Space Shuttles and Sushi

Early Friday morning, Jamie and I loaded up the car with cooler, chairs, beach clothes and whatever else we thought we might need on the way out the door and made the 140-mile trek to Cape Canaveral on the east coast to see the space shuttle lift off.  It’s a trip we’ve made several times now.

Our first voyage, we were out of the house in the wee hours with the parents in tow to see the last launch of the shuttle Endeavour.  Mum and dad have seen a number of launches, including a night launch that remains as their favorite.  Back in the day, they would drive over to Titusville in their motorhome and park up with other shuttle spotters in their self-sufficient worlds on wheels.   There is a whole subculture of rocket launch watchers in Florida.  They will lay out their credentials flight by flight if you have the time and patience to listen.  But this time we were making the journey in Traveller, our trusty Ford Taurus.  The crowd estimates were expected near 300,000 for the penultimate launch and reading stories of the traffic headaches from the previous last launch of Discovery in February, it seemed sensible to avoid Titusville, where the best views are, and try the approach through Cocoa  Beach and Cape Canaveral. 

We were scanning the area news stories and the Brevard County website for road closures and tips when Jamie remembered that he had a yo-yo contact on Facebook who lived in Cape Canaveral.  We were on my poor husband like a pack of hungry dogs, urging him to contact Bradley for information on where to park, perhaps even at Bradley’s family’s house.  As so often happens in the yo-yo world, Bradley came through like a star.  He gave us directions to his house, saying there was an extra parking spot we could use, and told us where we could meet him on the beach a block away.  He said there was a small parking lot where we could unload gear at beachside and we might even get a spot there if we were early.  We couldn’t believe our luck.

We arrived in Cape Canaveral around 6:30am.  The launch was scheduled for  8:56am.  After getting slightly turned around , during which we saw a beautiful sunrise, we found the lot at the beach, parked up and lugged chairs and gear out onto the beach.  Looking north,

we could see the largest buildings of the Kennedy Space Center and what might be the launch pad.  Bradley and his brother were yo-yoing nearby and Jamie was soon throwing yo yo with a champion thrower.   Bradley’s family had moved to the Cape only a few months earlier so this was to be his first shuttle launch.  Mum was straight off down the beach looking for shells.  Dad was trying out the video camera we had brought with us from Texas and the driver, me, plopped herself into a chair for a short nap. 

The weather did a 180-degree turn and within the hour there was a howling wind off the water and dark clouds galore.  It began to spit rain.  Bradley and his brother said they were going back to their house for some jackets and left.  Mum returned from her walk with the information that the shuttle would launch from a different area of the Kennedy Space Center complex . We wouldn’t see lift-off from the beach  That explained why there were no crowds of people camping out.  As we had the time to make a move, we decided to try getting a bit closer to the launch site and toted everything back to the car. Jamie texted Bradley a thank you and we were off.

We ended up on the Bennett Causeway with loads of people, including the mobile emergency unit for Brevard County. The makeshift parkinglot/campground was not more than a bit of field filled with RVs and autos.  Enterprising locals had set up stands selling watermelons, Italian ices, baked goods, hot dogs and t-shirts.  Mum and dad stayed in the car out of the wind while Jamie and I looked for a spot to set up our chairs near the water.  Though the launch pad was 13 miles away, we were assured we would have a good view of the shuttle’s lift off.  We set up our chairs and settled in to wait with the growing crowd.

The mood was jovial.  People told stories about launches they had seen and reminisced about the US space program.  One guy in his late 40s latched on to us and said he was in town to catch a cruise ship out of Port Canaveral tomorrow.  It was a bonus to have a shuttle launch while he waited. He said he needed a vacation because he worked with his brother and sometimes just needed to get away from him.   He asked Jamie to take some photos of him as mementos of the day.  Oddly, he asked for one photo to be of him near a news crew that was interviewing people who had come out for the launch though the reporter didn’t interview him.  He was a character and we laughed when we got home and looked at Jamie’s own shots of the day because the guy, whose name we never got, ended up being in several of them. 

As the launch time neared, news spread through the crowd that lift-off was being pushed back several hours due to technical problems.  Again consulting the parents, we decided to just stay and see what happened.  Jamie and I watched dolphins and pelicans feeding in the bay.  We eavesdropped on conversations while the wind blew fine beach sand into our eyes and every crevice or fold of skin.  Near 1:00pm NASA scrubbed the launch due to further technical troubles.  Ah the best laid plans of mice and space men.   We drove the 140 miles home.

It was a nutty coincidence that the following day we had to drive to Melbourne, just 25 miles short of Cape Canaveral, so Jamie could attend the Florida State Yo-Yo Championship.  He didn’t intend to compete but ended up in a funny novice competition to see who could make their yo yo spin the longest and he won.  The prize was, of course, a yo yo!  He did a lot of schmoozing and as the contest was held in a mall, I did a little shopping.  It was a great day.

