Hard Labor Under the Scorching Mexico Sun

My daughter is home from Mexico, hoarse and strung out from the road but fulfilled. For the second consecutive summer, she joined a church youth group in the border town of Acuna. There, they constructed a new home for an impoverished family.
The stories she tells are compelling, particularly when she recalls the gratitude of the families she and her fellow missionaries have served. While she had fun with her traveling companions, this was far from a pleasure trip.
They stayed in a rural church, where they slept on air mattresses and there wasn’t enough water for everyone to shower. Restroom? Forget about it. Outhouse? Even that’s a bit of stretch.
It must be worth the trouble, though, because she didn't hesitate to sign up when the opportunity was presented again this year.
Life’s small pleasures take on a different meaning when you are deprived of them even for a few days. A Mexican soda pop was one of the highlights of the week.
It’s all about service and gaining a different perspective on your place in the world. She’s gratified that she made the trip again; but make no mistake about it: she’s happy to be home. We’re happy to have her, too.

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Pay That Funky Music, White Boy

As I grew up, I was fascinated with radio and TV. For 27 years, I earned a paycheck (saying “made a living" could be considered a gross overstatement) pursuing my fascination. As my children reach adulthood, I have been breathing easy knowing they escaped the sinkhole of local broadcast media. (Just kidding, mostly). So imagine my alarm when my 20-year-old son announced the debut of his weekly radio show, The Transpersonal Growth Hour.
There he is, at the board in the cutting-edge studios of KSCL radio on the Centenary College campus. Don’t ask me about the music he’s sharing with his vast listenership because I’m not familiar with it. I tuned in for the whole presentation, though, and the songs he played were mostly pleasant.
He said to his mother, “Now I understand why Dad loves this so much.” He did not say anything to me because he knows I would tell him there’s more downside to pursuing this than potential benefit. He wouldn’t listen to me, anyway. I mean, why would he start now?
Honestly, he’s doing this just for kicks. College radio’s old-school freedom allows guys like him to express themselves and that’s a beautiful thing. His presentation needs some polish. There was a disturbing amount of “dead air” during his time. His transitions were awkward, at one point including dumping out of a song right in the middle of it.
His voice is pleasant, though, and his delivery is conversational. So, there’s real potential there. He just needs to tighten up his board operations.
It’s not like he’s new to all this. As this photo from October of 1999 clearly proves, he’s already a broadcast veteran.
I’m still holding out hope that this remains an avocation, or merely a pastime. Still, I have to admit it was fun to hear him on the radio. I guess his old man is finally earning cool points. It’s taken me a long time to get into a position to redeem them.

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A Texas Two-Step

After a quiet month of June, during which the family mostly sat around the house, things are starting to heat up a little. Our son has fallen in love with Austin, Texas and is tearing up the road between here and there as often as he can. I wouldn’t be surprised if he moved there by the end of the year.
Since our daughter is just a month away from moving to Ft. Worth, it seems we will be spending a lot of time in the Lone Star State in the years to come.
Both offspring are in Texas today. Our daughter is in the back of a van with some of her friends and a goofy kid or two, bound for the Mexican border town of Acuna on a mission trip.
This is the second year in a row that she has joined a church youth group on this journey. Obviously, she found it rewarding. There’s a big white van caravan crossing the Rio Grande. The young people and their older escorts will build a house for an impoverished family. The camaraderie is noteworthy and so is the sense of accomplishment.
This continues the long good-bye for us as our daughter makes final preparations to start her studies at TCU. We won’t see much of her between now and move-in day. She will be home from Mexico for just a few days before she’s off to Colorado for an intense, small-group TCU orientation adventure labeled “Frog Camp.”
As leaving-home day draws near, she seems genuinely excited. She’s had a sense of certainty about where she wants to go to school for more than a year, and there’s great comfort in that.
Well, comfort for her. I don’t know who will comfort her mother and me when all this finally gets here. Get the IV bag with tranquilizers and antidepressants ready.

