The day he brought the crock pot home, he came prepared.  He also bought a prepackaged chuck roast that had carrots, onions, potatoes & a seasoning packet with it.  He got up the next morning, filled the crock pot and “voila” dinner started simmering for hours, smelling wonderful.

It wasn’t until after dinner was over that I pointed out the fact that we could have purchased all of the parts and pieces of the meal separately for a lot less.  And I tried to do so gently, since he was not only a fledgling cook, but also a big help to me in taking over the dinner preparations.  Up until this point in his retirement, his daily crisis in life had consistently been “so . . . what’s for dinner?”  He always used those same words about the same time of day.  Just after I finished making him lunch and he ate it.  He immediately started worrying about dinner.

And, I mean, it’s not like I never fed him – or that he had ever done without too many meals.  It seemed to me to stem more from either a long ago insecurity over not being fed enough as a little kid or else (my theory) he had way too much time on his hands and had nothing better to do than harass me unceasingly about why I wasn’t spending hours each day in the kitchen.

[I must note here, too, that when he retired was about the same time that my blogging regularly became a problem.  I'm not casting blame, you understand.  I'm just sayin'.]

Anyway . . . he was so excited at his crock pot success, he decided to try something else in it.  He was completely enamored with his new kitchen toy . . . sensation . . . appliance and now wanted to fix everything in it.  Or, at least serve everything in it.  Including things we had always before prepared and served in big pots on the stove.  Like chili.  And crawfish corn bisque.  And gumbo.  And this proved especially so when we invited friends to come eat with us.  Whereas before we had usually had everyone serve themselves in the kitchen out of one of our big pots on the stove, he now thought our pots were just too “ugly” to serve guests from any more.  We now needed to transfer whatever we had prepared to the crock pot on the counter top where we could keep it warm.

I didn’t see the crock pot as being any better looking than our pots.  And, I certainly didn’t see any need to now have to wash and scrub two separate containers when one would do.  That just doubled my work load.  But, he wouldn’t be swayed.  When he finally, albeit reluctantly, agreed to wash up both containers for me, I relented.  But, I wasn’t a happy camper, I’m tellin’ ya.

This went on for two or three weeks – him wanting to fill the crock pot every other day with some big batch of food and then invite friends over to be served from it.  My freezer was already beginning to overload, but he was still at it.  And he thought his first try with the roast, et al, was such a success, he wanted to try another dish.  This time from scratch.  I had him peruse my cookbooks and every single recipe I had, but he found them all lacking somehow.  So, instead, he did what he had really wanted to do in the first place.  He jumped online to find a “perfect” one for him to try.   (Of course.  Why didn’t I think of that.  Where does one go these days.  I mean – how on earth had I managed all these years with only about a dozen or more cookbooks and piles of good recipes I’d collected from family and friends over half a century.)

It took him a while, but finally he found one he liked.  He printed it out and even went to the grocery store with me to purchase all of the ingredients.  When we got home, he pulled his crock pot out to set on the counter top for the next morning.  He placed all of his cans of corn, tomatoes and other veggies nearby, along with the box of chicken broth he needed to use.  The meat went in the fridge and he planned on getting up early to get dinner started in the crock pot because it was supposed to cook eight hours or longer on low.  We usually eat around 6 or 6:30 p.m., so time was of the essence.

The next day it was about noon before I came into the kitchen for the first time.  I’d had a really bad night and had slept very late.  I assumed Tom had everything under control.

I was shocked when I looked around.  The crock pot was sitting there plugged in with the lid off, but it only had a couple of things in it.  There were opened cans sitting all around with veggies still in all but two of them.  The box of broth had been opened, too, but was still full.  The meat was nowhere to be seen.  Neither was Tom.

I found him over at his desk in our living room talking on the phone.

When he finally got off the phone, I asked him who it was and what he had been doing all morning.  He said he’d been on his computer earlier, including Facebook, iTunes and YouTube, and then had phone calls from two friends and had called his brother.  The conversations had been long, he said, and had taken up a lot more time than he’d thought.

In other words, he’d gotten completely sidetracked playing around on his computer and talking with friends.  All morning.  It was now past noon and the kitchen was a mess with nothing cooking.  The cook had played hooky it seemed.  It was way too late to start his recipe that had to cook in the crock pot for over eight hours to be ready to eat.

But, I wasn’t upset.

Nope.  Not a bit.  I thought it was rather funny.

Besides – it gave me the perfect opportunity to say what I’d been dying to say since I’d come in the kitchen.

“So . . . ” I asked him.  Sweetly.  “What’s for dinner?”

He also had to get the swing keel down in the water under the boat and get  the small outboard motor going to get us out of the harbor.  Every step he took, I was afraid he was going to fall off the boat.  I tried to keep out of the way and kept yelling to him, “Be careful!”