  We loaded up the parents once again when Endeavour’s launch was re-scheduled.  With a better idea of what to expect, we left not quite so early, found a good spot on the causeway, enjoyed the camaraderie of the crowd and watched the shuttle go up.  Because of the low cloud cover, we could see the rockets for about five seconds and then it disappeared.  That was it.  And I had missed most of those five seconds trying to find the shuttle on the screen of my camera for a photo.The whole thing seemed anti-climactic but Jamie had a big smile on his face and said most joyfully, “We just saw a space ship take off.”    There was little point in trying to get out into the flood of cars leaving the area so we stayed in our chairs for a while looking across the bay at Kennedy Space Center.  President Obama and the first family had been in attendance at the scrubbed launch but not this one.  Seats in the viewing stands at the space center had sold out months ago for the final launches.  Our contemplation was interrupted by the sound of an impatient driver far back in the line of traffic laying on his horn.  As a pair of motorcycle cops drove by we heard one of think sternly aloud “Blow that horn one more time…”  Everyone within earshot started laughing.  We had lunch at a British theme pub, spent a few hours at the beach ,which was swarmed with dreaded love bugs, and again headed for home this time with a shuttle launch to our credit.

I encountered Endeavor again a week and a half later when she re-entered the earth’s atmosphere. A sonic boom occurs as the shuttle zips through the atmosphere faster than the speed of sound. If you are near the shuttle's path, you will actually hear two sonic booms. NASA states that one sonic boom is generated by the shuttle's nose; the other by its tail. Prior to the sonic boom, you will see an orange streak with a bright white tail if skies are clear. I fairly leapt out of bed from the unexpected noise and checked our dark house for signs of something having blown up or a parent having fallen in the night. It wasn’t until I mentioned it to the folks at breakfast that I learned I had heard Endeavour as she flew over the area on her path home to Cape Canaveral. How very cool.

As Jamie, Traveller and I sped east towards Atlantis Friday morning full of petrol and coffee, I had a lot on my mind. Mum and dad were safely in Maine, having arrived Thursday night for their summer season as snowbirds with friends and family. I had given my notice at work and was now once again unemployed. I’d become a space shuttle groupie and the words my sweet husband had spoken at Endeavour’s launch resonated in my head. We were going to see a space ship take off. After years of watching Star Trek and Star Wars, and Dr. Who with his little blue police call box that’s bigger on the inside, it was finally sinking in that yes, we were going to watch a space ship take off and with its final mission bring to a close this chapter of manned space flights. I realized how little I’ve paid attention to an achievement that is pretty darn amazing when you stop to think about it.

I couldn’t tell you when the shuttle program started and what the first shuttle was called without doing a search on the internet. According to NASA, President Nixon formally proposed a reusable space transportation system in January of 1972. The first shuttle was originally planned to be named Constitution, but a massive write-in campaign from Star Trek fans convinced the White House to change the name to Enterprise. President Ford said he was partial to the name Enterprise as he had served aboard a Navy ship in the Pacific that had serviced the aircraft carrier Enterprise. Ford told NASA to change the name. (As an aside, as I followed a research thread to check the accuracy of the story about the Trekkies and the write-in campaign, the document used in a Wikipedia thread was a scanned copy of a page from the Sept 6, 1976 issue of The Lewiston Sun Journal of all newspapers—the Sun Journal being a paper from Lewiston, Maine. The story was an Associated Press story. Funny!) Enterprise went on to be the shuttle from which its sisters were all born, the Henrietta Lacks of the shuttle program.

I can tell you I was sitting in a lecture room on the USM campus in Portland waiting for my music history class to begin when students started arriving saying that the shuttle Challenger had exploded during launch on that January 28th in 1986. It seemed like a bad joke until Professor Bowdren arrived and confirmed that the shuttle had exploded, killing everyone onboard including Christa McAuliffe, the New Hampshire school teacher whom all of New England had embraced when she was chosen as the first teacher astronaut in the Teacher in Space Project. We spent some time talking about the space program and its future then Prof Bowdren let us go. He’d pick up with class next week.

I am ashamed to admit that as I did a search to find out where the shuttle Columbia is now, I was stunned to learn it had disintegrated over Texas during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere on February 1st, 2003. As I read articles about the disaster, bits of memory returned. When I moved to Texas, the name Nacogdoches seemed familiar. I couldn’t recall why but as I looked at film footage of the debris field, I remembered the numerous interviews that had come from Nacogdoches in the days following the tragedy and strange way the word Nacogdoches felt in my mouth. Memory is such a delicate thing.

We arrived at Bennett Causeway to find the place rammed with people at eight o’clock in the morning waiting for the final countdown for Atlantis. We parked far down the causeway and walked to a spot near a bridge perhaps half a mile from where we had watched Endeavour launch. People were sat in chairs on the roadside, balanced on guardrails, spread out on blankets on the banking and high a-top big RV’s. There was no shortage of updates thanks to cell phones and radios. Cameras with massive telescopic zoom lenses were trained on a spot far out at the horizon. Binoculars were passed back and forth. It didn’t matter who you were, what you looked like or where you came from, so long as you were not blocking anyone’s view we were all just citizens of the planet here to send our love and good wishes to the Atlantis crew and be part of history.

