ROBERT'S 80TH BD PARTY

We drove to Antlers Saturday for a surprise birthday party for my brother, Robert, 80th birthday. We left early and stopped at Waffle House in Gainesville for breakfast. Interesting place run by a tight fisted owner who limited the number of jelly packages on the table and only had one waffle maker running so I had to wait for a while on the waffle. Restrooms had no towels but a stack of napkins to dry your hands.

On the way into Antlers we stopped at the cemetery to find my dad and mother's tombstone and were fortunate when Nancy spotted it. We offered a prayer for them and their descendants. We then found the Church of Christ after showing Nancy where we were living when WWII broke out.

Tommie brought Robert to a truly surprise party. He refused to get out of the car and his kids had to go out and bring him in. Had most of his family there  including his daughter Elizabeth and her daughters Nicole (who reads this blog) and Bryce who is living with Robert and Tommie, granddaughter Ricci, grandson Cody with his four sons, as well as his son Bobby and his new wife, plus a number of Antlers residents. I got to visit with one of the graduates of my class of '44 who brought me up to date on who are left. Not many. Several have died in the last year.

Robert's birthday cake had 80 candles. It was a two tiered cake with candles on the top and around the lower tier, but he was able to huff and puff and blow them all out. We then had the professional photographer take a lot of family group photos. One of all the Rodenberger boys had Robert, me, my son Mark, Robert's son, Bobby, his son Cody and four of Cody's sons. Quite a good-looking crew. More photos were taken across the street at the Brantley grade school building where Robert had gone one year when we lived in Antlers in '40-'41 and where Robert's children had gone to school.

It was a great party and we drove back getting home at 8. A long but satisfying day.

TEXAS BOOK FESTIVAL

We drove to Austin Saturday. Stopped for a break in Crawford and the store had no George W. Bush memorabilia for sale. We were surprised because just a few years ago it was filled with items.
Parking at the TBF was impossible. We got there about 12:30 and spent 30 minutes looking. We finally parked at Colorado and 17th street. But it was a beautiful day to walk. We started at the Capitol building where we ate at the Capitol Grill.
We then went to the tents starting with Tent #1 that held the Western Writers of America with Candy Moulton and her husband holding the fort. He told me that they left 8" of snow on the ground and he had justed talked to his daughter on the phone and it was -7 degrees. We continued to walk through the exhibition tents. Most of the usual exhibitors were there except Shearer Publishing. They did have a place on the program with the Italian author of the Tuscany Cookbook flying in for the program. Kathy was there but I missed the program.

Rollo Newsome, Charles and Kay Arnold at the TFS booth.

The exhibit tents this year went all the way down Congress Avenue to 8th street. We walked back up past the Capitol looking at the new statues and memorials. We had our photo taken by a friendly onlooker at the TBF post and Nancy took my photo at the WWII memorial.

2012 LORD'S ACRE

We celebrated the Cross Plains FUMC Lord's Acre along with Sue's birthday on November 10. We got to visit with many friends. We contributed a Mink jacket that we had purchased in Granbury with the supposed history of being a gift from the estate of a Methodist minister whose children donated it for a fund raiser and after going thru three churches came to Granbury. I was able to make the high bid on it at CP and gave it to Sue as a BD present.

On Sunday we attended our old SS class to read the first 4 chapters of Amos. The class has new members and a few who have stayed for the two year journey through the Bible. A few more lessons and they will be through the Old Testament and into Matthew. Nancy and I have been reading the lessons along with the class and even got a lesson ahead we found. We enjoyed attending the church service and I stood with the other veterans recognized on veteran's day.

God was with us driving back Sunday. On the narrow road between Sipe Springs and DeLeon a truck indicating a wide load came toward us. I didn't slow like I should and topped a hill to find a pickup that was stopped in our lane with a car pulled off to the right in front. I couldn't stop and went around both cars to pull off on the right side of the road in time to miss the wide Double-wide coming toward us taking up most of our lane as well as the other side. God was with us. It could have been a real disaster if the wide load had been closer. At 70 mph it is impossible to stop short. We are blessed and I need to be more aware of warning signals in the future.

