Not all Revolutionary War ancestors were good guys

 Experts will warn you that when you look at up your family tree or take a DNA test to expect the unexpected.

Some things can get weird, muddled or just plain ugly. Not all of us come from a pristine line of saintly ancestors with noble careers and glorious military service. Some of us – many of us – have some kind of unsavory characters, out of wedlock births, questionable parentage, adoption, rape, or other factors that have roots in our family trees.

I started learning some of those while stuck at home during the COVID pandemic in 2020. I’ve been wanting to know about my family history for years and that break from work gave me ample opportunity to investigate my family line. So far, I’ve found at least four patriot ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War or aided the colonials in some way.

Using my fifth-great-grandfather, William Hopkins, I was able to gain membership into the Sons of the American Revolution. In doing that research I discovered that one of his sons, Henry Harrison Hopkins, lived in the Republic of Texas, which qualified me for the Sons of the Republic of Texas, but I digress.

I have tried hard to find documentation about William Hopkins, but it has been difficult to come by. I know that he was born in Rhode Island in 1748 and he died in Kentucky in 1832. He was a private in a New York regiment under Goose Van Schaick during the Revolutionary War. I can’t find any information about his service, if he saw any military action, how long he served – any pertinent information like that. What I can find, however, is plenty of information about his father, Francis Whaley Hopkins, who turns out to be one of those weird, unexpected and unsavory characters in American history.

Francis Hopkins was also known as The Tory Bandit. He was a notorious horse thief, a convicted counterfeiter, and a radical counter-revolutionary organizer. A staunch loyalist to King George III, he held views that were apparently very different from his children. Not only did William serve in the Continental Army, his sister Hannah was married to Thomas Charles Lewis of the 8th Infantry Brigade under George Washington.

Discovering that my sixth-great-grandfather was such a scoundrel was akin to discovering an Old West outlaw in my family tree. I should be ashamed of him, but at the same time I’m fascinated and ought to write a book.

Francis Hopkins was born in 1720 in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Records show that he left Rhode Island in 1758 and moved his family to New York and later to land that was in Connecticut at the time but is now part of Pennsylvania. From there he moved to Washington County, Virginia.

On May 19, 1778, a grand jury found him guilty of counterfeiting treasury bills, passing two bad $10 bills and buying bad money at an underrate. In August he was fined 50 pounds sterling and was sentenced to six months in jail. It was reported that several of his friends, including his son William, helped him break out of jail.

Francis Hopkins led a gang that terrorized supporters of the rebellion. They stole horses and left placards and notices about depredations that would occur to those who opposed the crown.

Sometime in the fall of 1778 or spring of 1779, Hopkins left a message threatening the life of Col. William Campbell, whose wife was the sister of Patrick Henry. On April 22, 1779, Hopkins was identified to Campbell, who gave chase on his horse. They raced for a mile or so before crashing down the embankment of the Holston River. The two men struggled in the river and Hopkins was about to drown Campbell when help arrived and Hopkins was subdued.

A consultation was held and Hopkins was hung from the branch of a sycamore tree that reached out over the river. It has been reported that his son, William, my patriot ancestor, was also captured but escaped and fled to Kentucky. I have not been able to find any documentation about it, but it seems probable.

Given the dearth of information about William Hopkins and his military service, I’m now inclined to document my lineage to other patriots and see what rascals I can wring out of those branches of the family tree.

Father's Day a reminder of the importance of dads

 

“We are calling on men, all men — the successful and the unsuccessful, the affluent and the poor, the married and the unmarried — to come and claim their children. You can run the biggest drug cartel in America or win the Super Bowl, but if you haven’t claimed your children, you are not a man. No matter how useless or hopeless a father may think he is, his role is simply to be there. If he makes that commitment, he is a much better man than he thought he was.” – Bill Cosby (before he was disgraced)

 

Father’s Day is of my favorite holidays. I like it not because I’m a father and it makes me feel good about being a dad. I don’t need a holiday for that. I like it because it puts fatherhood in a positive light.

Fatherhood has taken a beating in the culture wars in the past 30-40 years. It’s a shame, because we need fathers more than ever. I don’t mean men who get women pregnant, but men who step up and are actively involved in raising their children. We need men who love their wives, care for their children and rise up to protect their family.

Being a father is one of the absolute joys of my life. What matters most in life to me is this: My faith in God, being a husband to Sandy, and being a father to Heather, Wesley, Luke, and Colton. I hope someday to add grandchildren to that list.

I remember well the feelings of excitement, joy, and pride while watching the birth of three of my children (Wesley was 4 years old when I married his mother). I was equally excited when I adopted Wesley as my own son.

There is nothing like the feeling of snuggling with your newborn baby. Those feelings are only magnified the first time he or she says, “I love you, Daddy!” I remember the feelings of peace when one of my children fell asleep in my arms or next to me on the couch. I love story time, gathering for family prayers, playing games, going camping, celebrating birthdays and other holidays, and just doing life together.

