CROSS PLAINS WEEKEND

I put out an email about the events going on in Cross Plains the weekend of June 10-12 about the Robert E. Howard fans, the Barbarian Festival and the international rocket launching contest. My grandson, Jim Wilcox, who teaches engineering at Devine High School and inherited the Rocket Squad this next year called and said he had to go to the rocket launching. My daughter, Kathy, had already said she was coming with my two granddaughters, Valerie and Vanessa. Vanessa backed out when she decided she needed to study for her RN certification exam she takes on the 17th. Kathy brought her friend Carol Thormer and Jim brought his two sons, Christopher and Brent. They got here just before the Friday night dinner.

Friday night we had six but released one seat at the Robert E. Howard dinner. Sue Neal joined Kathy, Carol, Val and me. We sat next to Carol and Wallace Bennett where Kathy got some good information on possible future jobs from Carol Bennett who works in the rehab business. The two speakers told about the development of the REH Fanzines through the years and how interest in REH has grown since REHUPA (Robert E. Howard United Press Association) was formed in 1986. There were old photos of the first BBQ on Saturday night held at our place here on Halsell Hill. That brought back some memories.

Saturday we started at the new art museum run by Kim Cunningham, who is the daughter of Chad Cunningham, who is the brother of Brad Cunningham who owns the huge homes behind me. They built a new fence and took out mine when they developed their place. Kim take photos but sells art from other local artists like Mary Barton. We went next to the REH museum for the tour. Nancy and I had gone to the Library and museum Friday afternoon. At the museum we saw our next Methodist pastor and his wife. Also Carleton Stowers came in with friends from the Metroplex. He is the nephew of Tom Stephenson, whose wife Arlene was working at the museum and as president of Project Pride was the MC of the dinner last night.

We then drove down the road to the park where the Festival had the old auto show, old tractors, and all kinds of booths selling all kinds of stuff. We ran into Susan Hunter who said that the rocket launching was supposed to be over by 2:30 so Jim, his sons and I grabbed some food from Bubba's food booth and headed out there. The women stayed to visit the Library on the way home. We went to the International rocket launching contest to get there just as they broke for lunch. They had not launched as many rockets that morning as they planned. About 1:30 they started launching again and we got to see 3 launches before we left. The rockets were about 6 feet tall and carried the students experiments in the nose cone that seperated from the rocket on the way down. The experiments were a parachute holding an egg that had to survive along with instrumentation that sent GPS data back to their computers on the ground to help them locate their package to see if the egg survived. The rockets launched so high that they went out of sight so we didn't see the rockets or the parachutes with our eyes. One team had recovered a package from the morning launches. Their egg didn't survive. The teams were from Instanbul, India and a number of US colleges. None from Texas. They generally had 4-6 team members but one team was one person. The site was out in a large pasture with a lot of cactus and other rough places to walk. The temperature was around 100 degrees. We came home and took a nap.

Sunday Jim and Val helped me teach my SS class. We just started a study of the Psalms. Jim had just completed a study and helped me a lot. Everyone else came to church where our pastor gave his last sermon before moving. His wife Julie gave me a good report on the resolution against the Methodist stand on teaching only evolution. I had presented a resolution last year and Rev. Jim Senkel had his this year that received a lot of discussion with many saying they wondered what we believe. Jim had sent me an email saying that 30% supported the resolution but that 100% of the young people voted for it, so we agreed our future lies with the young people. There will be more resolutions presented to the General Conference to reverse the action of the 2008 Conference. Hopefully more Methodists will ask themselves what they believe and that creation science should be taught as a possible theory along with evolution.

Today we went to Abilene to have a wedding portrait made. I left my hearing aids to go back to the factory for reburbishment and will get them back in a week or so. It is good that I can hear fairly well.