Just wanted you all to know that I'm thinking of you today. I've not been able to write much lately, so no new stories for under the tree this year.

Kit is so excited about his presents that he is about to pop. I think he is getting everything ever made, associated with the green Hulk. Even the girl down at the gas station, who shares his birthday, has gotten him the DVD of the new movie. For some reason, folks delight in giving him stuff.

Yesterday, I drove along the beach road and took the ferry to Galveston Island. On the short trip across Bovilar Roads (the ship channel) I saw three porpoises. That's quite a treat down here. There was also a floatilla of pelicans at the landing. I just love the rhythm of their lives. A small group was feeding together, dipping their great yellow beaks in unison - paddle, paddle, dip - paddle, paddle, dip.

I don't know what all that has to do with Christmas, but the security I find in nature's order always brings a calmness to my life and soul, and I suppose that might be a refuge for me in this time of rush and crush.

I wish you each a safe and happy holiday, the love of friends and family, and the peace which is hidden beneath our lives. I shall think of each of you today.

Lonnie

-- Lon & Kit (lgal@exp.net), December 24, 2003

Answers

Hi Lon & Kit.

I hope Kit can contain himself for one more sleep. I'm not surprised people get pleasure from giving Kit gifts because he sounds so lovable.

How lucky to be there at the right moment to see porpoises. They are beautiful to watch, streaking through the water.

It's hard to worry about life's difficulties while watching a group of pelicans going about their daily business, isn't it.

Hugs and Happy Christmas to both of you.

-- Carol (c@oz.com), December 24, 2003.

For you Lon:

I know what you mean about nature...

Merry Christmas to you, Kit and all the FRLians!

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), December 24, 2003.

(((Lon))) (((Kit))) (((Hulk))) >;)

Merry Christmas, darlings!

-- helen (one@more.sleep), December 24, 2003.

Lon, it might be the delight that he takes in receiving them rubs off :-)

To all: Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year (the WHOLE year!)

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), December 24, 2003.

WOW Gayla, that is a brilliant picture. You always seem to be able to find just the right image. Applause.

-- Carol (c@oz.com), December 27, 2003.

I've been working daylight-to-dark for a couple of weeks now. You know, I've got the place down the street which is a super nice piece of waterfront, but floods easily. So, I've been putting in a retaining wall, and filling the low places of the site. Been doing it myself, with a friend's backhoe and a college kid helper. When I get in, in the evenings, I'm so tired I can't blink my eyes!

Yesterday we finished the 400' wall, and leveled the last of the 50 truckloads of fill dirt, so now I'm ready for the house. The missus is tired of the little cabin (which I love) and wants a bigger place to store her shoe collection. Anyway, that's where I've been. But now, maybe I'll have a little more time to visit with you all here. I'll take some pictures of the place when the scars heal in the spring, and post them so you can see how nice it turned out. The new house will sit kinda out on a point in a curve of the bayou, and have a wiew of the water of about 360 degrees. It should be nice, when it's not underwater!

-- Lon (lgal@exp.net), December 27, 2003.

Good grief that's a lot of wall and dirt. It sounds like a great project though. How lovely to be so near the water, as long as it's not sloshing around your feet. I'll bet you'll be able to watch all kinds of birdlife through the seasons. Excuse my ignorance please, but is a bayou still (as in calm) water and can you row a dinghy out on it?

-- Carol (c@oz.com), December 28, 2003.

Sounds like the beginnings of a GREAT bed and breakfast for FRLians!

-- helen (the@view.and.you.too), December 30, 2003.

Calm?

Calm?

A bayou is so flat and and so muddy and so lazy and flows so slow that the only motion is up when the water evaporates!

That is, if anything could evaporate when it's that humid.

-- Robert & Jean (Robert&Jean@south.whatsnow), December 30, 2003.

OK, so now it's safe to go to Ol' Lon's. Work's all done. Redneck, on recollection, spits and says, "Ah gotta admit it, that is one fahn view he's got thar."

Helen--"You hush up!" (Don't put any ideas in Lon's head or he'll start charging poor Redneck, and I'm about to run out of places to send him to get him out of here every once in awhile.)