A flotilla of watercraft bobbed in the small bay before us. There was a no-go zone being enforced by the Coast Guard keeping boats a defined distance from the launch area. A pair of manatees came to view the gathering, surfacing over and over to the delight of the crowd. During prescribed minutes prior to launch, fighter jets patrolled the airspace, gathering climate information that was being sent to the command center according to several seasoned spectators who were near us. And then the final few seconds of the countdown. Everyone looked to the horizon. Someone with a camera announced, “There’s the steam clouds!” and suddenly we had lift off. Even from 13 miles away, we could see the billowing clouds of white against the distant gray and then the deep orange glow of the rockets forcing themselves and Atlantis skyward. There was awe-inspired silence and then applause. Then more silence from the crowd as the sound of the rockets moved across the water towards us and we watched Atlantis climb higher and higher, through a layer of clouds and into another patch of blue sky, her rockets still blazing, finally disappearing above another layer of clouds.

There was a final round of applause and then that was that. Some kept watching the sky, watching the exhaust plume spread out across the blue as upper level winds caught hold. Others dashed to their cars,hoping to get on the highway ahead of the exodus. Jamie and I stood by the guardrail holding on to each other, smiling. We had just seen a space ship take off, the last of her kind.

Godspeed, Atlantis. May we all make it home safely.

(As for the sushi mentioned in the title, we had lunch at Cocoa Beach Thai & Sushi and it was amazing! If you find yourself on the Space Coast, get your sushi here! Oh, and most of the photos in this blog are sadly not ours.  Most are from NASA, some are from news agencies and they are images I found through Google)

Austin in the Rearview Mirror

 Well, we’ve done it.  After three and a half years of getting by and being tossed around by the whims of the capitol, Jamie and I made the decision to cut our losses and leave Austin.  Of course it’s a fine line between cutting one’s losses and being booted out on your ear, which is pretty much what we were facing with our apartment lease coming up for renewal and no job prospects in sight beyond our limited work for Busted.  But at some point you just have to accept that a place is not good for you and that your personal growth has been limited to extending the boundaries of how many rude people you can stomach on a daily basis and how many nights you can drag your bed into the living room to get away from the neighbors partying and puking outside the bedroom window.  Simply put, we were ready for a new start.

Our last few days in Austin turned out to be some of the nicest.  We saw friends for goodbye coffees and beers and dinners.  We met friendly strangers.  We became tourists, people who were not staying.  As we packed and sold furnishings, we thought a lot about why we were leaving a city that epitomizes cool, hip, groovy and weird and we realized that aside from a few dear friends and a few favorite spots, most of our enjoyment in Texas took place outside those famous Austin city limits.  Austin is great if you are a student and have daddy bankrolling your life.  Austin is great if you have a job you love and the income to take advantage of all those hip, cool and groovy things.  It’s a city of pleasures and privileges, cliques and clubs.  If you fall outside those parameters, it’s a tough to make connections that actually mean something to everyone involved.

Perhaps it is the same in any city.  It certainly didn’t help that we seemed to keep bumping up against neighbors and work situations that demanded far more than they ever gave in return.  In the end, we realized we were losing faith in humanity and indeed in our own abilities to remain the caring and good people we know ourselves to be.  It was those moments of needing clarity that would send us off on adventures to Enchanted Rock, Abilene and the coast.  If being away was better, then why stay?

So here we are in Central Florida having traded hipsters on bikes for hip replacements on trikes.  Bless their hearts, my folks drove to Austin with their truck and cargo trailer to help us with the move.  Jamie and Dad packed that trailer with surgical precision while mom and I vacuumed and scrubbed in the hopes of getting the security deposit back.  We set off for Florida at 6 am on a Sunday morning and watched the sun rise over Round Top as we drove.

Breakfast was at Denny’s in Cypress, a new experience for Jamie.  There was a bacon celebration underway, a Baconalia.  How could we resist!  The first day’s
drive took us through Houston and Baton Rouge.  There was no time for snapping photos but Baton Rouge made us laugh when we spied a sign for a pizza shop called “Schlitz and Giggles.”  http://www.schlittz.com/Brilliant.  I emailed them a few days ago saying we wished we could have stopped because we loved their sign. The owner wrote back that the pizza was even better than the sign and when we were in Baton Rouge again, stop in—the first beer and pizza was on him!