Being a father isn’t always easy. At times it can be very difficult and sometimes painful. It’s no fun when you have to enforce discipline, deal with injuries, break up fights, or cope with being lied to by your precious little ones. I think the things that hurt the most are not the times when your children fail, but when you fail as a parent. We all make mistakes, but life goes on.

Some of life’s greatest moments come when your children succeed at something. From winning scores, getting A’s on tests, learning new skills, and graduating from school, there are endless moments big and small that a father treasures forever.

Inevitably, there comes that time when your children grow up and leave home. It’s a bittersweet moment when you know it’s their time to fly but they won’t be there every day to kiss goodnight or hug first thing in the morning. Even when your children leave home, your job as a father never ends, it just transitions.

Wesley is married and lives in Florida. Heather is an avowed bachelorette living in Colorado. Colton, our youngest, left the nest a year ago and is working for Arms of Hope in Medina. Luke, our middle son, lives in San Marcos and on July 7 will marry Samantha “Sammy” Owen.

I’m thrilled to be adding in-law children to the family, but I’d be even more excited to welcome grandchildren (hint, hint!).

As I reflect on the joys of fatherhood, I have to wonder why so many men shun the responsibility. Our jails are populated with people whose fathers were absent, alcoholic, or abusive. Imagine the difference it would make if more men stepped up to embrace fatherhood. Think of the generational cycles of poverty and crime that would end with each father who manned up and cared for their children.

I’d like to see a world where men, and fathers in particular, are given their due respect and likewise earn it. Being a father is an incredible joy and an awesome responsibility. I’ll conclude with one of my favorite quotes: Anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad.

Happy Father’s Day, y’all!

Football needs to take a hike on holidays

 

Dear NFL and UFL,

I respectfully request that you leave our holidays alone. From his past UFL season to the announcement of the upcoming NFL season, you have unfairly targeted all of our major holidays with games. I want to watch many of those games but more importantly, I want to spend the holidays with my family and friends, not glued to the TV watching sporting events.

This domination of the holidays is incredibly damaging to family time and separates us from our cultural and religious celebrations. This is harmful on many levels. Before I get into that, allow me to set the stage.

The Houston Gamblers of the UFL played 10 regular season games, five at home. Their first home game was on Easter, April 5. Their second home game was on a Thursday night, April 16. Although not a holiday it was a very inconvenient time. They played at home on Sunday, April 26, at 11 a.m., which cuts into church time for many people. The next home game was Sunday, May 10, which was Mother’s Day. The final home game came on Sunday, May 24, the day before Memorial Day. It’s no wonder the Gamblers had the worst attendance in the UFL.

When the NFL made its schedule announcement, it highlighted all of its holiday games like they had won the lottery. A Monday night game will be played on Oct. 12, which is Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day. That one is not such a big deal.

New this year is the Thanksgiving Eve game on Wednesday, Nov. 25. That is followed by the traditional Thanksgiving Day games, offering no break for a Thanksgiving meal. Then the NFL had the audacity to schedule a Christmas Eve game on Thursday, Dec. 24, and three games on Christmas Day! That is followed by a New Year’s Eve game on Thursday, Dec. 31. There will be a playoff game on Monday, Jan. 18, which is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The coup de grace, however, is the scheduling of the Super Bowl on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14.

Fortunately, there are no football games scheduled for the Fourth of July or Labor Day, but don’t worry, Major League Baseball has those covered. They’ve also got Flag Day and Father’s Day.

So, what’s the big deal about scheduling games on holidays? Let’s begin with the reason we have holidays in the first place. It’s not to give us random days off throughout the year. Holidays exist to give us time to pause, reflect, and respect certain events or people. When we have games on those days, they remove or deflect the focus of the day. That’s not to mention the tens of thousands of people who have to work those games, either directly or indirectly.

With our holidays saturated with football games – especially Thanksgiving and Christmas – we lose not only focus on the meaning of those days, but also very valuable family time. Families sacrifice so much throughout the year that taking away even more time is harmful to our most essential relationships. Football widows and orphans are a real thing and taking over holidays exacerbates the problem.

I understand that watching a favorite football team can also be a bonding time for some people, but there are plenty of other non-holiday weekends for that. Let’s restore the sanctity of our holidays and respect our culture and families and back off on the scheduling.

Of course, the reason the NFL and UFL are scheduling holiday games is pure greed. The more nationally televised games they can have, the more money they make. That’s why the NFL has taken over Monday and Thursday nights and pushes into Saturdays when the college football season ends. That’s why the football season has gone from September to January now from August to February.

Speaking of football greed, the NFL has priced out the average fan from attending games in person. Only the wealthy pack NFL stadiums anymore. It used to be that the games were free on broadcast television stations. Now you have to subscribe to numerous streaming services to get the games you want. They are taking our time and our money and not giving us anything substantial in return.

Maybe I’ve become a grouchy old man and this rant is for nothing. But I believe if the football leagues are left unchecked, they will consume more of our time, our money, and ultimately damage our families and culture. So please, NFL and UFL, give us a break.

Coffee is the elixir of life

 I once had a life before coffee, but now I have no life before coffee.

