Quips from Kay

Sometimes I have trouble getting to sleep so I try to think of nice things I've done or places I have been. Last night I harkened back to my youth, thus the following: First of all I have to explain to those of you who don't know what "riding fence" means. That's when you get on a horse and ride along the fence line to check for any damage. When I was about 13 or so my parents and I went to a ranch near Laredo for a visit. While they visited I rode fence with their son and also checked the "tanks". A tank on a ranch, at least back then, is what others may refer to as a pond. Bear in mind that this was deep in southwest Texas near the border and it was hot as hell. Tanks were very important. There was always a post by the tank with a couple of tin cups hanging off it and these were for the thirsty cowboys to use, drinking the same water the cattle did. I think I built up a good immune system from all the stuff I used to ingest at ranches and farms.  The n...

 This is a little silly true story that I wrote some years ago but want to share with you now. It was 2001.    I got a call from one of my Beeville friends telling me that her niece had been in a bad car wreck outside of Mexico City.  My son had been living in Mexico for a number of years and she felt he could help so she wanted to get in touch with him. I called and asked him to stand by, explaining the situation. He said he felt he could help by contacting a cousin who was with the hospital setup down there. About an hour later I got another call from my friend and she was laughing, which I thought was a bit odd given the circumstances. She said that she had talked to her brother and he told her that the injured party was not the cousin they had originally thought, but her mother-in-law. Evidently she had been offered a job in Cuernavaca and had insisted against all advice that she take her car down there. Unable to dissuade her, my friend had sent one of his emplo...

There once was an ol' gal named Mable who liked to dance on the table. She' d shimmy and shake the dishes would break. You see, Mable was quite unstable. that's all for today

 I wrote the following on May 15, 2014 three weeks after my husband died. I was in a fit of black humor.  Okay, so the Social Security Administration, in its infinite wisdom, determined that $255 was the amount to send to a decedent's family as death benefits. Sooooo, with that, I bought a keg of beer and some plastic cups. Then we had a party to celebrate my husband's life after which I stuffed his poor tired body in the empty keg and rolled it off a cliff into the ocean. "Home is the sailor, home from the sea"

    I found a stack of stories I had written some time ago and I don't know if I put any of them in this blog so here goes.    When I was growing up in the Coastal Bend town of Beeville, Texas, we lived sort of out in the country. "Sort of" because, as I may have explained before, we were only one-quarter of a mile outside the city limits but just far enough that I was referred to as a "country girl".    We had a small one story wood frame house on 2 1/2 acres sitting right off the highway surrounded by what Mama called cemetery cedars, citrus trees and castor bean bushes. We had an indoor bathroom thank goodness, but it had only a tub, no shower, so washing hair was difficult. I had very long hair until I was about twelve (when the bat got tangled in my hair), so Mama always washed my hair in the kitchen sink. It was difficult because we had a single faucet for cold water and a single faucet for hot so she had to fill a pitcher with water of the right temp...

 I don't remember if I sent this one before but I did check and couldn't find it so read on and enjoy.    When I was a senior in high school I decided that I didn't want to play the trombone in the band anymore but wanted to sing in the choir. I sang alto and thoroughly enjoyed it. We were pretty good and for some reason I wound up trying out for State Choir in the Spring. When being interviewed at tryouts, they asked what I sang and when I said "alto" they asked how low I could go so I did and they chose me as a second alto. There were about 250 voices from all over the state of Texas and it was a great privilege. We gathered in Mineral Wells and practiced together for about three days. On the fourth evening we gave a concert and we sounded great. Our director didn't use his hands to direct,  but used his facial expressions instead. That was an experience!    Mother accompanied me to Mineral Wells and she stayed in a regular hotel while I had to stay in so...