We saw another great sign along the highway in Ponchatoula.  Cretin Homes. We were in tears from laughing.    Urban Dictionary defines cretin as “A Person that is: brainless, stupid, child-like, and full of pointless information that makes no sense and appeals only to other cretins. They can be found in abundance in every single populated internet forum, where they race to post as many mind-numbing messages as possible in a single session. In addition, they seemingly interbreed with other cretins, ensuring that their cretinous genes continue long after they end up dead meaning the Internet will never be rid of their kind. More's the pity.”   It’s good to know that even cretins get to have custom-made homes.  http://www.cretinhomes.com/

Louisiana along Routes 10 and 12 was fun and friendly.  We had dinner at the Olive Garden in Slidell, Jamie’s second of the three forays into popular American eateries that you find along highways and in mall parking lots.  Miceli, our young waiter, brought Jamie the biggest draught beer he’s had in America (everything is bigger in Texas except the beer glasses) and I shared a tip for getting a ginger ale in places that don’t serve ginger ale, which is most places in the south it seems.  This tip comes from a very nice waiter in a bizarrely posh restaurant in Austin called The Cheesecake Factory http://www.thecheesecakefactory.com/ when we met with the Jewish bookkeeper from the library who was certified online to perform marriages to discuss our wedding vows:  fill a glass with Sprite then add a shot of Coke.  Honest to goodness, it’s a suitable ginger ale substitute in a pinch.

We stopped for the night in Diamond Head, Mississippi, at the Diamond Head Resort http://diamondheadresort.ms/which was decidedly un-resort like.  Creepy was more like it but we were tired and dad doesn’t like to drive with the trailer much past dark.  The folks’ room was ok but it took the desk clerk three tries to find us a room that was made up.  We ended up with a suite because he got tired of trying to decipher on the computer which rooms had been cleaned.  The suite had a complimentary cockroach in the refrigerator.  I didn’t sleep well, which made two nights in a row because our UT neighbors back in Austin the night before had decided to have 60 of their closest and drunkest friends over for another all-night party.  It was a blurry-eyed Wren that stumbled into the Cracker Barrel in Spanish Fort, Alabama, for breakfast at 7:30am but a happy one that left an hour later after a rousing breakfast delivered by Debbie Lee and a nice chat with Jackie in the gift shop.  Jamie had his first taste of grits which he pronounced “quite gritty.” 

Breakfast saw us through until Gainesville, Florida, in late afternoon.  It’s safe to say that the panhandle of Florida goes on forever.  It’s like Pennsylvania without the mountains.  What kept us occupied for surely 100 miles were signs for Café Risque.  We had been marveling at and lamenting billboards from the minute we crossed into Louisiana.  They are everywhere, most of them trying to lure you to Gulf Coast casinos.  My folks stopped at Gulfport, Mississippi, on two of their trips out to Austin to have a flutter in the casinos.  By the second trip, the casinos had gone completely high tech, not a one-armed bandit in sight.  Gone was the sound of quarters dropping, levers being let loose and jackpots spilling into buckets.  Now you get a voucher if you win, a piece of paper you take to a person or another machine.  What fun is that?  However, Café Risque was sizing itself up to be a winner.  There was one commercially produced billboard with some coquettishly positioned seemingly

naked ladies but the majority of the billboards were made with a lot of big stencils and paints.  The first one was a bit surprising but by the time we saw the thirtieth one, we were laughing and praying we could see the café from the highway. 

We stopped at Sonny’s Real Pit BBQ http://www.sonnysbbq.com/to get fueled up for the final push to Sebring.  It’s never a good idea to stop somewhere that has ‘Real Pit’ listed in the name but Sonny’s is a Florida chain and the folks knew it would be ok food, which it was.  After dining at The Salt Lick, a legendary central Texas barbecue joint that has earned every single kudo it’s received over the years (it’s where we had our après wedding party), nothing else quite measures up, but we managed to clean our plates and leave with a stack of wet-wipes for future adventures.

It was with great joy that we soon discovered we were closing in fast on the exit for Café Risque.  I slowed down to 60 mph and Jamie craned his neck to both sides of the bridge but to no avail.  We couldn’t see the café.  But we saw something equally hilarious.  The billboard beside the on-ramp after the bridge read:  

     Again, tears of joy.  What clever marketing for that lawyer.

Florida delivered us to our journey’s end with a spectacular sunset followed by a starry sky and here we may settle.  For now we are in the spare room at my folks’ place, enjoying the quiet at night and re-acquainting ourselves with the importance of sun screen during the day.  We’re quickly finding that our new state is very different from our old one but that’s why they call it Florida and not Texas.  Stay tuned for adventures in bike shopping, catching escaped parakeets and buying fruit at roadside stands.  Florida promises to be every bit as nutty as the Lone Star State. 

Paid In Full...or how we got stiffed 20 bucks by a family of Amazing Grace Baptists

It all starts with the Israeli Army...well, sort of.  When I first got to Austin, after acquiring a resonator guitar that I couldn't really play but that I knew Jamie would love, I decided that I wanted a keyboard.  I missed playing the piano, especially after having been on it so much rehearsing with the Book Chicks back in Freeport, singing our funny library made-over tunes from South Pacific for the 10-year anniversary at the library.  So I started watching Craigslist for a good deal.  Craigslist is huge here in Austin, perhaps because of the university and so many folks with so much disposable income which translates into disposable stuff.  Eventually, I found a really good deal on a Casio Privia digital piano that was way smarter than I was.  I called Jeff and off we went in the war wagon to pick it up.