Carol--A bayou in local parlance is a big ditch that carries away rainwater. What we call a bayou on the Gulf Coast would be an arroyo in New Mexico or Eastern Colorado except for one major difference, bayou's are usually thought of as having at least some water in them pretty much all the time. The larger ones as they near their terminations are like twisty rivers with lush banks, and there is intermittent sparring over where to put industrial plants or whether to mess with some of them for enhanced flood protection. What I think of as bayou country is in the Coastal Plain along the upper Texas coast and Louisiana (and probably Missippi and Alabama), generally flat lowlands. It rains a lot, and the bayous carry the rainwater to the Gulf or a bay or a river. In developed areas bayous are "improved," dug out, straightened out and often lined with concrete. But they still carry the romantic-sounding old names (White Oak Bayou, Buffalo Bayou, etc.). Just to confuse things, other drainages in the same areas as the bayous are called creeks (Little Cypress Creek, etc.). When I drift the word "bayou" by Redneck, we call up visions of hot sun and still or slow-moving water near the coast, full of moss and heavy with the weight of suspended algae, lazily meandering around the landscape toward the Gulf or some bay. During times of heavy rain or big floods, the bayous become turbulent water-chutes, deep, fast, foamy and dangerous. They quickly carry the water away, and in my neck of the woods, it takes a quick 5-inch rain to bring them up appreciably, and they are back down again within a day unless the rain is sustained. They carry a lot of water, but it's "local" water. Their watersheds aren't so big as those of rivers. Hope this definition is OK bayou.

"Bayou" is a fine sounding word, isn't it. Sounds like a corruption of some Louisiana French term from genteel plantation antiquity. But it's more likely from a Choctaw Indian root. Which reminds Redneck of some anecdotal history of the Choctaws, but that's another story that I don't know if anybody would be interested in (and also, sometimes Redneck's sources are suspect!).

-- J (rollin@onthe.river), December 30, 2003.

Story??!?? Did I hear STORY?!?! Pretty Please with sugar on top? :-)

Congratulations, Lon! Sounds like you've had a very busy holiday season, doing much more effective work than I've done! So when do the invites arrive? ;-)

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), December 31, 2003.

Thankyou Robert and J. for the explanation. It sounds pretty much as I had pictured it. I guess I like the idea of still water because as much as I love the sea I have never acquired the stomach for it.

Tricia's right J. If Redneck's got a story, there's always an audience here.

-- Carol (c@oz.com), January 01, 2004.

STORY!!

-- helen (j@said.STORY), January 01, 2004.

Well, OK. But it's not exactly a story, more like one of Ol' Lon's history trivia pieces, but it might be of general interest if you like insights into the Southwest:

I saw Joe in the hall awhile ago eating his morning bagel. Joe is an old Oklahoma boy, and I thought he would be interested that bagels had been invented up in The Nations by the Choctaws (originally called the "Toc-Chaws," Toc meaning bagel). After some thought I felt that I should elucidate. Joe had seemed a little disoriented.

The Toc Chaws at one time included a bunch known as the "Lock Jaws." (The linguistics having become somewhat confused over the years, a few scholars have referred to the consolidated tribe as "Lox and Bagels," but this is erroneous.) At a point in, I believe, the late 17th Century, the tribe had split. The Lock Jaws were the bunch that refused to eat anything but buffalo meat for religious reasons. When the buffalo were later killed out, they all starved to death. The Toc Chaws (or, as we know them today, "Choctaws"), having invented the bagel, naturally survived, and there are some around even today.

Although it has nothing to do with the invention of the bagel, I found it interesting that the Kiowas, being religiously similar to the Lock Jaws back then, also prospered on the plains due to their willingness to partake of the occasional cow as well as buffalo (thus "Cow-as," or "Kiowas"). Many of the tribes revered their inventors as well as their medicine men, and the Kiowas invented tracking in order to keep up with their food source. This actually could have cut many miles off trail drives if cowboys had just been able to find the tracks this side of Kansas.

Joe only looked at me funny and asked what I'd been drinking. I guess some people just aren't as interested in the history of food as that of drink, though I'd have never figured Joe for that sort.

