i am a rock...i am an island.

My mama told me
Son to be polite
Take your hat off
When you walk inside

But the winds of change
They fill the air
And you can't set your hat down
Just anywhere

these are a few lyrics from lyle lovett song that came to my mind a couple of weeks ago. they have returned often ever since.

i was always taught to understand that it is polite to remove one's hat when entering a building. sometimes it requires real dedication to remain true to one's principles. hat hair can be quite embarrassing, especially as one's hair thins due to age. nevertheless, i have always attempted to be polite and pass on this lesson in manners to my six-year-old son.

i often find that people around here are not likely to remove their head coverings. it is uncommon for someone to do so. i have determined that it is because i work and shop in this bastion of liberalism that is austin. just look at the way they dress, and the way they act; it is obvious that they have no respect for themselves...how can they be expected to have any respect for anyone (or anywhere) else? i'm left to lament my surroundings.

a few weeks ago, i went to west texas for david's wedding. oh, yeah. sarah was involved, too. well, on saturday morning we stopped at a little restaurant in alpine named magoo's. i highly recommend it as they made me the best breakfast tacos i've had in a very long time. anyway, as i pass through the front door into the restaurant; i instinctively remove my hat as a courtesy that i expect to be commonplace in this haven of traditional custom, conservatism, and chivalry known as west texas. i am sad to report that no one else in the restaurant had removed his hat. cowboy hat, ball cap, or funny little west texas tall-cap-with-a-short-brim thing i only see in the sticks. what is that thing anyway? it looks stupid. i wouldn't even know where to get one...i guess the feed store. the only thing i didn't see was a yarmulke, but i wasn't taking an inventory either. they all just sat their eating with their heads covered as if this were the proper thing to be doing on a saturday morning in alpine.

i left my hat in my hand and threw my previous expectation to the wind.

maybe everyone thinks lyle will show up and steal their hats.?

three the hard way

i'm playing in a basketball league again. it's basically comprised of the same ol' guys i usually play with...me, darren, pat, ray, rick, daniel, gary, and a new guy named hector (i'll let you guess his ethnicity.) i really like playing with these guys for several reasons. they are all very nice; they are all good ball players who know how to play; and some of jackson's best friends are children of some of these guys. it's funny how that happens.

the league we're in right now is a 30 and older league at the san marcos activity and rec center. we've played in this league and the open league several times each. obviously, the open league is higher competition; but, you might be surprised at how good the old-man league can be.

our team name is "wide awake." it always is...i don't know what that means. often, i think it's a bit of irony directed at our first-half performances. we have come from behind more often than i can remember. tonight we played a bunch of guys i have known around san marcos for a long time. well, you know what i mean; i don't know any of their names, but i have played with- and against -these guys alot over the years. their team is called "the church."

only four guys showed up tonight. i don't know what happened to the rest of our team; but, we got to start the game because they also only had four. luckily we tipped-off when we did, because their fifth showed up less than a minute later. we would have had to forfeit if they had started five and we only had four. we played four on five for the first half and eight minutes of the second half. after 3/4 of the game had been played, we were losing by about 3 or 4 points. this is when i fouled out. i haven't fouled out of a basketball game since i don't know when. i always keep track of my fouls, and can refine my defense to play indefinitely with four fouls. the problem is that i only had counted three up until the last foul. either it was my screw-up or the scorekeeper's; but, the result was the same...we were stuck with three on five for the final eight minutes and a half minutes of the game. darren can dribble through and around most anyone; he can also score on anyone from 24 feet in. pat is 6'7'' with a great three and strong inside moves. ray is a police officer who doesn't feel nerves or confusion. somehow, even though i looked like an ass sitting on the bench, i thought we had a great chance to come back and win. i say "we" ,but i had nothing to do with it.

although we had to play a triangle-and-zero defense, and they double-teamed darren and pat; we took the lead. up one...up three...pat missed a free throw that would have given us a two-possession lead. with less than a minute, darren missed the front of a one-and-one that would have given us another four point lead. they hit a three. ray with a short jumper from the baseline. they get a put-back lay-up, and we're down one again. with seven seconds left, pat gets fouled. double bonus. the first hits the back rim, bounces up higher than "the goat" could jump, and falls in the bucket. the second is all net. they get the ball down to their best player (not "shooter") and he is short with his shot, which is then rebounded by ray. the horn blared, and our guys celebrated like i haven't seen them do after a championship game win.

losing four, and then three on five has got to be a brutal, ego-sapping, manhood-robbing, avalanche of basketball disaster. i wish i had been part of it; but, it sure was fun to watch.

stick it in your ear

i saw another one today. it is happening more and more, and is quite disturbing to me. so, here i go:

look, unless you are personal assistant to lando calrissian and are participating in the carbon-freezing of han solo, or the subsequent liberation of princess leia and chewbacca; there is no reason for you to stick a hunk of electronic metal in your ear. i like the sci-fi channel too; but, wearing portions of your cyborg costume around town causes trekkies to stare.

are you afraid of the transmission rays from your cell phone being so close to your head? good idea, now your phone is IN your head. tired of holding that heavy phone up for those long calls? upgrade your technology, gordon gekko. need hands free? work on your dexterity. it's not that big of a deal. maybe you just need to be ready to get that all-important call as soon as possible. it only takes 2 seconds to reach in your pocket and answer, i bet you can get it before the second ring.

until i hear a good reason for this ridiculous piece of technological self-gratification, i will simply continue to think you look like an idiot.