I learned early on that if you want to buy something from a stranger on Craigslist, it's never a bad idea to bring Jeff along.  He would ask ahead of time for the street address and then show up at my door appropriately dressed.  Table and chairs from the east side? That called for a t-shirt, maybe even tank top, so some or all of the tattoos were showing, and big  boots.  Cello from the west side?  Long-sleeved shirt and loafers.  The piano was downtown, campus apartments.  T-shirt and slippers.  Jeff always believed in dressing for the outcome he wanted which is to say you never knew what he was going to show up in. But his fashion trends are stuff for a future blog.  This does, however, remind me of a quote from a patron back in Freeport years ago. 

Her name was Emily.  She was always immaculately dressed, even on her most casual visits for books.  In his retirement, her husband, John, had taken to wearing old oxford shirts untucked over baggy shorts, his hair pulled back in a short ponytail that stuck out from under a baseball cap and no socks in his deck shoes when he walked up to the library with their old labrador, Stokely.  Lynn and I were talking about fashionable men when Emily came to the desk one evening to check out her books. She joined the conversation and shared that John used to be a real sharp dresser.  But then she sighed and said without drama,

"Now it's just one costume after another."

That still makes me laugh.   But back to the piano.

Jeff pulled the Suburban up to the curb at the apartment and we got out, including Wendy the Cat in her sparkly pink harness.  Those were the days when Wendy was in full service and she went everywhere with Jeff.  Having Wendy with us always turned knocking on doors into an adventure.  I rang the doorbell and soon we were greeted by a young guy in his early twenties.  We exchanged hellos and then he spotted Wendy.

"Is that a cat on a leash?" he asked in disbelief.  It quickly became the Jeff and Wendy show, with the several occupants of the apartment coming to see the little cat as she checked out the rooms, oblivious to the fuss as is her way.  Eventually we got to the keyboard and the transaction.  Jeff, and the guy who's name was Abraham, took the keyboard and stand out to the truck while I chatted with Abraham's girlfriend who had arrived to take him to salsa lessons.  I settled up, we all said thanks and see ya and off we went.

"That kid recognized my Purple Heart plate and thanked me for my service," Jeff remarked. 

"He's from Israel and did his time in the Israeli Army before coming to UT to do his grad work.  It's compulsory for men and women to serve in the defense force over there for a couple of years."  

I thought for a moment.

"So I just bought a keyboard from a former member of the Israeli Army.  Cool."

That's how the keyboard arrived on Guadalupe Street.  Now fast forward to our current apartment where Jamie and Wren are packing up and getting ready to move to Florida.  We've sold a guitar to a UT student from Houston who bought it for her dad for Christmas partly because the guitar was a Jay Jr. and her dad's name was Jay.  The bar stools went to a hipster re-sale shop that sells furniture with “patina” which is actually just a clever word here for filth.  The comics went to a nervous guy in a late model sedan and the wingback chair just went down the street a few blocks.  But what to do about the keyboard.  It’s a full 88 keys on a wooden base with a stool and neither Jamie nor I had played it in months.  Craigslist it was for $250.

The first inquiry was from Archie who was super psyched about it and did the stand come apart so he could get it in his car?  But then he super didn’t want to come to our part of town during rush hour and maybe he could come tomorrow. He kept interrupting my texts with more of his before I could finish the one I was working on.  I said text me tomorrow if he was still interested and could come and I’d let him know if we still had the piano.  He never texted back.

Next was Caleb who wanted to know if we still had it and where were we and please leave a message on the phone because he was interested.  He never called back.

Then there was a reply from someone that made no sense.  Deleted.

Mid-morning Friday  brought an email from Stacy asking if we still had the keyboard.  I replied that we did and would be home all day if she wanted to see it and gave her my number.  She called with a million questions, the last one being

“Could you come down 25 dollars on the price?”

 I hate it when people start haggling.  I make it a practice to price things very reasonably, basically what I would pay for the item.  Haggling may be an accepted practice world-wide but I hate it and I don’t attempt to buy something if I don’t like the price.  However, there were numerous similar keyboards for sale on Craigslist,  and despite ours being the least expensive of the litter, the offers were not pouring in, so I acquiesced and said sure.  Stacy said she had to check with her husband and would call me right back.  She did, said the husband said ok and they would be over around 4pm to pick it up. 

When she arrived, it was with the whole family in tow, including the dog.  Up the stairs came mom, dad and the three boys ages 8,7 and 4.  While the littlest one ran around the apartment, the rest plunked keys, pushed buttons and asked questions.  Well, Stacy asked the questions mostly.  In fact, Stacy was just full of questions and comments and observations.  Dad kept pretty quiet.  As they came to a consensus that everyone liked the keyboard, Dad pulled out a handful of cash and counted it.  Then he handed it to me and he and Jamie started unscrewing  the wing nuts that attach the keyboard to the stand.  Jamie took the keyboard, Dad took the stand and all the men tromped back down the stairs.  Stacy saw my easel with a canvas and asked if I painted.  I said I did and she had a good look at the pieces on the wall and declared

“You’re pretty good.”

