West, Texas...nothing would be enough.

West, Texas---Boxes heaped with personal household supplies, a couple search dogs lay on the floor, and tables with fliers of information made a u-shape as you entered the door of the Community Center in this tiny town of West, Texas.  A place that is reeling with grief because of the past several weeks of tragedy and enormous loss.

I was driving from Austin to Fort Worth and West is literally off the highway between the two.  I found myself exiting one exit early and following a road that lead me directly to the Center on the edge of the disaster area. I had absolutely no interest in seeing the blast sight but it was easy to see what direction it was by the blocked off road ahead and the police checking vehicles that passed. A large red and white tent was set up in the lot next door and bottled water could be seen in piles and piles.

Ten days earlier on Wednesday, April 17 a massive explosion at the West Fertilizer Co., rocked the town just before 8 p.m. A standing count of 15 were killed, mainly first responders, along with 200 injured, and many homes and businesses damaged or destroyed.

It is rare you hear about a disaster and are able to directly help. I know the Red Cross and organizations like them act on donations but I don’t know the face of who gets helped by anything I do. So, I decided that one person in West would be directly helped just a little.

When I walked in to the center I soon found out that everyone there was a volunteer. I connected with a woman who was a nurse from the Waco health department giving away tetanus shots to everyone from the area. I found out they had divided up the town in sections 1, 2 and 3 based on the proximity to the blast and was told that soon the meal was to be served and many would be coming. That I should wait.

Soon a small woman was talking to the nurse. I learned that anyone in the affected area had had to throw EVERYTHING edible away…including medicines. Inside their homes were covered in the soot that the blast produced. No one really knew what the chemicals that layered all their things would do. But her daughter was very sick. Most businesses were still closed and so she wasn’t working and didn't have enough money for the medicine and had not even heard from her boss. She was in zone 2.  She turned to me and continued to explain that all the windows had blown in from the explosion and she had come to pick up cleaning supplies available in the big tent. She said that was all that she could do was clean. She didn’t know how she would get medicine for her daughter but she pointed up and said “I am just trusting Him.”

She talked so fast I had a hard time stopping her to tell her what I wanted. Finally I said, “please listen.”  I started to explain that I was from Florida and had got off the highway to meet one person. She became very embarrassed because she had thought I was a volunteer and quickly said she was not asking for money. I had to reach for her hand and put my donation in it and curl her fingers back around it.

Her eyes filled with tears and she hugged me. She was so little that her hug was at my hips. I quickly left. I don’t know her name and she doesn’t know mine. But I know a hundred people who would have done the same thing if they were passing through this little town.

I decided that I could stop for lunch and gas up here as well, another small gesture to the town.

I walked their small down town where on one side were buildings and the other was a railroad track. I watched a short line of Union Pacific railway cars rattle by.  It was blatantly obvious that this was a very poor area. I selected the Czech American Café and had the best meatloaf of my life. The café was a giant step back in time. It had not been renovated since at least the 40’s or 50’s with extremely high ceiling that showed paint worn wooden planks. The kitchen was in a clear line of site from the dining room of about 15 tables.  “Grandma” was baking bread from a normal kitchen oven and the daughter was at the register. State troopers and local law enforcement filled a table for six and everyone at the table wore a cowboy hat. The conversation was solemn and faces were grim all around. One waitress had driven in from a nearby town to help and was making it her personal quest to be extremely cheerful. She got the officers to start talking about fishing. The air broke for a few moments with a bantering of brag-induced fish stories.

The word “Czech” was everywhere. So when I looked into it I learned that Czech immigrants moved here around the turn on the century. A man named Thomas West had planted roots here and a town followed. A popular Czech heritage festival happens every Labor Day weekend.

I found out that Willie Nelson grew up a few miles down highway 35. He had his first paying gig in West. The Willie Nelson concert in Austin yesterday that Sheila and I attempted to get tickets had sold out when it had turned into a tribute to West. Now that made even more sense.

