Quips from Kay

This corona virus social distancing thing is getting on my nerves, as it is for most everyone. I can at least blame my confusion on that now and lighten up on the "age" reason. I will just write some silly stuff because everything is so serious now. My children have all read this before but here goes.  I wrote it in 2000. I WANT I want a new license plate every year to find my mailbox crammed with letters instead of junk mail to see the other side of meat in the package before I buy it to know the price of an article without having to decipher the barcode to encounter a salesperson who knows the merchandise. Heck, I'd just like to encounter a salesperson! to buy an article of clothing or other items made in the U.S.A. to buy ONE battery to buy apples by the dozen. Otherwise, why all that arithmetic I learned in 4th grade? to open a newly purchased deodorant to find that it is actually the size of the box it came in to call a business without being put on ho...

   I have searched through my past blogs to see if I have written anything about the subject I am entertaining now but I haven't found it so here goes.    In 1954 I decided to take a break in my college life so I signed up for a correspondence course, went home to Beeville and got a job working for a lawyer. He was a very nice person and gave me plenty of responsibilities for which I am ever grateful. I learned a lot, had fun dating Navy personnel and all-in-all gained some insight into the real world. Even though Beeville is a dumpy little town, it is close enough to other places where there is actually something to do. It may be difficult for those of you who live in cities to understand, but in South Texas if you were seeking good entertainment, you had to drive to it. That means going a distance of at least 100 miles from home in one night on a regular date. One of our fun places to go was Nuevo Laredo, Coahuila, Mexico, which was 135 miles away, but in Texas y...

Because of the title of this post you may think I am going to write about a very exclusive Country Club like those seen in movies. Nope, my country club was a small, friendly establishment started by my parents and some of their friends after WWII was over. I will remind those of you not familiar with my background, that I grew up in a small town in South Texas and it was one of the most unlikely places to find a country club. They formed their organization because there was not much to do in our home town then and although they liked to have a drink now and then, the only places they could get one were not very respectable, soooo, being respectable people, they built a country club out among the mesquite and liveoak trees on the highway to San Antonio. After the clubhouse was built, they decided they needed a golf course, so they hired someone (?) to set it up. It was a nice little 9 hole course with cleverly placed greens and water holes. Not too many water holes, mind you, because...

Trying this again because of trouble with the font. Added a bit more I mentioned getting my driver's license when I was 14 which means I have been driving for a helluva long time. At the risk of breaking a lucky streak, I will tell you that I have gotten only one ticket in all thee years and that was for driving 4 miles over the speed limit in a school zone in New Orleans. That aside, being able to drive was a monumental privilege. I was the only one of my friends who had a license or access to a car, so you can guess I was quite popular. That bothered me so that on occasion I would tell my friends that I couldn't use the car just to see if I would still be invited to join them. It worked out okay because we still did stuff together, just not from my car.  There wasn't much to do in my home town outside of school activities so we had to get creative. Sometimes we would pick another car at random to follow wherever it went but that wasn't too exciting. Then we'd ...

Well, I was going to tell you about having the use of the family car when I was only 14 but I realized that there's more about Beeville nature that I must tell you. So the car antics will come later.    As you already know, we didn't have much modern technology in our little home in the 40s. We had the aforementioned fireplace and a wood stove in the kitchen but we didn't have a water heater so when necessary Mama would boil water on the wood stove. When I took a bath she would bring two big pots of boiling water in and pour them into the tub and then add cold tap water from the cistern, hoping for the right temperature. I learned to bathe rather quickly before it cooled off. One time when I was waiting for Mama to arrive with the hot water a scorpion crawled up through the drain and I swatted it with my slipper. Had to clean that up before getting into the tub. When you live where there are "varmints" around you learn which ones to kill and which ones to leave. ...

I decided I would continue with stories of my young life and I hope they're not boring. Just seems like at this time it is nice to think of a more peaceful era when we were not bombarded with life-threatening issues on a daily basis. (Well, aside from WWII) Besides owning and operating his feed store, my Daddy had a radio program on the local station, KIBL, where he reported the farm and ranch news. You could set your watch by my Daddy's habits. He got up at 4:30 a.m., made coffee and kept as quiet as possible so he wouldn't wake my Mother. He never closed a cabinet door all the way because he was afraid the sound would wake her. He left the house at 6:30 and went to the radio station which was just down the road from our house. He would talk about the price of feed and how much cattle and sheep were bringing on the market. He always talked about the weather and often forgot he was on the air and would say things like "We sure as hell need rain", or "These ...