I thanked her.

“And I’d like to give you a little something,” she said as she handed me a bit of paper that said  PAID IN FULL in bold print at the top.  Before I could get a good look at it she continued

“It’s a bit of gospel for you.”

And sure enough it was.  Below PAID IN FULL was a drawing of three crosses and inside were several questions that were supported and/or answered by passages in the Bible.

Did You Know You Are In Debt Because Of Your Sin?
Do You Realize What Your Sin Debt Will Cost You For All of Eternity?
Have You Heard Your Sin Debt Has Been “Paid in Full?”
Will You Believe the Bible, The Record of What God Has Done For You?
Will You Trust The Eternity Of Your Soul Completely to Jesus Christ?
Please Realize That You Must Trust Jesus, and He Alone, For Salvation.
Will You Claim the Receipt For Your Sin Debt?

I was surprised at this hand out but I smiled and said

“Thank you.  How very kind.”

We walked down to the parking lot where the boys had climbed into the middle of the Chevy Tahoe, having let the Jack Russell terrier escape and have a sniff around before Stacy got her back in the truck.  Dad and Jamie had totally disassembled the stand to get it all to fit in the way back portion and the tailgate shut tight.  Stacy went on about a couple of paintings she had picked up at Salvation Army somewhere out near Lago Vista where they live.  Lago Vista is quite posh so it’s no surprised the charity shops are filled with treasures like her painting that is worth $1500.00

Finally everything was packed up and we were at the good-byes when Stacy asked her husband if he had given Jamie any gospel.  Dad said no and went for his pockets but Stacy pulled out a leaflet, handed it to Dad who in turn handed it to Jamie.

“A little gospel for you,” Dad said, giving Jamie a manly nod.  Like me, Jamie did a quick look and then smiled and said thank you.  We finished our good-byes and parted company.

Back upstairs, we closed the door and looked at each other.

“What just happened?” Jamie asked comically as we looked at each other.

“I got one, too,” I said and we stood at the counter looking at the pamphlets.  Jamie chuckled.

“When she handed that to you all I could see was the Paid In Full bit and I thought my goodness this woman is very efficient with her receipts.”

As he said that, I was on my second time through counting the money they had paid us.

“It’s twenty dollars short!” I exclaimed.   “Count it for me and see if there are any bills sticking together.”

Jamie counted it once and then again.  It was twenty dollars short.

“He stood right there and counted it,” I said.  “I watched him counting.  I wasn’t going to count it when he handed it to me because that just seemed rude.”

We looked at each other in disbelief.

“We just got ripped off by a family of friendly Texas Baptists.  And that’s after I’d already knocked off 25 bucks from the price!”

Now I’m pretty sure it was an honest mistake but after nearly four years of city living and getting a good dose of not so good folks, there will always be a lingering doubt.  Whenever I pay someone a handful of cash, I ask them to count it to be sure it’s all there.  Did the dad purposely leave out that twenty hoping I wouldn’t count it, ready to cough up the missing cash with an oops! if I did?  We’ll never know.

A bit later I read through the pamphlet completely.  On the back are two option boxes that you can check.

I Choose To Trust Jesus Christ and His Finished Payment For My Sin Debt.
“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved…For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”  (Romans 10:9, 13)

Or

I Choose to Reject The Payment of Jesus Christ and Trust My Payment.
“In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ:  Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;” (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9)

Below those options it reads:

If you have decided to trust Jesus Christ as your Saviour after reading this tract, please write and let us know.

And rubberstamped is the name of the church, Amazing Grace Baptist Church, and its contact info.

Needless to say, I am struggling with which box to check.  Either way, Jesus isn’t getting such a good return on his investment and I’m out twenty bucks.  Now that IS amazing grace.

Busted Book of Baby Names: Volume 2

Names, names, names. Those precious combinations of consonants and vowels that are bestowed upon us at birth and barring a court order remain with us our entire lives.  Heavy is the head that wears the crown...and that wears a name no one on the planet can spell or pronounce. Let's once again celebrate the creativity of our parents and the endless boundaries of the written word courtesy of the weekly issues of Mugly! Dallas/Ft Worth:

Just Plain Cool Names
Billie Ray Minnieweather
Frisco Townzen
Wyvonne Wright
Sulfornia Amos
Tommy Tester  (arrested for capital murder for retaliation against a judge/justice...yikes!)
Chille Edmundson
Truly Hollis
Ethearius Moore
Amadeus Balmaceda
Odessa Daniels
Chiquita Gulley
Njinski Hill
Hilario Vargas
Wykivia Strain
Stoney Rawlinson
Dovie Williams
Sixto Macedo

