CHRIST HAS RISEN!

It was great to celebrate Easter in Valerie's home church, University United Methodist in San Antonio. Bishop Lowry was their preacher before he became the bishop of our Central Texas Conference. They have a full orchestra with tympanies, brass, strings and a magnificant pipe organ with their choir.

Nancy and I drove to San Antonio after a full day at the Texas Folklore Society Friday. Thursday we missed the Hootenanny because we went to Maundy Thursday service at Cross Plains FUMC and it was too late to drive to Abilene. Friday morning bright and early we got to TFS in time to hear the start of the program by Lucy West, who lost her husband, John West, just a week ago. She and I exchanged feelings about the grieving process. We heard papers all day but the big surprise for me was to see Dr. Suzy Burnham at the meeting. I had been wondering about her. She is either the State Veterinarian or close to it. The last time I had heard about her she was working in Mexico coordinating vet problems across the border. She grew up in Mexico and we met her at TAMU when she was in Vet school. She and her husband have a Vet practice near Graham that we drive by every once in a while but have never stopped. I called Sylvia Grider to tell her about seeing Suzy. I had to call her again when Jack Duncan gave a paper on his remembrances of TFS. At his first meeting in 1971 in Wimberley he met Sylvia and had her photo with Sid Cox and James Ward Lee on his slide presentation. He recalled that she won a quilt being auctioned off and Sid asked her if it was the first time she had taken a chance on a quilt.

We heard papers by Lori B. Garrison who told about taking a 20 mile drive in the Hill country and going through 8 "demon" bump gates and scarring up her daughter's car because the gates swing back into the car going through them. W. C. Jameson gave a great paper on legendary rattlesnakes, claiming that he had measured one at more than 8 feet on a trip to Mexico. We enjoyed all of the papers and went to the dinner where Ken Davis was named the 14th Fellow of the society. A well-deserved honor.

Saturday on the way to SA I stopped at Hinckley's Country Store in Mason to buy birthday gifts for Christopher and Brent. I had stopped before but lucked out this time and found both Brent and Monica at the store. They were friends from the Wesley Foundation days at A&M and have been in Mason since. They operate the store on the square, a bed and breakfast, plus other enterprises. Brent said he has been mayor of Mason for 5 years and running again this year. We exchanged blog addresses. Their son, who served in missionary work in Honduras has a blog named familiahinckly.blogspot.com and it is very well done. Much better than this one.
When we got to Kathy's in San Antonio we got to visit with Jim and his family because Brent was still celebrating his Thursday birthday with a party that morning in SA. They had their new daughter, Faith, who is growing up and smiles at everyone. She was born December 10. Then the crowd arrived. Keith's cousin Crickett with her son, Jay and his daughter. Valerie's four girl friends came with the parents of one of them. When we got there Valerie and Ness were helping Christopher and Brent dye Easter eggs. So the big event of the afternoon was when Easter eggs were hidden in the back yard. Christopher and Brent had half the yard and all of the big girls had a basket and searched the other part of the yard like a bunch of school kids. Kathy had prizes for the prize egg and the most, etc.

Dinner was the great BBQ that Keith makes. He had pork ribs, chicken breasts and drumsticks. We had all kinds of salads by Kathy and Carol. The pediatrician Christy brought two great pies that she made, one chocolate and the other apple. Nancy got to meet all of Kathy's kids except Jon-Marc who is working in New York this week.

Sunday after church we went back for brisket Kathy had cooked overnight with potatoes and salad. We got to take a nap and drove following the GPS up 281 through Hico and Glen Rose to Granbury. Today I drove back in to Halsell Hill to try to catch up here.