Before leaving town I stopped at a gas station to fill up. I was standing outside of my vehicle staring at the pump and trying to figure out why there was no place to swipe my card when a high school-age kid asked if he could help. I said I wanted to fill up and he swiftly grabbed the hose handle and made for my tank as I stood dumb-founded. Next he asked if I wanted my windows washed. Finally it hit me. I remember this, what did they use to call it? Oh yea, full service!

The man gassing up next to me was grinning. I looked at him and asked if they were serious. He said they were and laughed at me trying for figure out where to stand. I asked him if he was from West. The tone changed. Yes, he and his buddy had just come from the funeral of their classmate. They had red bows on their lapels.

How exactly do you respond to that.  I said I was sorry for them, for their town. And just like my meager donation. Nothing would be enough. 

Singing Austin

Austin, Texas---Sheila Spensley moved to Austin from Daytona about five years ago looking for a change and a better place to expand on singing opportunities . And as I had been told, Austin is a full blown music town. It’s everywhere, every day with every type of music you could want…even yodeling as we discovered in SoCo (A really trendy area off South Congress Street I’m told).
Sheila currently sings with a group called the Church Rejects (yes there is a story there and it’s not anti-God or religion). I missed several gigs because I had been sick but rallied at the end of my stay and made it to one as well as going to a gig by the Whiskey Sisters, a two girl super energetic duo with original songs and a country twist.

Sheila lives with a friend who had played his way from pounding the blocks of the line of bars on 6^th street to a professional musician in a very successful regional band who played for the presidential inauguration in Washington, DC when that Texas Governor turned US President.

Seeing the hectic lives of two musicians reminds me that I am amazed that any music ever gets out. It is a hard life, one driven by a passion for their craft. One that can be changed by a single meeting or a twist in fate that puts you at the right time, with the right people. It’s just not enough to have a great voice or be talented in multi-instruments. It really seems like it is the luck of the draw.

In this case, the Texas draw.

 

Could have, Should have, Would have

Quote on Building; Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make you Free

Campus of The University of Texas, Austin, Texas---A boy sits under one of the huge Live Oak trees on campus.  The year is 1980-something and he is writing a letter to someone two states over. He had met her on the beach of South Padre Island during Spring Break that year. When they first met she joked that since she was from Kansas her name had to be Dorothy. And so the letter read appropriately; Dear Dorothy…     They had flirted, laughed, danced at Louie’s Backyard and kissed.   He had given her his “Texas” jacket at the end of Spring Break and they had promised to write. It was young love or rather young infatuation. 

But the letters that arrived became fewer and farther apart---and then stopped. Then a year later and another Spring Break, by fate, they ran into each other, again on the beach of South Padre Island. Again they went out and danced on the same dance floor that tops the water at Louie’s Backyard. This time he explained why the letters stopped; a new girlfriend…a serious one.

I walked around the UT campus today where about 51,000 students attended in 2012. A part of the Big 12 Conference the “hook ‘em horns” battle cry and the Longhorn logo, like in any college town, their proud team name is ever present. The iconic campus Tower has a clean line-of-site to the Capital Building downtown Austin. It’s a beautiful campus.

As I watched hurried students rush past on the maze of sidewalks and limestone layered clearings, or huddled around tables in the Union and in their campus Starbucks, I realized just how young I was when I got those letters from this boy going to school in a place I’d never been: Austin.  I remember he described the trees and the bench he sat on. He wrote about what he wanted out of life and how far away I was.  Last I knew he had married that girl and become an Austin Firefighter. He was living happily ever after in my head.

Even before that, my dream in high school had been to go to college in Texas. At 17 years old, two girlfriends and I actually talked all of our parents into letting us use a family station wagon and drive from Kansas to check out three schools in Texas. It was the first time I had ever seen major highways. The first time we had gotten a hotel room without an “adult”.  However when we heard a noise outside our motel room and moved all the furniture in the room in front of the door for the night while the girl closest to the door slept with her curling iron (weapon of choice) next to her, I’m reminded how scared we really were.

But after driving to Dallas, Denton and Abilene and back again, I had realized I could not afford out-of-state tuition and would commit my education to Kansas and then move to the coast of Texas just as soon as I had a degree in my hand. But things do not always end up how you plan, especially the plans of a teenager.  My path was redirected to Florida while at Kansas State and things are as they are.