I knew that if he fell in the water, there was no way I could get him back on board.  Once we got under way, it was even worse.  If he fell off the boat out from the harbor, I had no clue how to stop the boat and turn it around.

Well – I could slow it down a whole lot, I knew, but letting the sheets go loose to the jib and mainsail, but after that – I dreaded to think.

Tom listened to me patiently, but finally tried to quiet me by saying, “Dee – I do this all the time, I know what I’m doing and I’m being careful.  Everything will be okay.”

It became easier once we were under way and I began to really enjoy myself.  Then, the lessons began.  You see – sailors have a totally different vocabulary.

For instance, there are no ropes on a boat.  Only lines and sheets.  Sheets are the “ropes” that attach to the sails.  Thus, our boat has jib (the forward, smaller sail) sheets and main sheets (the large, duh, main sail).  The rest of the many “ropes” on the boats are lines.

Also, there are no door or walls on a boat.  The “door” is the hatch and the “walls” are all bulkheads.  The right side on the boat, facing the front, is starboard and the left side is port.  The front of the boat is the bow, while the back of the boat is the stern.  The vocabulary goes on and on endlessly, but I learned enough to sound semi-intelligent by asking many times, “So . . . what’s this do-hicky?”

Captain Tom was really proud to have me on board, except for one thing.  You see, in the three years now he’s had the boat, he has not let one person use the little port-a-potty because he didn’t want to have to later empty out the holding tank, etc.  I told him there was no way I could go out for several hours without using it.  He uses a jug he bought especially for that purpose, himself, and then empties it over the side and washes it out.  So, he said, “Don’t you think you could just use that?  It has a wide mouth on it, Dee?  Come on.  Try it.  I don’t want to have to mess with the port-a-potty.”

I popped a canned drink and said . . . well – you don’t really want to know what I said.  ha!

So . . . while most people christen boats with a bottle of champagne across the bow, I christened Tom’s boat by peeing in the port-a-potty.  Hey – it worked for me!

By the way – have you taken a good look at the photo above?  See anything amiss?  Think about it and comment if you think you know.  I’m not going to tell you till everyone has had a good guess (or bad one).

We sailed out to Cat Island, a barrier island about seven miles out and then turned around to start back while eating our roast beef sandwiches.  We saw a couple of dolphins swimming across our bow and a loon in the water giving it’s lonesome cry.  Loons are fun to watch fishing.  They dive into the water and take forever to come back to the surface.  Neat birds.

We got back into the harbor and the slip about 4 p.m.  I had intended to captain the boat some myself while we were out, but Tom used his auto tiller the entire time, which guides the boat on whatever course he sets.  It’s a pretty neat instrument that I got him the first year he had the boat.  It’s really a necessary item for someone who wants to sail alone.

The auto tiller lets Tom do what he does best, which you can see in the photo above.  Lean against the “bulkhead” and enjoy being out on the water!

I had a great time and can’t wait to go out again now that I’ve taken the plunge and gone the first time.  Y’all come see us and we’ll take you out!  Don’t worry if you need a potty break, either.  Now that it’s been christened, Tom has relented and said it could be used again.  It wasn’t the end of the world to have to bring home the small holding tank to empty out.  I figure that was what it was made for, ya know?

Cheers!  And many blessings to each of you today!  Dee

I took the plunge Saturday and christened Tom’s sailboat - Item 7 – with my lovely presence.  I also officially christened it another way, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

He’s only had the boat three years, after all.  I had to make sure he could handle it well and that it was safe to venture out, you know.  A girl can’t be too careful these days.  I figured that by now with all of the stuff I’ve had to get him for the boat (that he just had to have to safely and comfortably sail, you know) it should be fit for a Queen to sail.

You’d think so, anyway.  I mean, he’s awfully proud of it and has been sailing a lot this fall, after a very late start this year.  He went sailing a couple of days last week, the weather has been so gorgeous.  But, he wanted me to go out with him so he could show off his “other” love (besides me).

We were going to go Friday, but it was too windy.  Saturday it was perfect weather, and I do mean, perfect for sailing.  Good breezes, but not blowing hard.  Mid-70s, bright and sunny and very few clouds.

I made us roast beef sandwiches and got out the potato chips while he got an ice chest of drinks for us to take.  We took jackets with us, but didn’t need those at all, and we headed out.  The 40 minute drive over to the coast was lovely; about half way there we hit the beach.  It was the kind of day you want to last forever when you’re starting out, ya know?  Have you ever had one of those?  The kind that makes you want to exclaim, “This is the BEST day of my life!”