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Getting Wet in SE Louisiana

For more than four decades, I have maintained a strict “no root beer” policy. When I was a small boy, I tagged along with my mother and some of her friends on a tour of a brewery in San Antonio. The root beer was cold, free and unlimited. I took advantage of this opportunity with a little too much enthusiasm.
I remember throwing up root beer. During the tour. Surrounded by people.
I remember the smell and feel of it as it went the wrong way, even through my nose.
I remember being embarrassed.
As I approach 50, I am about exorcizing demons. So, I went on a brewery tour and I sipped some cold, fresh root beer. I did not throw up.
We were invited on a weekender by another couple. They were motivated by their devotion to Abita beer. So, off we went to the Abita brewery in Abita Springs, Louisiana. Consistently the good sport, my wife approached the trip with a “sure, why not?” frame of mind. Unlike me, she had no brewery tour experience; so she didn’t know about the whole “free” thing.
During the appointed tour time, you can pretty much help yourself to the taps. We sampled a couple of varieties and then moved on to curing my root beer issues. We were, after all, driving. Plus, there’s the whole “lessons learned” aspect of my previous overconsumption trauma. There were a lot of people on our tour and many of them took great advantage of the free-flowing taps. I think that’s the main attraction. I mean, the little building is nice and the big tanks of beer in the brewery itself are kind of fascinating, but it’s not something you’d necessarily build an afternoon around. Except for the free beer. Abita Amber is my go-to brew when I drink beer socially, so there’s an advantage to having visited the motherland, I suppose. It was a low-key excursion on a hot Louisiana Saturday.
I know a little bit more about my state than I did before, so I feel like a good citizen.
We eventually made our way to New Orleans, where we stayed in a French Quarter hotel. Our room opened into a courtyard, but we didn’t get much use out of it. The afternoon was interrupted by a raucous thunderstorm. When the weather finally settled down, the early evening was heavy and sticky, quintessentially New Orlenian. We kept things low-key, strolling through the Quarter and stopping for a time to overeat. After dark, we hopped on the street car and rode uptown for dessert at the Magnolia Grill. Nothing is free there, by the way.
We had a Sunday morning breakfast at Café du Monde and hit the highway for home. We were gone for about 36 hours and enjoyed a nice change of scenery. I guess that’s what a weekender is all about.
What’s next? Who knows? I might just try a root beer float.

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Only the Finest Meats and Cheeses

What a difference a day makes. Less than 24 hours after my daughter was earning a paycheck as a singer, she found herself hawking cold cuts at a local supermarket.
Let’s not sell this thing short. She’s proffering samples of Boar’s Head, the finest meats and cheeses. It’s a temporary job, I think about a week.
She and several of her friends are doing this together, and for some reason I find it (well, I shouldn’t say it but this is the expression I’ve been using, so here it is…) pee-in-your-pants funny.
It’s all the more amusing for me because she made a point of telling me not to take any pictures. I don’t remember the quote exactly, so allow me to paraphrase:
“Dad, don’t even think about bringing your camera. If you do, I swear I will break it.” I’m guessing the apron and cap have something to do with her demand.
I honored her request.
So, imagine my delight when these images appeared in my inbox! I have them and I’m not responsible for them. I never agreed not to write about it. So, at the risk of incurring her wrath, here we are: Boar’s Head Girl!
She’s doing more than pushing smoked turkey to the grocery store masses. She is also face painting. Why you would take a break from the Tex-Mex aisle to get a soccer ball or rainbow painted on your cheek, I don’t know; but she’s obviously getting some traffic.
Given the enhanced skill level required to perform these functions, the pay is better than you might think.
All kidding aside, I commend her for accepting work. She was getting a little restless and bored, plus the family budget certainly benefits from her having a little walking around money.
All of this comes together nicely. If she ever decides to sing for her supper, we have an inside track on top-notch, fresh sandwich ingredients.

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Singing for the Seniors

My daughter and her performance partner, who skyrocketed to notoriety at their high school with a goosebump-inducing number at their senior talent show, took on a different sort of senior audience today.

The activities director at a nearby retirement facility caught their show on YouTube and invited them to present a program during a birthday party.

This was certainly a first for both of them. They had performed in public together exactly twice, both times at school, both presentations involving exactly one song.

For this gig, they were asked to fill an hour. So, they dutifully constructed a nice little set of easy-listening songs which would presumably please the senior citizen set.

Casual observation would seem to indicate they were successful. Many of the residents were fully engaged, even though they had not heard the songs before.

Come to think of it, they may have been locked in precisely because they hadn't heard the songs, the vast majority of which were recorded and released in the last 2-3 years. Most performers offer this audience big band era songs or Sousa marches. Maybe the folks liked hearing something new for a change.

