countries. It produces and infuses a mix of propaganda, National Inquirer stories and rattlesnake venom into the Western media-stream for consumption by the credulous – of which there have been a growing number ever since we stopped teaching civics to junior high students.

Originally known as Russia Today, the operation was rebranded “RT” a couple of years before it became acceptable to traipse around Trump Tower wearing Chinese polypropylene gimme-caps stenciled with recycled Reagan campaign slogans. Putin’s internet house-organ has enjoyed an enormous surge in growth and popularity during the Trump era. (e.g.)

RT’s remit is perhaps no more sinister (but certainly no less) than its counterparts like the US Information Service and the State Department. Think of RT as MSNBC (or FOX) operating in the DRPK but with a constrained budget, limited access to talent, and a management composed of CIA operatives.

The following was submitted to RT’s website using the ‘share your comments’ button.

Me? I always have comments.

***

Gentlemen and Ladies:

I get the idea about how if you’re able to turn the US into as big of a dumpster fire as Russia that it will facilitate your efforts to continue holding up Mother Russia to your own MAGA class as The Best Dumpster Fire Over All The Rest of The Dumpster Fires. I’ll also admit that it’s not the worst strategy; but let’s face it, that sort of thing didn’t get you guys to the moon first, did it?

Unfortunately, you’re laboring under more than a few misapprehensions about the American character. I’m going to describe the most central one to you. Hacking our computer systems is child’s play when it comes to hacking a MAGA.

Look, the MAGAs are pretty stupid – we all know that – but if you think you’re going to Radio Free Europe them into doing predictably stupid shit you’re in for a rude surprise. Very rude. I’m talking Trotsky spotting that ice axe moments before it sunk into his head. 

You can’t trick people in rural Alabama into doing what you want them to do, every time.  They are as unpredictable as drunk Cossacks. More. To be sure, this time they were with you. But next time, who knows? Figuring these things can be subtle and subtlety is not exactly engrained in the Russian spirit, now is it? My friends, had the hillbillies in South Carolina still been drinking moonshine instead of speed balling oxy and meth – Trump may very well have died on the vine. Did you chess masters consider that when you were putting this whole thing together?

You certainly didn’t give it much thought after you won I imagine. But victory in America is fleeting, gold-precious, and though it occasionally goes to the lucky, usually it goes to the smart. And we have a saying here in the U.S.A. that goes like this:

You were lucky this time.

Fellas, the Manchurian Candidate was a movie script, OK? It’s not going to work more than once. There are too many variables. You boychiks are good at arithmetic, right? Model it out. 

What I’m doing here is warning you that if it feels like you’ve got Billy Bob and Martha Rae figured out, you don’t. If MAGAS could be figured out, we’d have already done it and started making them do what we wanted them to do.

Face it, you lucked out. This is not chess, boys. And you can’t stake your political goals on a bunch of fucking idiots.

Ask Donald Trump.

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

GIVE US YOUR FEEDBACK.  CLICK ON “COMMENT” TO TELL US WHAT YOU THINK or use one of the alternative methods for providing feedback.

Click here to submit feedback.  Let us know what you think.

click here to CLOSE THIS PAGE