I'll just entertain myself

When he pauses before the Alamo it's before any restoration was done.

Don't forget to add a small Juneteenth reference and/or a reference to the Company Store - the new slavery.

A lot of that stuff can make its way in. This is the fourth story about this guy. There will likely be more.

Traces of Texas
Comanche leader Quanah Parker along with some of his wives and children on the Waggoner Ranch near Vernon, Texas. They were there at the invitation of W.T. Waggoner. I believe this was taken in 1905 and that Quanah met President Teddy Roosevelt on this occasion.

Just learned about the "sport" of boxing, a new twist where the ring is a triangle. I couldn't find a decent clip of it.

Quanah Parker was the son of the little girl kidnapped by the Comanche. She was the woman John Wayne was looking for in The Searchers. Didja know that?

Didn't know. I never read much about it. But that to me is one of the Duke's best movies.

It always amazes me how close some of these historical figures of the 19th century are to us. John Wayne knew Wyatt Earp and used Earp's moves as a model for his own.

And, that's something I didn't know.

Last Sunday evening, the eve of the MLK holiday, I ordered a dog product online. A short time later that same evening my Paypal order was accepted and I received an email telling me my package would arrive either Monday (the aforementioned holiday) or Tuesday (day after the aforementioned holiday). It arrived Tuesday. I had just looked outside and returned to my keyboard when an email informed me my package was delivered. Looked out. There it was. Holy effing christ. We don't need religion in our lives any longer. Hail the internet and all it entails.

Two days ago I began sneezing, had a bit of congestion and felt generally blah. I had quit taking some of my home remedies for various flimsy reasons and that's when it sneaked in. Yesterday I returned to my remedies and by the end of the day the congestion was easing along with the lethargy. This morning I appear to be my normal self, but I continue to double down to make sure it dowesn't come back. Cold? Flu? Virus? Don't know. My senses of taste and smell stayed the same. I feel good now. Shrug.

I like this person.


Mark A. Henry
@markahenrybooks
I have no idea where my college diploma is, but I do have this in-class essay where the professor gave my literary analysis an F and called me "perverse, if not an enemy of the law."

Just went to What I Like About My Fellow A2Kers thread and found it locked up tighter than a drum. Them friendly threads get pretty raucous. Give me the serenity of the political threads.

I'm near the end of the first full rewrite of Leaving Texas. There will be a second. Perhaps a third. Too much telling instead of showing.

Another while hitchhiking true story.
I have my life through admired the native American Indian and have been outraged that encroaching whites committed their crimes against them. I reverenced a vision of the wise old Indian, a man in tune with the Earth and his past and felt I had perchance met one that day in New Mexico, when I the hitcher got let out at a restaurant. He was standing beside the door, his greeting scarcely a grunt. I felt honored that he followed me in and sat next to me at the counter as I went in, ignoring a sign that ordered hitchers to keep moving.

"Give my friend a hamburger," the Indian said, looking possibly drunk, over his shoulder. The waitress frowned.

"Give my friend a hamburger," he repeated.

She scolded the Indian, who broke into a fit of coughing.

I ordered instead a cup of coffee.

As I sipped the tepid liquid, the Indian decided to impart a great wisdom upon me. "Don't ball up," he said between fits of coughing. "Don't ball up. Don't ball up. Don't ball up."

And so I gulped the last of my coffee, paid hurriedly, and got the hell out of there.

A woman called Sally Morgan has just won a literary prize for a novel based on her own hitchhiking experience.

She was offered a lift by a pregnant woman and her toothy husband. Something stopped her getting in, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

About twenty years later she realised it was Fred and Rosemary West, notorious serial killers who raped and killed lots of young women including their own daughter.

And for me, hitchhiking was getting too scary. I always felt fearful toward the end.

It just goes to show, listen to your gut.

If I had learned to drive at an earlier age my whole younger life would have been somehow different. I was out of the Navy by the time I had a car.