They hit 'em with some Jason Mraz, Colby Callais and Kings of Leon. They did throw a Bill Withers in there for good measure, but even that was a song recently resurrected by a contestant on American Idol.

It's safe to say the kids were nervous about this and when it was all finished, there was a sense of relief.
Many of the birthday party attendees greeted them after they sang and had kind things to say. While there was actual pay involved, which would seem to indicate they are now professional performers, I'm not sure they've found a livelihood here. Overall, it was a great experience. They worked together to prepare their show. They accepted an offer to take a risk and it seems to have paid off. Beyond the paycheck, this was an experience of personal growth. To me that's a positive result of their friendship.
The duo will soon separate, however, because they're off to different colleges in a couple of months. At least they will part ways with a pocket full of memories and a song in their hearts.

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Losing a Little Zip

For the past two weeks, people too polite to ask what's going on might have thought I had gone into full-blown midlife crisis. I've been zipping around town in a fancy sports car.
Several people have asked.
"Did you get a new race car?"
"Hey, Zippy. What's with the ride?"
"Having trouble getting out of the spaceship?"
The answer to the last question is "yes." I now know what the original Mercury astronauts must have felt like. Strapped into that sardine can, I was low to the ground and constrained.
It's my son's car, and he's been conquering the Great American West in my SUV. Word is, he has arrived safely at the Fabulous Bachelor Pad, but I have yet to see him or my car. By all accounts, he and his running buddies had a terrific time. They spent three days at an outdoor music festival, hung around San Francisco for a couple of days, saw redwoods and wine country, general young-guy California cavorting.
Obviously, the family was fully supportive of his travels and we are eager to hear his stories and see his photos.
I am much more eager to get my regular ride back. I'm accustomed to stepping down from a vehicle when exiting. In this thing, you have to unfold and then step up. It's like doing calesthenics every time you get in or out.
I will miss his stereo. Driving around with his premium sound, I heard things in songs I simply had not noticed before.
I realized along the way that we're running a four-car fleet in this family and my vehicle is the oldest. It also has the most miles on it, a circumstance that was significantly enhanced by my son driving it halfway across the continent and back again.
That's okay. My old car fits me like an old shoe: comfortably. Midlife crisis deftly averted.

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Go West, Young Man

My son doesn't get out much. He's too busy, working two jobs and going to school (barely) full time. Heck he doesn't even have time to get a haircut! (Yeah, okay. You got me there). Many forces have combined to keep him close to home for college, most notably a lovely young woman with whom he's been romantically involved for four years. This week, though, he's bustin' loose!



He finds himself in northern California with two of his buddies, and day one evolved into a tour of San Francisco. What a great way to start.
The only gauge we have of how the trip is going comes in the form of a Facebook status update: "Beach in San Francisco. Holy Crap I can't even believe this place exists! It's unbelievably amazing!"
Yes, my son, wonderful things can be discovered when you broaden your boundaries.



The primary purpose of the trip is a music festival around there somewhere, but it seems some kind of personal discovery is underway.



The guys were relentless on the road, driving through the night, the following day, and late into the subequent evening to arrive at their destination. They pounded my SUV for 36 hours before they put her up at one of the guys' grandfather's house.
This is the boldest move my son has ever made, leaving behind (in no order of priority) his home, his girlfriend, his sister, his parents, his jobs and his cat.
There's no question he will love it there. It will be interesting to see how his fortnight in the Far West ultimately affects him.

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One Last Look Back

The days following the end of our daughter's senior year of high school have been a blur. While many of her friends found their way to the Caribbean coast of Mexico for a weeklong party, she chose instead to work at a church camp in Georgia. She said the tasks were challenging, but the company and the scenery were well worth it.

She came home, as did everyone else, just in time for Pomp and Circumstance. In the moments before they received their high school diplomas, the ususal suspects assembled at our house for photos.



Nearby, as always, was our daughter's psuedo-sister who lives across the street. They met in the middle to contemplate for a moment all the time they've spent together. On graduation day, no doubt it occurred to them that they soon will be attending different universities in different states.



Then, it was a quick turnaround to an Enormous Downtown Facility for the graduation ceremony in front of a standing room only crowd.



The family showed up in force to celebrate the moment. Her mother and grandmother were all smiles.



The Happy Couple, her older brother and his long-time love interest, emerged from seclusion for the occasion.



After the graduate walked across the stage, we dashed off into the evening for dinner at the Fancy Steak Place, where my father was occupying the table while we ran late.