STATE FAIR WITH SUE

Last year when Sue was taking chemo and radiation for her cancer, we promised her we would take her to the State Fair to celebrate her recovery. She came in Wednesday night so that we could go to the Fair on Thursday when seniors get in free. Of course parking was $15.
We drove thru misty rain all the way there with forecasts of 20% for rain. It stopped as we got there and started sprinkling as we left at 5:30. We enjoyed walking through the Creative Arts building and by 1 were getting hungry. I had promised myself to have a Fletcher's corny dog but the lines were 100 people long so we went into the Food court and I had mini corn dogs. Nancy had to have her funnel cake. 
We went to the Bird Show that was new to me. It is amazing how they can train wild birds to fly from the Ferris wheel down to the stage close to the audience heads.
Like last year we went to the Marine Drum and Bugle Corps concert.

Marine Gunnery Sgt Major is the drum major and told about the year's activities by the Corps. He asked the audience to like the Corps on Facebook and to post his photo.
This year after the concert we rode the arial Tram back to the parking lot. We had a great day getting our walking exercise in.

THE PROMISE AND BOOK FESTIVAL

We had an active weekend. Friday night was perfect for going to Glen Rose to see The Promise. One of the Waples UMC members is a member of the cast. The play is a local production by hundreds that portrays Christ's life from birth to ascension. The huge outdoor stage has a "river" in the front that starts the play as the Paluxy river in Glen Rose with two children looking for dinosaur tracks with their grandfather who then tells them the story of The Promise starting with Mary riding a donkey going to Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus, the wise men with outstanding costumes  delivering the gifts from camels. The play takes a couple of hours and has beautiful scenery. Lazarus is revived. The river becomes the Jordan with John baptizing (by immersion), has the fishing boat for recruiting the disciples and the scene where Christ stills the storm. The scene where the Devil tempts Christ in the desert has unexpected scenes where they disappear in a flash at ground level and appear unexpectedly on top of a very tall column then back on ground level after another flash. The play ends with Christ being ascended to heaven in a dramatic fashion. The audience had several large groups that came in buses from churches, mostly Baptist, but one large contingent were United Methodists from Ardmore, OK.

Then Saturday we went to the lunch at the Abilene West Texas Book Festival where Jon Erickson was presented the A. C. Greene award. He is known for his books on Hank, the Cowdog. He has sold 8 million copies of his self published books, self published to maintain his integrity and philosophy. I know him because he published a book on the modern cowboy that was updated in a second edition where he added a chapter on the cowboy's newspaper The Livestock Weekly where he mentioned my column.

Then Monday night we presented papers for critiques at the Writer's Bloc in Granbury and got good comments to help us.

PIONEER STATUE TO TWU

Yesterday Nancy and I took the Juan Dell statue of Pioneer Woman of the West to give to the TWU Library Lou Rodenberger Collection. They put the statue on a display table in the reading room in the back of the collection. We looked at the new display for Lou that they change every so often. They changed it on September 14 in advance of her birthday on September 21.
They took photos but I haven't received any yet to post.

I bought the statue at an art studio in Santa Fe NM in 1982 for $1500 and had it shipped to Lou at our new Abilene address. This was when I retired from A&M and had a lot of money for one month, drawing accumulated leave pay from A&M and also working as a consultant for General Dynamics in Fort Worth. We had looked at it sometime before and admired it because the artist was from Hockley County. She was from Littlefield and we were married in Levelland which is just south of there. She has many fine bronze statues of western themes. This one is of a pioneer woman holding a rifle in her right hand and using her left hand to put two children in hiding in a tree trunk. We liked it a lot.

BLESSINGS OF RAIN

The Lord has blessed us with rain. Yesterday we had over 1" in about two hours starting at 10 a.m. Last night we had another .08". And the temperature is now Fall like and very pleasant. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get jumper cables to the pickup parked in the pole barn. The battery is dead this morning.