(That’s actually an inside joke for our friend, Ron, who took Tom & me sailing one fall day several years ago while his wife, Debra, was having to work.  It was much cooler that day and the wind was stronger, but it was fantastic.  I took over sailing the boat as Tom & Ron took a break.  We were really heeled over and I was laughing out loud at the thrill of it all.  Ron called Debra and told her what I just said above.  When the conversation was finished, Ron turned to us sheepishly and said, “Don’t ever tell your wife you’re having the best day of your life when she’s not with you!”  We still laugh about that all the time all of these years later.  Just a hint for you guys out there.)

We hauled everything out to the boat in the slip and Tom started packing things aboard.  Then we came to the first “tricky” part.  Tom’s little “finger” pier that runs out along side the boat in the harbor for getting on and off the boat (that was there when he got the slip) is narrow and rickety.  It’s probably 15′ long, without a center brace pole beneath it, so it wobbles.  That fact, plus the facts that I’m (1) scared of heights – I was probably 6′ above the water, (2) have a fear of water, strange as that may be for a sailor – which I used to be(!), (3) you have to step across on to the moving boat – small ones are move around more than bigger ones, and (4) I hadn’t been out on a boat at all  in 5 1/2 years, all made me scared – to – death – momentarily.

Tom went ahead of me, while I gripped his hand and arm ferociously until I was safely down on the finger pier, out to the end of it, and then safely across and down on the boat.  Whew!  That was a feat for someone who used to be so cool about sailing.  I mean, I was the one who bought a Hobie 18′ with wings 22 years ago when I was living over there on the coast!  Here’s a photo of one like mine (sails and all), except mine had bright turquoise hulls and trampoline :

I used to do THAT!!  What the guy in the photo is doing.  You wear what they call a “butt bucket,” which is a diaper-like sling you get into, and then you get on the high side of the boat as it’s traveling rapidly through the water.  What fun!!

Tom & I went sailing all the time (as you may remember from some of my posts several years ago, when we still had the Hobie).  We kept the catamaran for 15 years and had always had a blast with it.  We’re way past those days, but not past good sailing days, as I so hesitantly found out Saturday.

I’ve lots more to share with you, but don’t want to take up your entire day, so will stop here.  The first photo above shows Tom next to the tiller sailing the boat.  The photo wasn’t taken Saturday, as we forgot to take our camera and Tom, much to his dismay, but my delight, forgot to take his phone that takes pictures.  But, he had that exact same shirt on and shorts and was barefoot most of the afternoon.

Next time, I’ll delve into (1) the language and culture of sailing and (2) how I came to christened the boat, other than by my presence on it.  I’ll also try to give you a descriptive “tour” of the boat.

Till then . . . Cheers!  And many blessings to each of you today! Dee

I haven’t written about “THE BOAT” lately.  Oversight on my part.  Although, you have to admit there’s been a whole lot of other activity going on in our lives.  Like Tom’s 5 heart-bypasses March 31 and recovery.  My 1,750 mile trip to Texas and back.  Etc, etc.

But, believe me, boat happenings have been ongoing this entire time.

Some of you will remember me discussing das boot last summer when I briefly went back through our “boat history” up until he purchased the present one.  Last August I talked about his purchase of some expensive marine plywood to make a new “door” down into the tiny cabin.  I called them “Men Don’t Measure” and “Men Don’t Measure – Conclusion” for obvious reasons, when you read the posts. (Here and here – the photos are gone, but the links still there, so you’ll “get” the picture.  ha!)

He’s had the boat for two and one half years, so this was to be his third summer of sailing fun in the sun, blowing with the breezes, leaving all of the cares and worries of the world behind.  He had gotten the boat “all fixed up,” which is interpreted “everything he could think of to load the boat up with that I would be willing to go along with and pay for, if only he could convince me the items were all dire necessities to keep him alive and relatively safe out on the water alone.”

He half-heartedly worked on staining his marine lumber doors for the boat throughout the winter months.  The boat sat in the yard next to the driveway up to the garage with a blue tarp over it.  Staining went slowly, then ground to a halt about thanksgiving, with winter not yet completely upon us.  But days were short, nights were long and there was an abundance of football games and other major TV entertainment attractions to keep him from having to even think about that second, then third, coat of varnish each side of all three pieces of lumber needed.

He  decided to wait until early spring to regain his enthusiasm for boat “work,” as opposed to boat “play,” and kept napping in his recliner.  But I told myself, at least he’s not out spending “boat dollars” (Greg & Patrick, you will remember that this is somewhat equivalent to “guitar dollars,” an amount that boggles an average wife’s mind, especially one not given to piles of shoes).

Early spring arrived.  Cool sailing days were just around the corner.  Tom didn’t feel well.  After a trip to the ER turned into a two day stay, with needed heart by-passes set for a week later, Tom’s visions of sailing on the breezes faded a bit from his mind.  Staying alive moved to the number one place in his thought processes and stayed there for another two months as he endured complications and setbacks with his health before he could even return to work.