Names That Sound Great Over Loudspeakers
Anterius Dequon Lewis
Inocencio Torres Parra
Santana Landeros
Willie Tywone Greathouse
Edgar Quinteros Cenisceros
Bufus Earl Fletcher
Bobby Luckey   (fail to pay child support...not so lucky after all it seems)
Guy Chararra Lara
Frank Tom Steve   (yup...that's his name)
Tomorrow Rayshell Session
Jorge Epifani Hernandez Arevalo
Noe Alejandro Martinez Montoya
Khadija Love Fuquan Young  (prostitution...blimey)
Tex Elkhatib
Kenneth Lee Rasberry II
Ebenezer Legbedion
Lucious Dewayne Lugo
Tronald DeGaulle Finely
Boris Bernard Barr
Peaches Bean
Lamarcus Quinstadius Pier

Names That Look Great in Print
Kenevious Dereion Deamon
Queadrean Dremail Bell
Montavious Lavell Rudd
Dmarkus Dawaye Jackson
Joshawa Everitt Curley
Earl Clearance Shaw
Rashad Zhizago Henderson
Quotess Stevenson
Hanifah Taylor
Alessandrini Johnson
Demarkus Rashaud Williams
Lamarcus Rasheed Williams
Ella Wee Lester
Jazzmik Lashun Allen
Furchester Celeste Bradford
Thurmonique Scott

Royalty and Titles
Princess Brown
Pharoah Romaunt Warren
Majesti Autionette King
King Terrell
Marquis Antron Germany
Prince Slaughter
Sir Captain Bennett
Major Lee Jones
Sircedric Jamaal Smith


Troublsome Twins
Roy and Troy Herring      (theft of firearm)
Brendan and Brandon Irby (theft and possession of a controlled substance)
Connell and Donnell Heads  (assault causing bodily injury family violence)


How Do You Spell That?
Antywon Dillard
Tijuana Meshelle Owens
Higinio Padilla
Syntyche Raven Griggs
Dequithiana Beaty
Zacchaetrius Turner
Treashure Laece Hardin
Dalvin Dwing Gardner

Tough Names for a Teenager
Wayne Romeo Gay
Kenneth Eugene Lovely
Dallas Meek


Historical...Kind Of
Marcus Arvelius Graham
Demond Octavius Grant
Victor Hugo Morales
Victor Hugo Cabrera
Markis De Laffett Goynes
Ponce Deleon Deere
Nepolian Harper
Bismarck Duarte
Dytanion Alton Brisby
Bubba Wayne McBeth
Actavione Buckle


Still Laughing in Appreciation
Jammie Wannette Lacy
Rose Royce Davis
Bill Lufthansa Barnes
Lonnie Chaney
Deon Warick Moore

How Many Ways Can You Spell
Dewaiin
Dwayne
Dewayne
Dwain
Dewainne
Duwayne
D'wayne
Dawayne


And MyFavorite Name of the Moment...

Chateau Briand Hattley

To stay up to speed on all the latest names stopping by the Dallas County police stations, get yourself a subscription to Mugly! Dallas/Ft Worth at http://www.muglymedia.com/

Guadalupe Street Vignettes: Tanisha

She was standing in the driveway when I came back from my morning walk, a plus-sized black gal in her twenties whom I had seen moving things into the apartment downstairs the day before.  I smiled when we made eye contact.

“You got a phone?”she asked accusingly.  I stopped in my tracks.

“Yes.”

“I need it.”

I wasn’t about to say no.

She punched in a number and started pacing.  No answer evidently.  She hung up, dialed again.  No answer.  She dialed again.

“I don’t know where they are,” she said to the person on the other end.  “They were supposed to be here at 8:30 and it’s 8:32 now.  I told him, I told him to be here at 8:30.  I’ve got to see my probation officer and then the social worker and I don’t have time to be waitin’ around.”

My heart sunk.  I lived above the apartment from hell, that was the long and short of it.  Emily told me that an elderly lady had died in that place.  Someone found her a few days after she had passed.  Maybe it was her restless spirit drawing these people into that small gaff, people who could make do with a dorm size refrigerator and a hotplate because there wasn’t room for larger appliances.  The outside laundry alcove wedged its way into what would have otherwise been living space, smooshing the kitchen into oblivion.  I could hear people doing laundry day and night in the single washer and dryer.  My bathroom was above it.  It must be hellish to live right beside it.

She was dialing again.  I wanted to ask for the phone back.  The need to get upstairs and use the bathroom was increasing in urgency but I wasn’t going to leave her with my phone.

“Where you at?” she barked into the receiver just as a late-model sedan pulled into the parking lot.

“Here,” she said, shoving the phone at me, and then they were off, floating down the driveway in that way that big old cars can.  The driver was getting an earful.

***

It wasn’t so much a knocking on the door as a command to answer.  Looking out the peep hole I saw she was staring right back at me intently.  I opened the door.

“I need your phone.”

I handed it over, hoping to explain that I was almost out of minutes and could she please keep it short but she was already pounding back down the stairs.  I trailed after her.   When I caught up at the foot of the stairs, she was standing in front of her door, staring at it.  On a piece of notebook paper she had written        T A N I S H A , underlined it numerous times and taped it with copious amounts of tape to the metal door for all to see.