"i was having a nightmare." "get used to it."

casa grande in the coming daylight.



last sunday morning, dad, jackson, and i decided to hike down to homer wilson's ranch and up the blue creek trail for a mile, or so. we had been in big bend national park for a few days, and this would be the final outing before heading for home.


on our first day we had hiked across terlingua creek into the mouth of santa elena canyon and up the canyon wall for a while. it is a pretty easy hike between the forbiddingly sheer and towering walls of the canyon. it is beautiful. the rio grande is etching its way through the canyon; and, in this remote location, it seems less like a border between nations than it is a source of life to the desert environment.


we hiked into the valley that houses blue creek on an overcast and cool morning. before we returned, we would be sprinkled with light drizzle. between the refreshing weather and the local environment, i was invigorated. after wandering around the remains of the ranch foreman's house, we found the trail up the creek. we had already seen a sign warning of the existence of bears in the vicinity. this caused a little concern because we had heard of some bear sightings in the area just days prior. as we had a group of three who would likely be talking much, i was not too worried. after all, jackson was one of the three, and he is physically incapable of silence, or even discretion. the second warning sign did cause me to be on high alert. it warned of mountain lions, and even suggested children not hike this path as the mountain lions can be aggressive, and a small child would be at greatest risk. sound advice; but not advice taken. we hiked about a mile up the path with me on the constant lookout. surely, it would be no trick at all for a mountain lion to remain unseen if that was his choice; but, i acted as if i would be able to detect his presence, nonetheless. the situation was not made any easier by jackson's lack of adequate compliance with the rules of the hike. he was to remain between dad and me, and close behind me. sometimes he did really well with these instructions. other times, not well at all. after a stressful hour of walking we returned to the "safety" of the ranch house.

all that remained was the innocuous switchback up the valley wall to the trailhead, and the car. walking on a two-foot-wide path between the scrub brush, we began talking about lions and bears (oh, my.) i turned my head to look behind me while talking for a few seconds. that was long enough for something ahead of me to create a noise i have never heard before. it sounded like a cricket, but it would have to have been the loudest cricket known to man. i snapped my head back around to see my right foot about one foot away from a three-foot-plus snake. its markings and color were familiar, so i checked its head. yep...diamond shaped. just to be sure, i looked at its tail. 7 or 8 rattles slithering to a stop. obviously, i stopped right where i was because the rattler was stretched out across the path. since i didn't want him to become unstretched in his effort to coil into striking position; i kicked a couple of sprays of gravel at him to get him moving again. it worked and he went off into the brush.

while i was kicking the gravel, i realized that jackson had seen the rattle snake and recognized it for what it was. he said to me, "stop it dad! you're freaking me out!" from that point forward, not only was he right between me and dad, he was right on my tail. in fact, he held my hand for most of the rest of the way to the car. like most of us do, once the adrenaline started to die down; he let us know how little he had been worried about the snake. in fact, we should have all stopped long enough to take a picture of it. while that might have been cool, i just wanted it to leave. i'm sure the snake reciprocated my feelings on the matter.

one thing for sure, it did get my attention.

i can't wait to go back.

how 'bout "billy reb?" or will johnny get mad?

last friday night i went to a hays high school football game. darren masur called and asked if jackson and i would like to go with him and his two boys, davin and dalen. it sounded just like something we would like to do. we met up at darren's house and drove to the game together. when we go to hays games, we are almost always found on the visitor's side of the field. the main reason is that it is much less crowded than the home side; the other reason is that the hays fans may be the rudest, most classless football fans this side of arkansas.

we took our usual spots between the 5 yard line and the end zone on the south side of the field. the boys had a great time and i always enjoy hanging out with darren; but, the game was pretty uneventful...hays won by 4 or 5 touchdowns. the prevailing result of the night was my remembrance of my uncle billy ray.

a couple of weeks before my uncle's death, i ran into him at a hays game. again, jackson and i were with the masurs, sitting in our usual spot. at half-time we started walking down the stands to the concession booth. i had almost passed uncle billy before i saw him. i sent the others on and stopped to talk to this old man i have always known. he told me he almost never missed a hays home game and he always sat in the same area where i had found him. he had been coming to these games since the school was opened in the late 60's. when he told me that he was always allowed in for free, i said that i needed some explanation. from his wallet he pulled a card he had purchased in the middle 1970's. it was a lifetime athletics pass for the bearer. it was old and worn (just like uncle billy ray); but, still got the job done (just like uncle billy ray.) we spoke throughout the half, and then he left. he said the games always finished so late that he usually left just after the hays band finished playing "dixie." uncle billy died before i ever saw him again. i can't tell you how happy i was to have happened upon him that autumn night.

uncle billy ray wasn't the oldest member of our family; but, he was the patriarch. he knew everybody up and down the family tree for generations. he loved to share the stories from his life as well as those that had been passed down to him. at every gathering, he was the first to perpetuate the ever-present game of "42." he literally knew where the bodies were buried. he knew the location of a "lost" slave cemetery on the way to driftwood; and, one spring afternoon a few years ago, he led jackson, dad, and me out to lockhart to find the gravesite of the first wilsons to move to texas. this line of my father's family first crossed into central texas some time in the 1840's. as we crossed the counties, he told me plenty of stories about girls from niederwald, the crosshouse, riding his horse to kyle, and the dance halls between kyle and lockhart that he used to frequent. old stories, four generations, bar-be-que and confederate flags...it was quite a day.

i miss my uncle billy ray. he is a good man and i can't wait to greet him and his beautiful wife, caroline once again. living here, in the place where i knew him; i am constantly reminded of this old man as i find myself in the paths that he left.