Like many people, I drink a cup of coffee first thing in the morning. Then I have another. And another. I usually have three or more cups under my belt before I go to work. That’s where the serious drinking begins.

Yes, I am totally addicted to coffee. Don’t judge me. I really don’t care how good or bad it is for me. I know I like it and I can’t do without it. I like my coffee hot and black. No cream or sugar, just plain bean juice. And for Heaven’s sake, don’t try to pass off any of those fru-fru drinks with funny names by me.

I come from a family that measures coffee consumption, not by the cup, but by the pot. When I was a kid I hated coffee. It smelled bad and was very bitter. Being around it so much, I decided to try it when I was in my teens. I wanted to know what my parents were so enamored with.

I started out by loading my java with lots of cream and sugar. Prepared that way it wasn’t such a bitter pill to swallow. I found myself being sucked in by the magic bean. I didn’t want to become a slave to it like my parents, so I decided I would wean off the bean by doing away with the cream and sugar. Certainly the bitter taste would turn me off, right? Ha! By then it was too late.

For most of my life Folgers coffee was my regular poison but Maxwell House was my favorite. During the summer months while I was in college, I worked at a Boy Scout camp that served Chock Full o’ Nuts brand. I still have cravings for it and drink it when I can.

I usually got my first few cups at breakfast in the camp dining hall. My morning routine from there was to go to the site where I taught wilderness survival, start a fire, and set a pot of coffee on it to percolate while I taught my first class. By then I could serve coffee by the slice and friends would come by to have a bite.

The camp had old Army surplus mugs that they let us have and I kept mine with me wherever I went. After all, you never know when a coffee emergency will arise. I don’t know what kind of material the cup is made out of, but I once dropped it off the side of mountain by accident. I found it later, unscathed. I still have it and use it on occasion.

Coffee and I have come to an understanding over the years. As long as it keeps me awake, I’ll keep drinking it. A day without coffee is like … who am I kidding? I don’t know what a day without coffee is like. I imagine it involves a lot fewer trips to the restroom.

I was the kind of person who could drink a cup of coffee before going to bed and zonk right out for the night. That’s changed in the last few years. Now I need to stop my caffein intake around dinner time. That was a hard lesson to learn, but it wasn’t the most painful lesson coffee has taught me.

That lesson came at the end of my first semester in college. I was planning on pulling an all-nighter to cram for three finals I had on the next day. I drank a pot of coffee, had a couple Jolt Colas, and popped some NoDoze. I was wired all night long and through breakfast. When I got to my first final at 8 a.m., the caffein wore off and I crashed – hard!

Since then I’ve had a great level of respect for the mystical powers of the almighty cup o’ Joe. Like I said, we understand each other. I’ve also come to understand that not all coffees are equal. As America’s obsession with coffee has grown in the last 30 or so years, different varieties and qualities have emerged.

You really can’t talk about coffee without mentioning Starbucks. The company made the coffee shop industry what it is today. I’m not a big fan, but I won’t turn down a steaming mug.

When it comes to the black elixir of life, the most exotic kind that I’ve had is Kopi Luwak. The wild palm civets of Indonesia eat ripe coffee cherries and the beans are collected from their droppings, cleaned, and roasted. My father-in-law was gifted some while on a mission trip, and we enjoyed a couple of cups after he returned.

More recently, my wife discovered that most of the world’s supply of coffee comes from plantations where they are covered in pesticides that make it into the final product. She has recently started buying me organic coffee from Ethiopia. Not only is it much healthier, the aroma is enticing and the taste is great.

Each morning now I eagerly awake to a fresh pot of organic Ethiopian coffee and the gift of life for another day.

Are rabbits pets or meat?

 Pets or meat? When it comes to raising rabbits, it could be either or both.

Occasionally throughout my 26-year marriage to Sandy we debated whether rabbits were for meat or pets. Both of us had rabbits as kids. Sandy and her sister had pet rabbits. My family raised them for meat and to show in 4-H. I ate an awful lot of rabbit meat growing up in Colorado. At one point we had more than 200 in our rabbitry.

Feeding, breeding, and butchering bunnies was just a way of life for me. Twice a day my brothers and I went out and made sure they had food and water and every weekend we used shovels to clean out the rabbitry and fertilize the garden. As needed, usually a couple times a month, we would reduce the population and fill the freezer.

Believe me, it’s a lot easier to increase the population than to depopulate it because rabbits breed, well … like rabbits. Most does (females) can breed immediately after giving birth. With a 30-day gestation period, they can have up to 11-12 litters a year with each litter ranging in size from 1-12 kits (babies). That pace is rough on the doe and isn’t healthy for her.

My preference is to wait until she weans her kits and they’re moved out before breeding her again. That takes two months or more. I usually get 4-5 litters a year out of each doe, and they average eight to 10 kits a litter. When you have about 30 does, that makes for a lot of little ones. It also makes for some very happy bucks (males), but that’s another story for another day.