“The door won’t unlock,” she was saying into the phone, still staring at the door.  “The key is not working and I am stuck out here using the lady upstairs’ phone to call.  No…why would I know the manager’s number?”     She looked at me and rolled her eyes.

“I have their number,” I said.  I ran back upstairs, wrote it down so she would have it, and came back down, knowing I was going to be paying overage fees to Sprint that month.  Tanisha was already on to another call.

“The door won’t unlock.  No, I can’t get in through a window.”  She took the paper I offered, studied it and kept talking.  I sat down on the steps and stared at the dumpster. 

Finally the call ended and she rang Della.

“The door won’t unlock…”  Della told her to go knock on Juan’s door and see if his master key would work.  I heard all this as Tanisha repeated the instructions back to her.  Good.  Juan could sort this out.  Tanisha hung up and handed the phone back to me.

“Thank you,”she said.  “If I need to use it some more I’ll come get it.”

***

Our interactions were numerous but brief.  Tanisha was almost always standing in her doorway when I came home from anywhere.  She was waiting for people on a regular basis it seemed.  She would say hi, tell me what she was about to be doing and then go inside to get ready.  That was the routine.  She had a phone now but had run out of tape.

“You got some tape?” she asked.  “I’m having a yard sale and I need to put up some posters.  You should come.  You need any silverware?  I’m selling a couple of extra forks I’ve got. I don’t need six, just four.”

I did have tape, the end of a roll, so I gave it to her.  Her posters were on notebook paper that she filled with writing, most of it being directions on how to get from Guadalupe Street clear across town to some address on the east side where her friend was actually having the sale.  The posters were crazy in that way of someone who was really enthusiastic and has a lot of faith in people, faith that someone would totally want to drive 20 minutes to a rough part of town after reading a sign scribbled on notebook paper with the fringe from the spiral binding still attached and buy some forks.  I felt myself liking Tanisha because of it.

She put three posters on the wooden fence that enclosed the parking lot and put two more on utility poles on the side street.  Clear cellophane tape doesn’t stay stuck to rough wood very long.  The posters were soon blowing down the sidewalk.

***

“I’m real nervous,” she said before I even had the car door closed.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I crossed the parking lot.

“I have a meeting about getting my son back. The judge is going to let him stay with me this weekend maybe.  I’m real nervous about the meeting though but I’ll be ok.   I’d better get ready.  See ya.”

I could hear them downstairs later, that sweet, carefree sound of a child’s laughter.

***

The last time I saw Tanisha she was dressed to the nines.  Her hair was curled and glossy.  Her lipstick matched the crimson dress and heels she had on.  I had only ever seen her in torn sweatpants and t-shirts and quickly decaying sneakers and I was envious once again of those women who can be large and gorgeous at the same time.  She was transformed.

“You look fabulous,” I said admiringly as she stood in her doorway waiting.   “What’s the occasion for all this glamour?”

“American Idol is having auditions. My girl and me, we’re going down and show them all how it’s done.”  She was confidence personified.

“I’ve heard singing down in your place but I always thought it was the stereo,” I said.  “Where do you sing here in town?”

She shifted her weight from one stiletto to the other.

“We sing in church,” she replied, looking past me to a car that was pulling in.

“Well good luck,” I said enthusiastically as she sauntered past me.

“You don’t need luck when you’ve got talent,” she answered.

***

Della was putting a lock box on Tanisha’s door when I came home from errands one afternoon a few weeks later.

“What’s happened?” I asked, setting down my giant bag of grapefruit from the market. 

“Tanisha’s had to move out.  She called me and said she couldn’t afford the rent here anymore.  She is going to move in with a friend.  We had her paying month by month to see how her probation went but she just couldn’t swing it.”

***

I guess American Idol didn’t work out.  I hope something did.

Black and White

It’s edifying and yet terrifying how life goes on after a death.  The couple walking their dogs this morning doubtless have no idea why their animals are lingering near the Jeep parked at the curb.  Do the dogs even know what it is they are smelling on the asphalt just beyond the vehicle’s tires?  I watch them from the porch and remember the sound of the garbage truck, the frantic yelping for a few seconds then a young man’s voice saying over and over, “Oh my God, oh my God.” 

The truck driver stayed in the cab, watching the scene in his big side mirror.  His assistant stood motionless with a trash can in his hands.  The young guy from the apartment house next door walked in circles of disbelief, ran back into the house and then back out again.  Several people stopped to stare and offer help.  My view was blocked by the Jeep and I was glad for it. When the truck driver finally stepped down from the cab, he moved slowly, as though he carried a heavy burden.

Eventually, the garbage truck moved on its growling way.  Trash waits for no one.  The dog was loaded gingerly into the back of a car; a rug beneath it, someone’s jacket covering it.  The young man from the apartment house kept coming out with bowls of water to sluice down the area near the Jeep.  Later, a City of Austin truck parked in our small lot.  The driver surveyed the accident scene for a few minutes then left, probably off to file his report, many steps removed from the black and white border collie who once chased a wandering guinea hen, making it fly up into the bare branches of a pecan tree.