As I visit here, I have to wonder all the “what ifs”.  From Houston, to Austin, to San Antonio and on to Dallas soon. What if?

Being here, I remember why I loved Texas.

I still have his UT jacket from that Spring Break so long ago. For some reason I have not thrown it out. Maybe it is just a reminder of sweet innocent times.  Times that remind me that there has always been a tiny part of my heart that is in Texas.



Sheila and I on Campus

Musician's posters who played at the Cactus lined the halls

The Famous On Campus Bar with a long history of famed Musicians.

What John Travolta and George Strait have in Common.

Gruene, Texas---John Travolta wore a winged costume and starred in a non-traditional depiction of an angel in the 1996 movie “Michael”.  In one part he danced to the song Chain of Fools across a bar with an old wooden floor. This is Gruene Hall, Texas’s oldest continually run dancehall, in Gruene, Texas (pronounced “Green”) about 40 miles south of Austin. A day trip Sheila and I decided to take and figure out why people referred to it as a destination in Texas.

Arriving in Texas in the mid 1840s, German farmers became the first settlers of what is now known as Gruene, Texas. Ernst Gruene, a German immigrant, and his wife and two sons purchased this land and built the first house and planted cotton. It became the number one cash crop and the cotton business soon brought more families. As the town continued to prosper, the Gruene family built the core buildings of the town including the dance hall. Downfall came in 1922 when the original cotton gin burned and was replaced by a modern electric model in a nearby town. The economic disasters of the boll weevil to the cotton crops and the Depression were too much for the Gruene family businesses and they went under, except for Gruene Hall, which never closed.

This dance hall was built in 1948 and was where a young baby faced George Strait was first discovered. It was the birthplace to many great songwriters and musicians.  Including Lyle Lovett, The Fabulous Thunderbirds and Hal Ketchum to name a few.

It has hosted Bo Diddley, The Dixie Chicks, Jerry Lee Lewis, Garth Brooks and Willie Nelson on its stage.

We missed seeing the (Kevin) Bacon Brothers play there last week.

It was mid-afternoon on a Thursday and the dance floor was occupied by two-stepping couples dancing to the second band of the day! The place is old. I mean really, really old. License plates were used to patch up the wooden floor in spots around the perimeter.  Looking up into the ceiling-less rafters, you could see layers, no…mounds of dust collected from the past hundred years I think. It all added to the character.

We were told that the “must visit” restaurant in town was Gristmill River Restaurant and Bar. Situated on a bluff overlooking the Guadalupe River, this in-door/out-door restaurant nestled under the shade of age old oak trees was originally a cotton gin powered by the river. Note: the signature Jack Daniels Chocolate Chip Pecan Pie WAS totally worth sharing an entrée.

The old county store sat vacant for years until the entire town was brought back to life in the 1970’s and stepping through the doors is a step back in time. A full salsa tasting station and a bunch of funny Texas themed items could be purchased. I just ate my way through the salsa, tried on some cowboy hats and took a few photos.

Shops occupied old houses and more outdoor country music was played under trees at another restaurant. The entire town could have been a movie set for sure. I tried to think of it has it had happened, a place where movie stars and music legends walked.

I do understand the charm of this destination. A little town with a big history.

Bacon bandaids, soap, wallet and gum

HILLBILLY BRIEFCASE



The General Store

What have you been doing for the past 25 years?

San Antonio's River Walk

San Antonio, Texas----“So what have you been doing for the past, ah, 25 years?” a ridiculous question I asked a long lost friend. As college friends at Kansas State we had remained friends past college but then life happens and there had been no contact. Knowing I was heading that way I had found him on LinkedIn still in San Antonio where he has lived for 22 years after getting his Doctorate and becoming a College professor.

Catch-ups like these can be strange. I met him at his university and had no idea if he was married, had kids, was even anything like the friend that had worked on the college newspaper with me: the guy with a sparkle in his eyes and a bounce to his step.