About that time, I left town for a while, so he thought that might bring a good opportunity for him to, at last, get back out on the water.  But, he didn’t have the strength to put the boat in the water on the coast, get the mast up and the sails all alone.  So, he had to muster help.  That would take a little planning, but could be managed.

However, heavy, on-going rains didn’t cooperate, so the minutes, hours and days tick-tocked away what would have been excellent sailing days while Tom and his helpers watched helplessly.

Then, total disaster struck.  The oil well in the gulf blew and now not only Tom, who sails in the gulf of Mexico inside the barrier islands of Mississippi, but the entire gulf coast region had a nightmare on their hands.

Tom was not to be deterred, though.  A true sailor and captain persists in even the very worst of conditions, most of which were about to happen to him . . .

To Be Concluded next time, so stay tuned . . .

(Cheers, Greg!)  Dee

She was 19 years old and married to a small thin man in his late 30s or early 40s who looked to be twice his age and was crippled up in his left arm from a working accident some years before.  Thus, he was disabled and unable to work any more, at all, although the work he’d done before was just as a laborer.

She had four little girls of her own, although she was just a girl herself.

They were destitute.  They lived in a small shack consisting of three room, with no bathroom, far off the nearest paved road among the tall, matchstick pines.  Being summer, it was swelteringly hot and humid, but they had no air conditioning, of course.  Nor did they have much furniture.  In fact, other than in the kitchen, I recall none.  The three little girls and baby all slept on bare mattresses reeking with the strong odor of urine.  They may have had diapers for the youngest, but the nearest place to do laundry was in town, and that cost money they didn’t have.  Neither did we see any clothes, anywhere.

Their only transportation was an old dilapidated pickup, and it was not there when we arrived.  The doors were wide open, so we went up the flimsy back steps to the kitchen and went in to look around.  We saw a small table with bowls on them, a couple of chairs and some cheap bent spoons.  The small refrigerator’s door did not shut well and it was full of big ants, but very little else.  Ants crawled all across the tiny kitchen, including on the counter, where we found the remains of their pitiful lunch.  Water gravy and water Koolaid, with a bit of sugar in it.  There were no signs of anything else to eat.

We had wanted to see them to visit, but instead we just left the big boxes of food, produce, milk and staples, for them to have when they got home.  We left some small clean clothes, too, for the girls, and took note of what else they needed.  It was a long list, because they needed everything, beginning with a habitable place to live.

We were not only saddened, but sickened at what we saw.  The wretchedness of the place; the poverty.  But, for the moment we had done all we knew to do.

We found out later that the reason they were not “home” was because all of them had driven to nearby Lufkin to the welfare department to try to receive a bit more financial help then what he was getting.  The girl told us that what we saw in their shack was the very last of the food that they had.  The water gravy and Koolaid.  They had nothing else.

When they returned home, completely dejected and hungry, they were overjoyed to find the food we brought.

My friend, a young Christian mother of four, herself, in her 30s, and I – just a married college student, myself, with a little one, David, who was two years old, had driven back into town by then.  I pondered what I had seen and experiences.  I deeply identified with this young girl, as I was expecting a baby soon, and would have two little ones at 21.

We lived in student housing in a small two bedroom apartment that was $67 a month, which we could not afford, either, but we managed the the four married couples’ buildings around our square and that paid our rent.  My husband went to school full time and worked all kinds of odd jobs at night to help with bills, too.  One job, sitting in a chicken house where the incubators were all night long to keep the eggs from burning, paid 33 cents an hour.  It was a miserable job, but we needed the money.

Yet, when I compared my life to hers, and she was a brand new Christian, I felt deeply blessed.

We did not leave them as we found them.  Charlotte, my friend, went back repeatedly to help them and even got the girl a decent paying job in town soon after.  Charlotte made sure she was able to come worship with us and bring her little daughters.  The girl dressed them up as best she could with the hand-me-downs and they looked shiny and sweet.

They are able to move into town and the church helped them greatly.  Their lives improved very much due to the love and care and benevolence of the compassionate Christian community there in Nacogoches.  It was inspiring to me to see true Christianity in action – Jesus love – and the impressions of that girl’s life have stayed with me until now.

This did not happen during the deep Depression of the 1930s.  This happened in 1966, and happens still today in many places all around us here in America, if only we will take the time to really open our eyes and see as Jesus would have us see.

My daughter, who lives in an a far suburb of Dallas told me a few years ago that she did not know any poor people.  (Although she lives out in the country and has trailer homes on both sides of their property.)  I was stunned.  I told her she would find them all around her, even there, if she would just look.  She took my advice, and did.  Since then, she has been involved in ministry with her congregation of Christians and on several mission trips outside this country, even.  We financially supported her in doing those things and have supported her morally and in every way we could to encourage her in her work.

