car & TU

Sure, like this is breaking news.
The FLEX is in the shop getting a new hood.  The buzzard destroyed the old hood (see previous post).  The grand total is over $1000 with me paying a hundred deductible.  I was so solid on the brakes that the bird slid under the car instead of over the top off the windshield.  It could have been worse - or worster if you are in the 3rd grade.
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We pick it up today.  Two days to fix it.  Unbelievable.  I like when a person does the job he says he will do and in a timely fashion.  I've discovered that many workers in the Corsicana area are flakes.  Maybe that is the way it is everywhere.  I don't know.
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I remembered an old stone from the days that I worked in the Univ. of TX stadium with school groups.  We installed chairbacks / seatbacks / permanent-almost  cushions with backs on the stadium for people with the money to pay.  The money is good for a school group.  You have to go to every home UT football game - and some are an inconvenience  (8 p.m. games - rain games - Thanksgiving games - even 11 a.m games are tough to make after a Friday night out-of-town high school football game).  
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We were installing chairs one Saturday.  I believe it was the Hutto HS band helping us.  They make 50 cents for chair install  and  50 cents per chair at the end of the season for the uninstall  -  or $1 a chair for the year.  We installed over 10,000 chairs.  Good money for a school group.  We were up on the 11th floor when this boy - young, probably an 8th grade or Freshman - came up to me with an ice scoop.  He said he had found this ice scoop.  What to do?
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Of course, of course, leaving it where found was not in his brain.  I didn't know where to take it.  So, I told him to take it home and give it to his Aunt Mary for Christmas.  He had this look on his face.  We moved on. Several hours later as the students left and "Johnny" and I were left alone to lock up, I saw this ice scoop on the bottom floor of the stadium resting on a ledge.  The same.  Aunt Mary must have died.
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To coin a phrase, I scooped up the scoop and took it home.  Today, 6 or 7 years later, the scoop lives happily in the freezer of my refrig scooping ice daily into my humongous tea glass.  It is a good scoop.  It has found a home.  We are friends.  We have bonded.
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Wife is in yard planting and scratching.  We have a big box of left-over day lilies to give away.  Years ago, pre-2000, my Uncle Junior mailed us a few day lilies from his back yard.  He was president of the Oklahoma Day Lily Society.  He grew day lilies in his backyard and sold them over the internet.  Beautiful garden he had.  So we prized these day lilies.  When we sold the Pflugerville house, we moved the day lilies to daughter Christine's house.  In 2008, some of them came here.
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They prospered.  Christine and BJ divided them over the weekend.  Now we have too many.  What to do?
m

Cisco Santa Claus bank robbery, 1927

http://homebrewedmojo.blogspot.com/2012/12/kris-kringle-robs-bank-and-kills-couple.html

Whoever wrote this article has a way with words. I would love to find more info on this - Surely this has been made into a movie. We were listening to a car talk guy on 570 (sat morns) - he always tells stories which he calls "The backside of American history."

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Today he told of the 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery in Cisco, TX. The above article leaves a few things out that he injected - such as .... well, I forget. But his story telling was more detailed.

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I think, if I were looking for a screenplay to write, this one might be pretty good - with more research of the before and after...and embellishments.

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I remember one: when the guy was lynched at the end, he was pulled out of the jail by 1000 people who hung him from a tree. The rope broke. He laid on the ground in a fetal position saying something like, "God forgive me; have mercy." The crowd had mercy. They got a new rope.

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1927 seems a long time away. But I was born just 13 years later. Levelland was established ???? in 1926. Side bit to the above story. That part of the country was pretty wild because oil had just been discovered and the towns were thriving with new railroads. A guy named Hilton came to Cisco to buy a bank, couldn't, was so upset with the available hotel conditions and seizing an opportunity, built a large hotel - starting the Hilton chain of hotels. That hotel still stands.

m

Vampire Suit

from the Corsicana Daily Sun......an article titled:  Texas inmate loses civil rights 'vampire' suit.   I hope it is legal for me to copy this article here.   It is an  AP story out of Houston.


A federal appeals court has rejected as frivolous a civil rights lawsuit from a Texas prisoner who argued he was being barred from practicing religious beliefs related to vampires.


Inmate Courtney Royal two years ago sued about a dozen Texas prison administrators and officials at the Hughes Unit where he's serving a life sentence for numerous offenses, including aggravated assault, robbery and escape.


Royal's nine-page single-space typewritten lawsuit, rejected Thursday by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said he wanted to practice "West African spiritualism and 18th Century Catholicism" marked by prayer to Africanas reincarnated by blood.  He argued it was no different from "unproven" Christian beliefs.


In the filing, Royal described himself as "Vampsh Black Sheep League of Doom."
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Now, aren't you glad you had your own parents?
mtz

Mike Leach rumor

just read on facebook a rumor that Mike Leach is being considered for Mack Brown's job at UT.

from the NEWS

short & from the paper.
I wonder before I start why this won't let me make new paragraps when I click the compose tab...guess, because

Dallas Paper this day...surely you have all heard about the 22 yr old guy who enrolled in Permian H.S. so he could play basketball and helped them get into the playoffs. He told them that he was a homeless Haiti refugee and a Sophomore. The coach even kept him in his h ome at times...there are more details but you can find those. The newspaper implied that they didn't understand why he did this. To me it is obvious - not even considering that he now arrested for making out with a 15 year old girl in the school.

guys name was Guerdwich Montimer - he had taken the name Jerry Joseph. So many questions: like h.s. transcripts - TX requires students have social sec #s... and more.

#2 didja read about the girl, Nancy Salas, who faked her own kidnapping to avoid telling her parents that she had dropped out of Univ. Calif @ L.A. (would that be UCLA?) T W O Y E A R S ago. This is one dump broad. Her father is unemployed and her mom cleans houses for a living.