With high school officially behind her, my daughter is now poised to take on the world.



A late Saturday night became an early Sunday morning. The church my daughter chooses to attend honored its graduating seniors. She was prayed for, as were many others, and was given a Bible by the affable pastor.



Then, things changed.

Forget formality.
Say so-long to piety.
The cap and gown were tossed aside, likely never again to see the light of day.
It was time to blow things out. The wardrobe change was remarkable.
Sure, there was a hat.
There were suspenders.
There were short skirts, pattern hose, sequins, feather boas, on and on.
It was time to party.
And they did, hundreds of them, late into the night and into the morning.
We hung around until the bitter end, midnight on a Sunday. Given the opportunity to share our daughter's last high school event with her, we could not tear ourselves away. We watched from a dark spot in the back of the ballroom while they actually danced the night away. Of course, all the usual suspects were there.




Bleary-eyed, my wife and I were wrung out from the activity and emotion of the weekend. We dragged ourselves home, but not before sending our daughter and her friends into the inky early Monday morning with a question: "Where are you going now, Honey?"
Her answer: "Wherever the wind blows."
I know we were just discussing this particular night, but think about the context and extrapolate that answer. We know this: She has the wind at her back as we're watching her go.

My wife said it is now time to look forward, and she's right. So, I will indulge myself just once more. The girls started high school together in the summer of 2006, when they were freshman cheerleaders and pep squad members. They didn't stick with cheerleading, but they stuck together. They made it with a little help from their friends.

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A Great Bark of Relief

One of the best things to happen to our family in the last couple of years was the arrival of a mostly-white, long-hair dog of ambiguous lineage. He adopted my father, who will celebrate his 84th birthday this summer.
There’s a reason this dog was a stray. Although he’s beautiful, he’s destructive, undisciplined, loud and unfriendly. He’s a rogue who would not fit well with any family. He hung around my father’s country cabin for a couple of weeks before finally earning a ride in the truck and a permanent home at the house. Since that time, the two have been constant companions.
My father has spent a significant portion of the meager family fortune on neutering, grooming, vaccinations and supplies. I’m not complaining. In fact, I’m thrilled. Not surprisingly, my father has a tendency to dwell on his own ailments. He gets kind of lonely and a little depressed sometimes. When he adopted this dog, everyone was encouraged. It meant, rather than being distracted by end-of-life concerns, he was forward thinking. The care and feeding of the dog gave him not only built-in friendship, but also an ongoing project. Trust me; this dog requires a lot of attention.
So, imagine the sick feeling we had when he called a few days ago to say, “I lost my dog.”
The two were back out in the country, doing whatever they do. My father decided to take a seat for a while. He rested for about an hour before he realized he had not seen the dog. “He never leaves me for more than ten minutes. He always has to check in.” He never checked in.
After sunset, dog still missing, my father came home and fretted. I drove out there three times, thinking the dog would find its way back. One of my cousins, aware of the implications of the loss of this pet, put on hiking boots and walked the property. My father kept a vigil. He said there was no way the dog had been stolen because he didn’t see anybody around the cabin, and there’s only one way in. So, he became convinced the dog was dead. Theories included bobcats, a pack of coyotes, snake bites and even drowning. Still, we soldiered on, even printing flyers…
My brother tagged along one afternoon to help distribute the notices. They took a moment to have coffee at the cabin. In a quiet moment, he heard a faint whimper. Listening carefully, he heard clear canine whining. It was coming from under the cabin. A diligent search revealed a telltale snout protruding from beneath one of the cabin’s support piers. The dog was trapped, thirsty and ornery, but very much alive. One of his legs was entangled in electrical wiring, so the extrication process was tricky, even a little risky.
The dog was in good hands. Two guys who have spent their lives working in construction got moving. Power was turned off, trenches were dug, cables were cut and the dog was free! My brother said, “The old man was practically turning cartwheels out there. You should have seen it.”
Nobody got bitten by a snake or devoured by coyotes. My brother, the good Boy Scout, earned at least six months’ worth of good deed points. An emergency trip to the veterinarian revealed no lasting ill effects from four nights of entrapment. A good bath, some antibiotics and a little salve for a rubbed-raw paw got everybody back in business.
This is a young dog, so there’s a decent chance my wife and I may have to take him in someday. Now, I’m counting on it because I think he will probably get a large portion of the inheritance.

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