Tom and I live in a very poor area of the south here in Mississippi where people such as the girl in the woods live, as well.  May I ever seek out those I can help in some way – as God’s child – a Christian – and not forget they are all around me too.  To get to our house in the woods, we drive by dozens and dozens of run down trailers and trailer parks that look like junk yards.  They are here.

I hope you will be encouraged today to look more closely around where you live to find someone you can help – in Christ’s name – to show them the love of God and Christ even in their lives!

Many blessings to each of you today.  Dee

It was quite sad.  He was quite sad.  Pathetic.  Miserable.  Hard to live with being so despondent over his plight.

But, he managed.  Managed to keep going and has done quite well, actually.  Exceedingly well, considering.

Then, a couple of weeks ago now he called to wish his older brother a happy birthday.  Jimmy turned 71.  Guess what he got for his birthday.  You got it.  An iPod Nano.

Tom sulked and pouted.  This was the last straw for him.  But, I’m tough, ya know.  I held out.  I mean, he has the new iMac and all and that’s been bad enough.  He’s always “needing” stuff for it.  So, while I wavered a bit, I hung strong.

But, I’m telling you, this guy just never gives up or gives in.  You will NOT believe what lengths he’ll go to when he wants something badly enough to scheme “needs” something so desperately.  I mean, desperate times call for desperate measures, right?

Except this time, he really did it.  Pulled a Fred Sanford.

[clutching his chest dramatically]
Fred Sanford: Oh, this is the biggest one I ever had. You hear that Elizabeth? I’m coming to join you honey.

Actually, Tom’s pains were real, poor guy.  You see, he was having pains in his upper back this past Thursday night similar to what he had 10 years ago when he had a major heart attack.  He was kind of moving around in bed during the night and I finally woke up, too.  It was about 4 a.m. Friday morning when he told me what was going on.  We lay there and talked about what to do and finally got up so that we could go to the ER at Louisiana Heart Hospital about 30 minutes away.

They checked him out and then admitted him about 6 o’clock Friday morning.  The great news is that he did not have a second heart attack.  However, the heart catheterization/angiogram of his heart showed some blockages that cannot be stented.  So, this coming Thursday at 1 p.m. he is going to have to have quadruple heart bypasses.  Heart surgery and all of its ramifications.

It’s not an emergency, so that’s good, too.  Just needs to be done soon, so this week it will be.

We have to be there early Thursday morning to check him in and to get his blood typed and matched for surgery.  The rest of the pre-op was done Friday and Saturday while he was there.  We got to come home Saturday evening for him to rest and for us to prepare for going back in.

He’s feeling pretty good today after three days of bad headaches from the nitroglycerin patches they have him wearing, so I’m happy about that.

What he considers the BEST news of the whole deal is that for me, this proved to, indeed, be the last straw.  I mean, there he was laying up in the hospital Saturday morning sleeping hard after the procedure, from the headache and from lack of sleep the night before and he looked pitiful.  The window in his room faced north and the light from it, plus the fluorescent lights in the room, made him look pale and gray.  I couldn’t stand it.

I told him I was going to go buy him some house shoes for his hospital stay at a nearby mall, and left to go do so.  What I didn’t tell him was that I was going to Best Buy first (conveniently located next to the mall – ) to get him the bright orange iPod Nano he had decided was the one he most wanted.  I got a 16 mg Nano with some accessories in a special sale they were having, put all of the little boxes in the shoe bag and went back up to the hospital to surprise him.  I did.

When he looked in the bag to get the slippers out, the iPod was stuck in the box with them.  He was surprised and kept saying, “Dee!  You didn’t NEED to do this!”

“I know,” I said, “But I wanted to, so I did.”

Finally, he said, once again, but this time with an addition, “Dee, you didn’t need to do this . . . but, I’m really glad you did!”

I thought about waiting to give it to him as a get well gift or for his birthday, which is April 23, but then I decided to go ahead and let him have it before so he could fill it up with his favorite music now.  I figured that afterward he might want to have some music to listen to either while in the hospital or after he gets home.  He already has it filled and has been listening to it at home.  Has over 14,000 songs on it!!!

I’ve got to go for now, but please be thinking of us and praying for Tom to have a safe and successful surgery.  Pray for me to be in good health and to be strong to care for him.  We have family coming so will have support.  He will be off work for six to eight weeks the doctors say.

Many blessings to each of you today!  Dee

P. S.  Now, the salesman in the store told me as I purchased the iPod and accessories, Tom will just “need” some iTunes gift card.  Sheesh!  I think Tom must have been talking with the guy some time before or something.  Or, maybe guys are just all alike, suppose?! 