Whenever the topic of raising rabbits came up, I would accuse Sandy of suffering from Thumper Syndrome. Thumper, the cute character from “Bambi,” made rabbits seem too adorable to eat. Bugs Bunny didn’t help either – that wascawwy wabbit!

I still remember when we got our first rabbits. We got a pair of New Zealand whites that I named Old Dan and Little Ann after the dogs in “Where the Red Fern Grows.” My fifth grade teacher was reading the book to us at the time. Eventually we added Californians, Dutch, satins and other breeds.

When I entered Boy Scouts, rabbit raising was the first merit badge that I earned. I also showed red satins as my 4-H project at the Boulder County Fair. For what it was worth, I sure racked up plenty of participation ribbons over the years.

We got rid of all of our farm animals while I was in high school. It took 42 years and a move to rural Brazos County to get back into farming on a small scale. We started with chickens and added ducks and geese. Last fall we were given three sibling New Zealand white rabbits to start our rabbitry. There were two bucks and a doe.

At the suggestion of my daughter, Heather, we named them Harry, Ron, and Hermione after the characters in the Harry Potter books. We then purchased two TAMUK rabbits. The breed was specially produced at Texas A&M University-Kingsville to be meat producers and to be able to withstand the hot Texas summers.

We named the doe Mousey because she looked like a large, gray mouse. The buck, who is mostly white with very large, dark ears, dark feet, and a line on his nose that looks like a mustache, has two names. Sandy calls him Mr. Belvedere. I call him Mr. Velvet Ears.

Not long ago we purchased two Californian does. Going with the Californian theme, I named one Cali. Keeping with the Harry Potter theme, Sandy named the other Luna.

Since we had too many bucks, one of the New Zealands had to go. I butchered one but couldn’t tell you which one. We decided that since Ron marries Hermione at the end of the Harry Potter series that we would keep that name. Poor Harry wound up in the frying pan – Sandy’s first time to cook and eat rabbit.

A couple weeks ago Hermione gave birth to six kits. Mr. Velvet Ears is the proud pappa of four black and two gray kits. On Tuesday night he became a father again as Mousey gave birth. As of this writing I have not had a good enough look to see how many.

What this means is we are now in the rabbit meat production business (and maybe pelts, too). So what changed Sandy’s mind? She saw how much rabbit meat was selling for at the Brazos County Farmers Market. She now gets the benefit of helping raise cute little bunnies and I get the job of converting them into meat. It looks like we both won our argument.

The force of Star Wars changed my life

 

There comes a moment in everyone’s life when something happens that causes a paradigm shift, forever altering your worldview.

That happened for me in the early summer of 1977. I was just shy of my 12th birthday and a die-hard “Star Trek” fan when my family went to see this new science fiction movie everyone was talking about. For me, science fiction began and ended with “Star Trek.” The trailer for this new movie looked stupid, but people lined up for blocks to see it.

When we left the theater after watching “Star Wars,” I knew that I had just witnessed one of the most profound things in my life. I couldn’t stop thinking and talking about it. I was obsessed. I wanted to be Luke Skywalker. Every stick I found became a lightsaber. Every gun-shaped object was Han Solo’s blaster. I still liked “Star Trek,” but “Star Wars” ruled my universe.

I spent a lot of time last week reliving those days in my mind in anticipation of seeing “The Mandalorian and Grogu” at the theater. Sandy and I went Thursday night and we were not disappointed. It was loaded with action and humor. We had a fun time picking out the Star Wars easter eggs, finding references to movies and TV shows.

It has been our tradition to see the very first showing of new Star Wars films. That meant going to midnight showings when each of the prequel trilogy movies came out. We quit doing midnight showings when the sequel trilogy and standalone films hit the theaters, but we always went on opening day. When “Rogue One” came out, I won tickets for my family to see an advance screening in IMAX 3-D a week before it was released.

On Thursday we arrived late and missed the first few minutes of “The Mandalorian and Grogu.” I guess that’s an excuse to go back and see it again!

My life with Sandy has its roots in Star Wars. We were living in the Denver area when the first Star Wars Celebration was held there in 1999 in preparation for “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.” We got three-day passes and it was while we were standing in line to see one of the actors that I proposed to Sandy. The Force was with me that day and we’ve been happily married ever since.

When “The Phantom Menace” opened in theaters, we went to the midnight premier and then I took the next day off from work and saw back-to-back-to-back showings. We went to Toys-R-Us and bought the full line of action figures “for the kids.” I still have them.

For the record, I’m one of the few who actually like the Jar Jar Binks character. I even have a Facebook page called Bring Back Jar Jar Binks. Don’t judge me!

There once was a time when I believed I was the world’s greatest Star Wars fan. Over the years, I’ve learned the painful truth that I am not the world’s greatest Star Wars fan. As I’ve attended comic cons over the decades, I’ve seen people whose Star Wars fandom makes my interest seem more diminutive than a mouse droid. Still, it remains a big part of my life.

In 2019 I did a phone interview with Anthony Daniels, the actor who plays C-3PO. During our conversation he said, “please tell me you didn’t name any of your children Luke.” Umm. I tried explaining to him that he was named for biblical reasons, not Star Wars. I don’t think he believed me.