We drove though gorgeous neighborhoods with porches and yards colorfully decorated in the vivid traditional Mexican colors and he explained that this was “Fiesta Week” in San Antonio. A WEEK of celebrations, down town parades and parties. I like it. Beats the one day only Cinco de Mayo tradition! Later I was told that San Antonio is famous for extra traditional celebrations and more reasons to party. Another plus for this town known also for the beautiful café and shop lined river walk that twists and turns through the center of down town.

Over lunch at a beautifully themed TexMex restaurant, we did the best cliff notes version of the years gone by. For him a long marriage and three beautiful kids. A fairly recent amicable divorce and the adjusting it took to restart and redirect life plans.  Super fit and still a smile that consumes his entire face, we sat like anyone reunited and compared updates on the people we had mutually known. Most of them also lost in time.

We are at an age where the word “nice guy” is no longer an undesired personality trait. And this man is a nice guy.

Looking at someone else’s life fast forward was somewhat sobering. I’m not into comparing my life against anyone I once knew. I love to celebrate their accomplishments, and am fascinated by their path of choices. In his case many good choices, he jokes that he was always a secret intellectual.

I don’t know why I left feeling a little sad. Was it that the past can truly never be revisited? Or that since my life has been a version of living Groundhogs Day, it was a grounding into the reality of aging.

This road trip is filled with future meet-ups with friends from the past. The stories I wanted to gather are not going as I had originally imagined.  I have no idea where it will all lead, what it will mean and still struggle with why exactly I’m doing this coast to coast drive…except for the fact I want to.  So for now, like this city’s Alamo, I’m not giving up.

 

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Davy Crocket: "You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas."

The Alamo, San Antonio, Texas---“Seriously? THIS is it? But, but…it’s so small!” In my mind THE ALAMO WAS ENORMOUS.  I guess I should have visited when I was 5 and it would have been.  Never-the-less, it was THE Alamo. Located center-city, surrounded by the hustle bustle of a city boasting 1.3 million residents. ---that also blew my vision that it was in the middle of a cow pasture somewhere.

My first realization was that they take this building very, very seriously. A shrine to those who died here. No photos, no touching the walls, no loud talking, no hats (even cowboys must take that hat off) no inappropriate clothing and signs asking you to treat this with the respect due to those who lost their lives here.

For those who need a quick review: San Antonio and the Alamo played a critical role in the Texas Revolution within a larger Mexican Civil War. A year before the famous battle, Texian and Tejano volunteers had fought against Mexican troops and occupied the Alamo.

I learned the famous battle happened on my birth date.

March 6, 1836. About 1,500 Mexican soldiers emerged from the predawn darkness and headed for the Alamo's walls. About 200 men used Cannon and small arms fire from inside the Alamo to beat back several attacks. Regrouping, the Mexicans scaled the walls and rushed into the compound. The desperate struggle continued until the defenders were overwhelmed. By sunrise, the battle had ended and General Santa Anna entered the Alamo compound to survey the scene of his victory.

Their website reads: “People worldwide continue to remember the Alamo as a heroic struggle against impossible odds — a place where men made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom. For this reason, the Alamo remains hallowed ground and the Shrine of Texas Liberty.”

Davy Crocket’s gun and vest where on show. The vest was adorned with intricate bead work. A list of those who fought and died was on a wall. Many other items in cases with low lighting that made the interior have a serious tone.

But open the doors and walk outside to the walled-in compound surrounding the iconic building. A surprise awaited me as I gazed onto beautifully sculpted flower gardens and pathways to several other buildings. Huge Koi fish swam under a little bridge, and the area was peacefully unexpected.  

But before the gardens it was a fort and you can still imagine the walls being penetrated and the bloody fighting that took place in that very courtyard.

Of course there was the ever present traditional American gift shop where I suppressed the urge to buy the faux coon-covered Crocket hat made famous by the American legend of the famed frontiersman and former congressman from Tennessee.

I escaped with only a few postcards and a magnet stating Crocket’s saying:  "You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas."

Can’t get any more Texas than that.

Time Out

Orange Juice and Chicken Soup of course...