Many Texans are original thinkers, too. It amazes me that so many of our people are now unaware of the heritage of the Southwest, have lost that spirit of adventure which can inspire us by the power of a strong heritage and a vision of accountability to uphold the traditional ethic of hard work and grit and grandness of scale in our thinking for future generations. As I used to pull out of the parking garage on the daily commute to the suburbs, I could almost feel the saddle leather creak beneath me, feel the power of the horse and the anticipation of adventure of the early trail drives. I am saddened that our youngsters don't capture that same spirit of courage and grandeur, can't see themselves, as can I, at the head of one of the great trail drives when hundreds of thousands of brown-skinned potatoes rumbling across the plains raised huge clouds of dust as they rolled northward.

I can almost hear the trail boss as he looks into that first dawn and yells into the still air with a forward sweep of his arm "Ida- hooooo!" The whoops of the farm boys fill the air, and they're off on the grueling trail to the railhead at Boise, fighting rocky trails that can take the hide off the toughest old lead spud, marauding bands of renegade fry cooks who can come roaring out of any draw with their butcher knives flashing, trying to cut your herd to hash browns, swollen rivers that could sweep away half the herd and leave slimy potato carcasses bobbing in the Gulf. The boys look for shade to keep 'em cool and hope against drought that can leave the whole herd staring at the heavens with vacant eyes out there on the prairie, skins drying in the sun. Yep, it's an adventure, being Texan, and I pity those who can't hit the modern trail with a fortifying song of the land to sustain them.

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling/Keep them taters rolling/Keep them spuds a movin', Rawhide...

-- J (jsnider@hal-pc.org), January 02, 2004.

Sorry J, I (or somebody) should have warned you about the "S" word 'round here...

If you post the "S" word then you'll probably get a reaction you might not have been expecting. Sometimes it'll be a Strong Reaction, with unconcealed excitement,even glee, and quite possibly a little screaming (posting in ALL CAPS), or worse, Demands for a "S....."! This is especially true if things were nice and quiet 'round here and you're the First to mention the "S" word. Then things can really become---shall we say---interesting.

So in the future, even though it's prolly too late this time, hopefully you'll remember, and also this can serve as a warning to others about writing the otherwise-innocuous "S" word in a post unless you Really Really mean it!

-- (Fearless@Chief.Tin), January 02, 2004.

Oh, and just so's ya know, I tried to get the "S" word on that new 2004 Banned Word List, but them folks over at Lake Superior State who make the list every year picked the words 'Bling Bling' and 'Metrosexual' instead.

poopie.

-- (poopie@bling.bling), January 02, 2004.

Uhmmmmmmmmm.

Er, there, sum thin got distracted me.

What happened to the bagels after the potatoes rolled over the buffaloes on the train tracks outside Whicithaw after the blue norther warmed up the cold front?

-- Robert & Jean (Robert&Jean@south.whatsnow), January 02, 2004.

But Rob, Story is a perfectly good word... it just has a mildly agitating effect when used here at FRL. Postcard is another word that can usually draw a response. And then there's Limerick... we haven't had that one for a lonnnnnnnnng time. Any takers? :-)

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplane.tent), January 03, 2004.

Watching for rolling potaters ......

-- Robert & Jean (Robert&Jean@south.whatsnow), January 04, 2004.

Good one J. I can just see Clint Eastwood driving a herd of spuds across the plains.

-- Carol (c@oz.com), January 05, 2004.

There was a fair Princess Canuck

Who was known to like a good book

She wrote lovely Haiku

And loved stories too

And she saw beauty wherever she looked.

-- Carol (c@oz.com), January 08, 2004.

Awww-riight, Carol (pumping fist horizontally)! And (composed and clearing throat)hear,hear.

-- J (redneck@appreci.ate), January 08, 2004.

Carol, you go girl! *Clapping!*

I'm counting the days till Spring
When flowers bloom and Robin's sing.
The skies here are grey
And it's freezing all day
What joy some warm air would bring!!!

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), January 08, 2004.

I'm thrilled and very impressed

With the limericks from those FRL's "Princessed"

Girl power wins again

("Them's fight'n words, I ken")

More, more!! I guess I'm obsessed :-)

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), January 08, 2004.