Over the years I’ve gotten to meet many Star Wars and Star Trek actors at comic cons. The one I got to know best was Peter Mayhew, the gentle giant who played Chewbacca. At one point he even used one of my pictures of him as his Facebook profile picture. I was incredibly honored!

Another Star Wars honor I received came in 2011. I went to Houston’s Comicpalooza dressed in my Lone Ranger costume and Boba Fett actor Jeremy Bullock stopped me and asked to have his picture taken with me. Apparently, he was a big Lone Ranger fan.

This weekend is Comicpalooza but I’m not going. They quit bringing in A-list celebrities a few years back and it has hardly been worth the time and expense to go. Instead, I’m hoping to return to SpaceCon in San Antonio on June 12-14. It’s loaded with an embarrassment of riches in A-list celebrities, including Tom Hiddleston, Ian McDiarmid, Hayden Christensen, Jimmy Smits, Karl Urban, Zachary Quinto, William Shatner, and far too many more to name here.

Of all the celebrities I’ve encountered over the years, the holy trinity of Star Wars has eluded me. We’ve lost Carrie Fisher, but Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford remain on the top of my Star Wars bucket list. Seeing them would make my circle to 1977 complete. This is the way!

Advice for graduates

 

There is one nugget of advice that I still remember from my college graduation nearly 40 years ago.

I don’t remember the speaker’s name or most of what he said. I do remember him concluding with the advice that when someone asks you where you went to college to proudly proclaim Adams State College like it was the biggest, most prestigious college in the nation.

When people invariably ask where that is, respond with bold confidence and an air of surprise like they should know that.

For the record, Adams State is located in Alamosa, Colorado, high in the San Luis Valley in the south-central part of the state. And it is no longer Adams State College. In 2012 it became Adams State University. And the mascot is no longer the Indians. We are the Grizzlies. The student newspaper where I learned print journalism was The South Coloradan. Now it’s the Paw Print.

When I graduated, Adams State had an enrolment of about 2,000 students. There were about 200 in my graduating class. Today the enrollment is over 3,000.

Adams State is about the size of a large high school in Texas. The entire student body and most of their guests still wouldn’t fill Texas A&M’s Reed Arena, which is packed out numerous times each spring for graduation.

Between all the high school and college graduations taking place, there will be a lot of advice given to those moving on to their next stage of life. I think I’ve heard just about all of it in the many ceremonies I’ve attended. Between graduations of family members to the numerous ones I’ve covered as a reporter, I’ve sat through the droning of countless speeches.

Although the names and faces of the speakers have faded from my memory, some of the advice has stuck. That’s probably because the best advice has been given many times in many ways. What follows, in a nutshell, is the best of that advice.

First, you are in charge now. Mommy and daddy are no longer calling the shots (at least they shouldn’t be). No one is going to tell you what to do with your life. Where you go and what you do is up to you now. It’s time to pull up your big boy pants and enter the real world.

Second, make the most of what you have. Your formal education and life experiences have brought you this far and made you the person you are. It’s time to up your game. The more you give, the more you get. As the saying goes, there are three kinds of people in the world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened. Which one will you be?

Third, always be grateful. You didn’t get where you are by yourself and you won’t get to where you’re going alone. There are people who have helped you along the way and people you don’t know yet who will come alongside you when you need them most. Always express gratitude and never look down on anyone.

Fourth, don’t quit! There will be times when you don’t feel you can go on and that your dream is unachievable. There will be naysayers who will tell you it can’t be done and they will dog you each step of the way. Don’t quit! Keep focused on your dream, your goal, and when things get hard or the path is blocked, knuckle down and find another way. There is no direct path to success. Be persistent and always moving forward.

Fifth, learn from your mistakes. All of us have failures. As the late Zig Ziglar used to say, “Failure is an event, not a person.” We grow and learn from our failures and mistakes. I like the saying, “Success is built one failure at a time.”

To the graduates I would say, “You got this!” This is your time and the world is your stage. Step out, be bold, forge your path forward but never forget where you come from. Sorry Aggies, but I’m from Adams State and proud of it!

Memories of Mom on Mother's Day

 

Mother’s Day is not just another Hallmark holiday.

Yeah, the traditional cards, flowers and dinner out are perennial requirements, but they’re not the most important thing to a mom – or so I’m told. It’s hard for me as a man to speak for mothers, but at my age I have learned a few things about the importance of moms.

More than anything, moms need love and validation. They do so much for us, seen and unseen, that we owe our moms a debt we can never repay.

The momma bears, helicopter moms, the barely-hanging-on moms – all of them play a vital role in our lives. From the moment she becomes pregnant, a woman never stops being a mom. Some dads may quit, but a mother never does. Her work and her worries never end.

As a child, I never knew or understood how much grief I must have put my mother through. And if she knew half the stuff I did behind her back it would have killed her. But she would love me just the same.