Austin, Texas---The truth is my worst fear happened. I got sick. A chest cold, sinus infection and fever that started in Gulfport had kept me down 3 days there and even though I felt terrible, I drove the 9 hours it took to get from there to Austin. My friend in Austin is a singer and I showed up at her gig just as they were starting a set. But I couldn't stay...it was all I could do to get somewhere and go back to bed.

I took directions to the house and headed for a neighborhood in Round Rock, Texas and for the past week, I have been sequestered in a guest bedroom letting the antibiotics that my doctor in Florida had called in to a Mississippi Walgreens, do the trick. And in two words my experience of a town I have wanted to see for about 30 years has been: this sucks.

But I'm feeling better and going to venture out to see a friend in San Antonio, about a 1-1/2 hour drive.

Plus I want to see the Alamo. And I'm hoping things will go better for me than it did for them.

State Crossing: Texas

Sights along the way: Mississippi

Changing Careers, one person's story

Gulfport, Mississippi---The combination of serious smarts and pretty face might have landed her on TV sooner than in a 20+ year newspaper career. But whenever the topic was mentioned, she would shut it down with a sarcastic, funny comment about the opposing media. She was committed to print.
From beat reporter, cops and cities, to the press corps in Tallahassee to management at a large Florida newspaper, Sharon McBreen followed her journalism training from The University of Florida.  Ending up as a regional editor, she fit her busy career in between a marriage and two kids… or vice versa.

But as the ink media evolved, she started looking for options, as did so many others. She wanted out, but that would mean a huge adjustment in lifestyle.

Combining a favorite pastime of fishing with her skill set, Sharon works on a fish conservation campaign in the Gulf of Mexico.

But wait. She doesn’t look like a tree hugger. She doesn’t talk like a “wacko” environmentalist. Like many others, she is a new face of the world’s concern for how things are going in the air, on land and sea. An ecosystemist. (Yes, I just made up that word.)  At an institution of people who base facts on science, then try to influence policy. (Not meaning that environmentalists don’t use science but, there have been some who HAVE given it a reputation of “extreme over balance”.)  One of her roles during this trip was for her to give information to a fishery council in support of investigating new ways to help balance recreational fishing opportunities with science-based limits.

When she’s not traveling, she works from a home office and is still intricately involved in all those parenting issues and challenges provided by teenagers. But how do you adapt to being on the road with the needs of a family after so many years of some regularity of routine?

Technology.

Via computer, she is no stranger to seeing what homework is due. Exhausted from a full day of meetings, she settles into her hotel room to multi-task between finishing up reports and checking in with her family.  Like a human day-timer, she can rattle off what needs to happen via cell phone. She jokes that she has to call three cell phones to talk to her family: the husband’s, the son’s, the daughter’s. And as a parent she worries passionately.

Balancing work and family and well, just a little fun, she squeezes in a charter fishing trip with one of her contacts prior to the 4-day marathon fisheries meeting. She couldn’t be happier with her decision to change the direction of her career.

“I absolutely love my job. I get paid to work with people who fish and try my best to make a difference. Plus I get to fish!” she said. “It’s one of the best decisions I’ve made.”

Day 5: After seeing Boston, nothing feels so important right now.

Gulfport, Mississippi---Sitting in my friend Sharon’s hotel room I watched reports of the Boston Marathon bombings unfold yesterday.  Switching between TV stations and Facebook on my phone I feel like so many others who are posting.
The first thing I thought was who is there that I know.  Who went? Pam was my trainer once, Bill was in my Rotary, and others start popping up in Facebook. They are okay. Beverly, my first marathon partner, is not there but has two relatives running it. They are okay.

This event feels way too close to home. I ran my first Marathon 11 years ago. I’m a slow pacer but love the challenge, the distance and the camaraderie. The actual event, even though it’s grueling, is the icing because it’s so much fun. All those great people in the Daytona Track Club and the Galloway running group, it could have been any one of the relatives of our runners.