You will note, when you squeeze your eyes really hard to read the sign, that you are not only “welcome,” but that they want you to drive safely.  You will also note in the photo, if you look hard enough, that there is a green sign to the left of the welcome sign that says “Shawnee Town Branch.”  That is (so you’ll be in the know) the town branch of the Shawnee River.  I suppose, although there were no tour guidebooks to inform us, that the “other” or the rest of the branches of the Shawnee River are out in the country around, rather in town.  Although, I would imagine that in the beginning when (again I suppose not having a guidebook) the Shawnee Indians named the creek/river, there was no town, so alas, I know not whence the name came.  From a bunch of white men wanting to settle the area, I imagine, and saying, “Look.  Here’s a nice creek we can put our town around and not have to worry about where our sewage runs off to,” or some such.  Just imagining.

Uh – back to our trip.

The photo above was taken from the front yard of the aforementioned Legion Hall, which is a log cabin, you’ll note.  (I’ll post it again here.)

Looking straight on at this photo, the Town Branch of the Shawnee River/Creek is to the left.  We stopped here and spent some time because (1) there was a nice big area for parking, (2) the “boys” all wanted to go down by the creek next to the cabin and pick up rocks as souvenirs of their trip back to this place (some people are more easily satisfied with simple remembrances than others and they all thought rocks might be just the thing to bring home), (3) they wanted to throw some rocks, as well, and (4) the main reason we stopped here – this is where their dad’s movie theater was.  I know.  The rest of us were really surprised.  And, it was even the Legion Hall back then.  Mr. Andrews leased the building to run his theater/movies two nights a week there in town.

There is a small “add on” at the back of the building (about the size of the “throne room” in the back of the Flippin jail, but a bit deeper) where the projection booth was.  They sold concessions and everything there.  This part of Yellville I thought was most quaint.

The next photo I’m going to show you (and the next story) has to do with the little cafe right across the creek on the other side of where the log cabin was and the town sign.

The cafe was in that building behind the H&R Block sign on the “town” side of the Shawnee Creek with the theater in the background.  Dickie told us there was a big scuffle and shoot out there one time in which the police chief intervened.  Several people were shot, including the police chief, and he never was the same again.  Messed him up in the head, Dickie said.  I don’t know whether that was from being shot in the head or from the trauma of having a shoot out in the local cafe in such a small place as Yellville.  Hard to say.

Another big story Dickie & Jimmy both told had to do with either the bank or the post office over on the other side of the big courthouse (look back up at the Welcome to Yellville sign photo and you will see the tall courthouse through the trees in the background.  Either Bonnie & Clyde robbed the bank – or the post office – or the film “Bonnie & Clyde” was filmed in one of those buildings portraying their “real” robbery years before at either/or establishment.  As usual, Dickie & Jimmy had vastly different “facts” to support their individual stories and the rest of us (nor you, I would imagine) could ever get it all straight.

But the two old, historic buildings were very interesting and beautiful, actually, and if you tried hard enough, you could imagine Bonnie & Clyde on the sideboards of their fast car making an even faster getaway from whichever one they robbed, the bank or the post office.  Or, you might even imagine a movie set being there in downtown Yellville.  Made me want to go back and watch Bonnie & Clyde the movie again just to see if I could recognize Yellville in it.  Or not.

Moving on – we drove around to where the boys thought they “might have” lived there.  It was either a duplex or like one, with the Andrews family living on one side and the Jollys (Tom’s mother’s sister & husband & son, Oliver) living on the other.  Times had obviously gotten hard by then as the place looked really run down, except for some bright blue paint.

We had now been to the four little towns the boys had most wanted to visit.  Gassville, Cotter, Flippin and Yellville.  Now we went in search of more touristy things to see.  We couldn’t go anywhere around, though, without seeing references to trains, as they were such a large part of the communities there back then.  On our way back over to the Bull Shoals Lake and Dam we passed these train cars and the guys just had to stop.

Oliver especially loves trains and just had to explore these old cars.  He & Tom went over to see all they could while we sat in the van with the doors open enjoying a little quiet time.  Oliver has a huge train track/trains set up in his home, or at least did at one time.  He loves trains.  Here he is thinking back to how it used to be in those days when people rode the train a lot.

Tom talks a lot about raining trains when he was a little boy, starting as young as five, by himself.  He apparently wasn’t scared or afraid at all to ride the trains from where they lived here and later in south Arkansas over to Memphis to see and stay with his dad.  Amazes me.  Completely.  Scares me to death to even think about putting a five year old little boy on a train by himself to ride several hours to Memphis from whatever little Arkansas town he started in.  But, that would have been 1949 or 1950 and times were way different.

Sometimes, Tom says, his dad was late to pick him up at the train station, so little Tommy would go inside and find someone nice there who worked there (traveler’s aid, or something) to give him something to drink and/or eat while he waited for his dad.  I wonder if I would have been so grown up feeling and so brave.  Do you think you would have been?

That’s it for today.  Next time we’ll take a scenic tour of the Bull Shoals Dam/Lake area and see exactly how the dam was built back then beginning in 1947.  Interesting stuff and gorgeous country.