I lost my mom 12 years ago. It was the most painful loss of my life. As I’ve gone through my own parenting journey and reflected on my childhood, I’ve come to realize that she had a strength beyond my imagination. I know she must have known about the contraband I hid in my room, the desserts I snuck, the chores I shirked, the lies I told and all the other things that little boys think they’re getting away with. I know she must have heard and felt my silent sobs when I privately cried about heartaches. Yet she never said a thing.

I can’t count the number of times she stood up to my father on my behalf, especially the times when I didn’t deserve it. I can’t thank her enough for the gas money she would slip me on the side or the nights she would stay up until I stumbled in at ridiculously late hours. I know I caused her to spend an inordinate amount of time in prayer.

I would not say my mother was a doormat or an enabler. She was far from that. She was a woman of deep faith, grace and love. That, in a nutshell, is how I picture motherhood. She let me spread my wings, even knowing when I was doomed to fail. She would pick me up, dust me off, and send me out to try again.

I have been incredibly fortunate to have three other women in my life that I’ve called mom. Both of my mothers-in-law and my stepmother have been incredibly kind and loving people that I am truly honored and blessed to have had in my life. My ex-wife’s mother has passed away, but Sandy’s mother and my dad’s wife are very much a part of my life and I love them dearly.

And speaking of Sandy, I can’t let Mother’s Day go by without singing her praises. Since we were both previously married, she has been a mother as long as I’ve known her. Like any mom, she isn’t perfect, but she has been everything a mother can be and more to our four children. We didn’t have much while they were growing up, but that didn’t stop her from giving them everything she had.

Although my daughter mostly lived with her mom, we still had three boys in the house. Being active in church and Boy Scouts meant spending a lot of time on the go. Yet she managed to work, put herself through college and graduate school, and somehow take care of everything on the homefront. She was a den leader in Cub Scouts, a scoutmaster in Boy Scouts, and even volunteered at the district level for a while. At church she sang on the praise team and participated in plays and musicals.

I’m just scratching the surface of all the many things she did and continues to do. Even though our children are grown and out on their own, she’s the one they call when they need something or just want to talk. Being a mom doesn’t end when the children are grown. The circumstances change but the love and the worry and the stress remain the same.

I can’t wish my mom a happy Mother’s Day anymore, but I can certainly wish that to all the women who have loved and nurtured children of their own. Your passion, your love, your hurts, your pains, your enduring commitment are heartfelt, respected and needed.

So no, this Sunday is not just another Hallmark holiday. Be sure to tell your mom – and all the moms in your life – how much you love them and need them. Never miss a moment to let them know just how important they are.

Houston Gamblers not a safe bet

 

Two decades after the Houston Gamblers lit up the Astrodome scoreboard in the United States Football League, a new version of the Gamblers has returned to its Houston roots.

To be sure, this isn’t your father’s Houston Gamblers. About the only thing the two teams have in common are a name and spring football. The original Gamblers joined the USFL in the 1984 and 1985 seasons. It was a fun and explosive team that featured quarterback Jim “Machine Gun” Kelly and the rapid-fire Run & Shoot offense.

Jack Pardee was the head coach and in 1984 he brought on Darell “Mouse” Davis as his offensive coordinator. Davis was a master with the Run & Shoot offense and proved it by setting the single-season scoring record with 618 points. The Houston Gamblers played in the Astrodome and had an average attendance of 23,500. They went 23-13 in two seasons, making the playoffs both years.

After three seasons the USFL announced plans to move to the fall and go head-to-head with the NFL. That fateful decision was strongarmed by New Jersey Generals owner Donald Trump, who coerced the other team owners into following his lead. Trump led the USFL into an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL and won. But the jury only awarded $1 in damages, which under antitrust laws was tripled to $3. The gambit was a bust and the league never played another season.

In 2001, wrestling promoter Vince McMahon launched the XFL with all the glitz and fanfare he was known for with the World Wrestling Federation. It lasted one season. McMahon revived the XFL in 2020 and it generated a lot of excitement in Houston where the Roughnecks, playing at the University of Houston’s TDECU Stadium, went 5-0 under coach June Jones before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the league. The league filed bankruptcy, but actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and his ex-wife Dany Garcia purchased it for $15 million and brought it back in 2023.

In the meantime, Fox Sports and its partners revived the USFL in 2022. An eight-team league was formed including the Houston Gamblers, this time under former Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin. The league played all its games in Birmingham, Alabama. That year the Gamblers went 3-7, finishing last in the South Division.

The next year was a rarity for spring football. Two leagues were in operation, the USFL and the XFL. Houston had teams in both leagues. The Roughnecks returned to TDECU Stadium, and the Gamblers played their games in Memphis, Tennessee. This time Curtis Johnson took over for Sumlin with the Gamblers and Wade Phillips took the reins of the Roughnecks. The Gamblers returned to the USFL South cellar with a 5-5 record while Phillips led the Roughnecks to a 7-3 record and a playoff appearance.