After participating in 14 marathon events (full and half’s) it hit home more than ever before. Those Daytona runners who happened to be in Boston this year were some of my heroes in the sport.  I found myself bawling over the news this morning. The amazing running community, the sacred sport of running and the festival and party-like atmosphere of marathon events will forever be changed even though we all want to cling to the thought that we don’t want it to be changed.

The one thing I could think of to do was to put on my running shoes and run Mississippi’s coastal sidewalk. Run for the victims. Run for those who didn’t get to finish. Run in defiance of this hideous crime. Run because I live in America and I still want to run with no worries that bad things will happen.

So no matter the distance, no matter fast paced or slow shuffle, I encourage everyone to go out and run.

Run for Boston.

A fish story

Louisiana Marsh--- Because my friend Sharon works with the fishing industry, the first thing we did was go fishing! The alarm went off way too early waking us to be at the boat at 6:30am but it was worth it. We drove to a dock along a canal that looked similar to scenes from the movie Forrest Gump and met Sonny with "Shore Thing Fishing Charters" (ShoreThingCharter.com).

Sonny, a cute mid 30’s guy with a big smile and a tan that proved he lived on the water was born and raised fishing on the MS. Gulf Coast. Capt. Sonny has worked on the water professionally for 11 years and knows these waters like the back of his hand. He scouted the water using funny code names for their charter’s favorite and secret spots when communicating over the radio to another captain. Joining us was a fishing guide from Galveston, Texas there for the same meeting Sharon was attending.

The lights of the morning sky reminded me why I love mornings, especially on the water. It was my first time back on the water since returning from living on a boat two years earlier. We sped away as the morning haze turned to fog over the water.

Sonny steered his sleek 23 foot Hydra Sport Bay Bolt boat like a knife through butter. With water all around the fog closed in but with a steady hand Sonny followed an unseen path towards our destination: the marshes.  Soon swamps appeared in what seemed like miles from land. Tall green and brown grass covered these islands. Various sea birds squawked in the distance. And this is where trout, red fish, unwanted sting-rays and an unwanted catfish were about to be caught.

Being around these fishing pros I really did not want to confess that I had really never caught a fish. As a kid I would take a bamboo pole, a homemade bobber, and the earth worms I had personally dug up in our back yard and walk to Sand Creek in my little Kansas town. (yes, cue the music for the Andy Griffith Show).  There I would sit for hours thinking that one day it would happen and I would bring home a fish. But it never happened.

So when I was handed a reel I just decided to watch Sharon and the guys and try to mimic what everyone else was doing. With a few tips from Sonny my secret was working fine until I had something on my line. Feeling a strong pull,   I pretty much lost my cool and did everything wrong…pole pointed down, screams leaving my mouth and perhaps a cuss word may have slipped out.

But on the other end of my line was my first fish: a 28-1/2 inch Bull Redfish.

Six hours flew by.  Now I understand another great American past time.

Hurricane Katrina 8 years later

Gulfport, Mississippi---Planning this trip meant being open to any unplanned turn of events. One was finding out a friend was going to be working in Mississippi exactly when I was going to pass through. So here I am in a nice Marriott Hotel facing the Gulf!

I would never imagine that this very hotel barely weathered Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005. But on the room's TV was an in-house video with a loop showing five guys who stayed behind and filmed the storm and the storm surge (UltimateChase.com).  I now understand why and how storm surge does the most damage. One hour of footage had been edited down to show the stages of the storm.



Current

It was remarkable to see the lobby that I had just walked through with a floating car being pushed through the front doors.  Furniture floating, surge rising, and wind howling.  It showed the beginning where water began to pour through the front doors to all four entry doors completely missing! It continued to record water that rose past the first floor and lapped up the stairwells towards the second floor.  As it turns out, this property formerly the Holiday Inn, reached 28 feet 10 inches of storm surge and a line in the lobby marked it off.

Current/water line above TV

I continued to notice the empty lots that line the Gulf front and large foundations.  I was told Mansions lined Highway 90 along the water.  I counted 31 driveways to nowhere in just the 2 miles prior to the Hotel. Watching the news never seems to capture the magnitude of it and this is 8 years later!

 



NOTE Foundation from past home still sits 13 years later.