Cheers!  And many blessings to each of you today!  Dee

Dickie, Jimmy, “Tommy,” Debbie and cousin, Oliver looked bright and happy.  The day was gorgeous and they were ready to go.

We had had such a great buffet brunch the morning before nearby that we decided to go there again to take Oliver.  However, fate had other plans because when we arrived at the Gaston Resort near Bull Shoals Lake on the White River, the electricity had been out for 45 minutes.  We were totally bummed out and tried to figure out where we could get a good breakfast on a Monday morning among the small towns around.  Turned out to be nowhere, so we headed back over to Mountain Home, the largest town around, to see what was cookin’.

Found a great little local cafe and chowed down, one of our favorite things to do, although somehow the whole four days we managed only two meals a day, the days being so full of sightseeing with no places around at all to eat.

(Left to right, Steve (Debbie’s husband), Oliver, Tom, me, Jimmy, Arlinda, Dickie, Joyce and Debbie.)

Now we were on our way, once again.  And, once again, we had to take the “old highway” over to Flippin, which meant going through Cotter again.  When we got there it was late morning but not much was going on.  It looked rather deserted.

It also didn’t look like much of a town.  It lacked the quaintness and charm of Cotter and we’d been to so many of these small places in search of old theaters and houses that I decided all of these Flippin towns looked alike.    In fact, we couldn’t find where the theater had been in Flippin, so went in search of where the boys had lived.  This was the only little house they remembered there and Oliver couldn’t remember where he had lived, although he knew it was nearby.

We were about ready to go on through town when we saw an interesting sign, so turned down the street there to see what it was.  This is what we found.  What’a ya think?

We couldn’t believe it, but Dickie & Jimmy said that the city jail in Cotter had been nearly identical in size and construction.  It was tiny, y’all.  And really intimidating to me, who is terribly claustrophobic.  It was creepy and scary.  Then Dickie told us that when they lived in Cotter, a feeble minded man who worked for their dad at the Paradise Theater was jailed one night in the Cotter jail, down near the White River, after some kind of altercation.  During the night a fire broke out and the man was killed in the jail.

All of this, of course, prompted Tom & Oliver & Steve to get out of the van to go peek in the barred door of the jail.  They nearly had heart attacks on the spot when they peered into the inky blackness inside.  Literally.

Here’s what they saw, except this was taken with a flash on the camera and not in the pitch black.

They thought it was a real man in there when they peeked in.  Scared them all three.  Pretty grim jail, if you ask me!  And, right in the middle of a neighborhood, not “downtown,” such as it was.  Although, back in 1928 when it was built, there probably wasn’t anything around it at all for a long ways.  (If you look closely, you can see the “throne” seat at the back.  From the outside back you see where it just would have drained down on the ground.  Not very sanitary to say the least, but then, I suppose it was the “modern” thing at the time.  Indoors, anyway.  Of a sort.  My goodness!

That stop abruptly ended our Flippin tour, so we headed on over to Yellville, where we’ll pick up next time.  I leave you with one more photo to ponder and a question (of course) to think about and comment on.  What was the deal with the Legion Hall below in Yellville and the Andrews/Jolly clan do you suppose?  Let’s hear it.

Be back Monday!  Cheers & have a great and blessed weekend y’all!  Dee

We all thought it was funny and couldn’t quite figure it all out.  Maybe Greg would like to enlighten us as to why a furniture store and embalming company would occupy the same building and why there was just an embalming company to begin with, rather than a full fledged funeral home.  Care to do so Greg?  Enquiring minds want to know.  I sure do, anyway.

When we left downtown Cotter, we went down by the White River.  It was a really interesting spot, and we spent some time there that late Sunday afternoon.

We took a lot of photos, three of which I’ll show you today, but more next time.  This first one is of the three Andrews brothers congregated to share stories about climbing the steep mountain just across the river from where we were on the west side.

Tom, as you can see, “borrowed” my old scooter that Dickie used on the trip as they had a quiet moment together.

However, as was the case the entire trip, in the next photo we see Dickie & Jimmy in a heated discussion – with constantly differing opinions – about where something or other occurred.  More about that next time, along the river side.

They were so funny!  I don’t think they agreed on one thing.  Or maybe just one, at the most.

One last photo before I go today.  I know it’s been a long time, so I don’t know if you remember how I started this entire series last November.  (See here.)   (Yikes, Dee Ann, are you that slow and long-winded in your writing?!  Good grief!)  Cotter nowadays refers to itself as the trout fishing capital of the USA, and from what we saw and experienced, it sure enough is!

We were down by the river about an hour or so, I suppose, and watched flat boat after flat boat come in off the river loaded down with fish – Rainbow trout, German trout, speckled trout . . . all kinds of trout.  And all of them had caught their limits within an hour or two!  Honest!  Wow!