In 2024 the USFL and XFL merged to form the UFL. The two Houston teams merged, keeping the Gamblers’ coaching staff and players but playing as the Roughnecks. Three other USFL teams were retained, along with four XFL teams. Due to construction at TDECU Stadium, the Roughnecks spent that season in the dreary confines of Rice Stadium.

Johnson coached the Roughnecks to a 1-9 last place finish. The team returned to TDECU Stadium in 2025 and went 5-5, once more missing the playoffs. At the end of the season Johnson was finally dumped and replaced by Sumlin.

This year the UFL is back but completely reorganized. The Roughnecks are now the Houston Gamblers. The Birmingham Stallions is the only other remaining team from the USFL. The Dallas Renegades, St. Louis Battlehawks and DC Defenders remain from the XFL. Joining the league this year are the Orlando Storm, Louisville Kings, and the Columbus Aviators.

The Gamblers play in Shell Stadium, the home of Houston’s professional soccer teams. I wanted to photograph the home opener between the Gamblers and the Stallions for sentimental reasons being a fan of the old USFL. I couldn’t make it, but I did photograph last week’s game against the Aviators. The Gamblers won 17-13 to improve their record to 2-3.

The official attendance for the game was 5,166, but that’s give or take about 4,000 people. Their first home game was held on Easter Sunday. The second was on a Thursday night, and the last game was under a forecast of rain. The next home game falls on Mother’s Day. This just isn’t good planning on the part of the league.

From the first season of the Roughnecks in the XFL to the current season of the Gamblers in the UFL, the quality of the gameday experience has steadily declined. Houston football fans are fair weather and they don’t back losers. When the Roughnecks were good and the games well hyped, the fans were there. What I saw last Sunday had all the enthusiasm of a junior high football game. They don’t even have logos on the field.

I really want to get behind this team and this league but it’s got to improve the quality of the product and the gameday experience. The spring football concept is solid and it works but the league isn’t doing much to connect with fans and generate excitement.

The whole league is based in Dallas, with teams only going to their respective markets for games. If the league wants to grow and expand, it must first endear itself to the fans and bring them along for the ride.

What to know about the Savannah Bananas

 

A few weeks ago I wrote about how difficult it was to describe the Blue Man Group. The same can be said about the Savannah Bananas.

The most common way to describe the Bananas is to say they are the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball. Only what they do is so extraordinarily entertaining that they’ve quit calling themselves a baseball team and refer to what they do as Banana Ball.

The Bananas sold out Kyle Field months ago and will be performing/playing there next Saturday, May 2. With Texas A&M’s football stadium able to seat more than 102,000 fans, it will be the largest crowd to ever watch the Bananas play their game. The current record is a mere 81,000 at Memorial Stadium in Clemson, South Carolina.

I had the privilege of covering the Savannah Bananas when they played the Party Animals at Sugar Land’s Constellation Field in 2023. It was hilarious and wildly entertaining. It’s interesting in that there is so much spontaneity in the show, yet it is carefully scripted to fit in a two-hour window.

At Constellation Field, the team, the mascot, and Jessie Cole, the team’s owner and Top Banana, met with fans outside the gates before they opened and enthusiastically rallied the fans, led cheers, posed for pictures and essentially gave a ticket-worthy performance before the game started.

They continued to greet fans, sign autographs and pose for pictures as fans entered the stadium. Fan interaction is a huge part of what they do. In this particular game, the Bananas wore yellow and black plaid kilts. The Party Animals wore black and neon pink baseball uniforms.

Throughout the game there were skits, spoofs of popular movie scenes, and even some singing and dancing. The game was interrupted for an actual wedding at the pitcher’s mound.

The most visible of the players is Dakota “Stilts” Albritton, who bats, pitches, and fields while walking on stilts. It’s that kind of gimmickry that makes the game so memorable.

And to be sure, it is a game. The outcome is not scripted. The game even has its own rules that differentiate it from baseball. First, the scoring is different. The team that wins an inning gets a point, except the last inning where every run counts. The team with the most points wins.

There is a two-hour limit, so no new inning can be started after two hours. If a batter steps out of the batter’s box, it’s a strike. Bunting is not allowed. A batter who bunts is ejected from the game. A batter can steal first base, usually on a passed ball or wild pitch.

There are no walks. If a pitcher throws ball four, it becomes a sprint. The hitter takes off running and can advance to as many bases as he wants. Every defensive player on the field, excluding pitcher and catcher, must touch the ball before it becomes live.

Mound visits are prohibited. If a fan catches a foul ball, the batter is out. It needs to be a clean catch with no bobbles or juggling.

The Golden Batter Rule allows a team to bring up a batter one time no matter where he falls in the lineup. Each team is allowed to have one challenge. If they win, they get to keep the challenge. The fans also get a challenge. Prior to the game, one fan is chosen to represent the fans. That person can challenge one play a night. The fan will shoot off confetti and hold up the “Fan Challenge” sign to make it official.