There are all kinds of cabins, lodges & cabins, rentals, state parks, on & on around Cotter where even a less than avid fisherman can go stay, rent a boat, catch his/her (I LOVE to fish for trout – when I can catch them) trout limit and then have a guide clean them, cook them and serve you and all your guests for either lunch or dinner, depending on how early you get out on the river.

The White River is stocked regularly, and I don’t feel bad for the fish (very much liking fresh fried Rainbow trout!!).  Tom is not a fisherman at all, but I would really love to go back up there one of these days and partake of such feasts for two or three day.

I’ll close for today by showing one lady I took a photo of as she showed me one of she and her husband’s limit of trout they had caught over just the hour and a half before!!  They came over nearly every weekend, she said, to catch trout to eat back at home fried (and froze the rest).  If we had such in the big creek down behind our house here, I would think that I was in trout heaven!!  Behold:

Mmmmm, Mmmmm!!  Boy, that looks like good eatin’!!

That’s it for today, but there’s plenty more good stuff to come next time, when we resume our Andrews memories tour.

Cheers & many blessings to each of you today!  Have a great, safe weekend!

Dee

P. S.  It just dawned on me.  I think I’ve figured out the answer to my own question for Greg about the embalming company/business.  But I want to wait and hear his comment first, and y’all’s, as well, okay?!

Why do YOU think it was an embalming business without being either a casket company or full fledged funeral home?  Comment!

Dee

I’ve seen it probably 10 times and still cannot keep from bawling my eyes out at the end when . . ..  Nope.  You’ve got to see the movie.

I especially think of Tom when I watch the movie because of the magic of his movies filled boyhood and teen years.  I’ve shared with you before long ago (if you’d like to read or re-read those posts, I’ll give you the links – just comment) about how Tom and his older brother Jim ended up living with their dad in Biloxi actually IN drive-ins and movie theaters!  If you’ve not read them, you might want to do so.  It was more in the times of John Goodman’s movie “Matinee.”  (Seen it yet?  It’s terrifically funny – as were some aspects of Tommy’s and Jimmy’s lives then.)

I left you with a question last time (surprise, surprise), and y’all have some great answers about what two distinct businesses founded in 1905  were housed in the same building we passed around the corner from the Paradise Theater.  But, none of you were correct.

Remember the photo (check the last one in my last post?  There were two plaques in front – one on each side of the double door.   As we looked at the store (now an antiques/gift shop), we saw this one to the left of the door:

Well, guess what?  I’m not yet going to tell you what the sign to the right side said.  You’re going to have to guess, again, for next time, when I promise to reveal the other sign after you’ve guessed some more, now with a big hint(?) – or not.

Remember, I said the two businesses were disparate in nature by a long shot.  Although (another little hint), in some sort of twisted way of thinking, the one – furniture store – could be of use in the other, but not with typical furnishings as we think of furnishings for a business.  Totally perplexed now?  Think out of the box, so to speak.  Or, perhaps I should say “in” the box, for yet another huge clue.

Moving on.

Last time I promised you photos of Tom’s mom and dad and here they are.  His mother, Glenda, was very beautiful.  She was slender and tall – about 5’7″ or 5’8″ – and had reddish blonde hair.  This photo was taken of her not long before she married Tom’s dad:

Tom’s dad, Lewis, was good looking, as well, and according to everyone who ever knew him, a real charmer of the ladies, despite being short (about 5’5″ or so, Tom says, whereas Tom is 6’2/12″) and more “robust”:

Tom calls him more of a vivid character, than anything, with his twinkling blue eyes that sparkle with mischief.  When I was working on his photo yesterday, Tom was here and I couldn’t help but see a strong similarity between them when it comes to the mischievous looks and charming personality.  Tom actually much more strongly resembles and takes after his mom’s family, but still . . . there’s a definite way about him that is very much like Lewis was.

One last photo before we head down the street next time to the White River and famous Rainbow Bridge.  There, we’ll find lots of stories from Cotter “yesterday,” as well as lots more stories about Cotter today.

But first, here we are hanging out on the street corner in Cotter, just down the block from McClain’s Furniture store and ????  It was a gorgeous day and we were having a blast, as you can see.

Cousin Oliver stands at the left, with Dickie’s wife Joyce on the bench behind him.  Jimmy’s wife, Arlinda is next to her.  The three of us standing in the middle of the picture (l to r) are me, Tom’s tall sister, Debbie, and Tom.  Behind him are Jimmy and Dickie on their scooters.   We roamed the empty Sunday afternoon streets soaking in the atmosphere and nostalgia.

Then we drove over to the river, where we’ll begin next time.  (Okay, right after the revelation of the “other” business in that building near by.)

Cheers and many blessings to each of you today!  Dee