If the game is tied at the end of the two hours, the game goes into a Showdown Tiebreaker. In each Showdown, if the hitter scores, it’s worth one point. If they get out, no points are given. In the first round, the hitter faces the pitcher, catcher, and one fielder. If it goes to a second round, it’s just the pitcher and catcher against the hitter. If it goes to a third round, it’s the pitcher, catcher, and fielder against the hitter with the bases loaded.

When I saw the Savannah Bananas in Sugar Land, they traveled with the Party Animals as their sole opponent. Now it’s a six-team league with the Firefighters, Texas Tailgaters, Loco Beach Coconuts, and the Indianapolis Clowns getting into the mix. Next Saturday the Bananas will square off against the Texas Tailgaters at Kyle Field.

Hopefully this will give you something of an idea of what to expect out of Banana Ball. Like the Blue Man Group, it’s something you have to experience because it’s darn near impossible to describe it. I hope to see you there!

Artemis II takes slow ride around dark side of the moon

 The Artemis II mission that sent four astronauts around the moon is something of an enigma.

On one hand it was a huge success, a historic milestone to be celebrated for generations. On the other hand, it was a prime example of how inefficient a government-run agency can be. As an amateur space junkie, I have been following NASA space missions for decades. Whenever I can, I take advantage of my position as a reporter to cover launches and interview astronauts. I have interviewed three of the 12 men who have walked on the moon.

If it’s space related, I’m there. I will go outside at night to watch the International Space Station fly by or to look at planetary alignments or eclipses.

In 2022 I was working in Wharton when astronaut Victor Glover came to speak at Abell Street Church of Christ. I wanted to meet him, but I had a scheduling conflict. The church sent me a video of his talk and I wrote my story from that.

The next year Glover was named the pilot of the Artemis II mission to fly around the moon. That mission faced more than two years of delays and just ended yesterday (April 10). Glover became the first person of color to fly to the moon. He was joined by Christina Koch, the first woman to fly to the moon; Jeremy Hansen of Canada, the first non-American to fly to the moon; and Reid Wiseman, who has the distinction of being the 25th white American man to fly to the moon.

The flyby around the moon marked the first time in 53 years that humans have made the journey. The last time was in 1972 when Apollo 17 concluded the moon landing missions. Since then we have had Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and the space shuttles.

Since the gung-ho days of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, NASA has been slow to meet objectives in space. It took the agency a decade to go from concept to launch of the first space shuttle, this after going from sub-orbital flight to landing on the moon in eight years. Granted, the space race influenced the rush in the 1960s, but since then NASA has been taking its own sweet time.

The original timeline for the Artemis program called for Artemis I to fly in 2016. The uncrewed mission flew in 2022. Artemis II was supposed to have flown in 2021-2022. It flew in 2026. Artemis III was supposed to land humans on the moon in 2024. It has been reassigned as a lunar orbital mission, going up who knows when. The next moon landing is now scheduled to be with Artemis IV in 2028. I’ll believe it when I see it.

In the time between Artemis I and Artemis II, over 100 humans have flown into space (using a very liberal definition of space). SpaceX sent 26 astronauts to the ISS on behalf of NASA. Russia sent 15 people to the ISS using its Soyuz spacecraft. Blue Origin has flown 24 people above the Karman line on sub-orbital flights. Even Virgin Galactic has flown 30 people on sub-orbital flights in that time, although they were below the Karman line but above the American definition of space.

China has its own space station and has flown 21 people to it in the time between the two Artemis missions. It has taken NASA over 15 years to send humans into space in its own vehicles since the last space shuttle mission.

NASA was once the undisputed leader in space. Now the agency is dragging its feet as a new space race is ramping up with China reportedly working on a moon mission. I really want to get excited about returning to the moon, but all of the delays make it hard to get your hopes up.

After watching the Apollo moon landing missions as a little kid, I’ve always held out hope of seeing humans return to the moon and eventually land on Mars. At my age now I’m hopeful of seeing humans return to the moon, but I have serious doubts about living long enough to see mankind set foot on Mars.

Still, despite all of this frustration, I must admit that it’s an exciting time to be alive to witness these amazing accomplishments and to dream, hope and be inspired by what America is doing in space. Now if we can just light a fire under NASA and get it moving a little faster (without compromising safety), maybe we’ll be able to enjoy that rush of adventure and excitement that we had when Apollo 11 made that giant leap for mankind.

Blue Man Group more than musical mimes

 

If you had told me the show was about some musical mimes, I probably would have taken a pass on it.

To describe the Blue Man Group as merely musical mimes, although accurate, would have been a gross understatement. It would have been like describing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as a piece of bread with squished grapes and peanuts on it.

Sandy and I attended the Blue Man Group performance Tuesday, March 31, at Rudder Auditorium. The two-night appearance of the funniest trio since the Three Stooges concluded the 53rd season of OPAS at Texas A&M. It was the second OPAS show we saw this year, having gone to “The Music Man” two weeks earlier.

I had the privilege of doing a phone interview with Chris Smith, one of the Blue Men, a few weeks ago to promote the appearance. In the interview he noted the difficulty of describing exactly what the Blue Man Group is. After the show I put that challenge to Sandy. We struggled to come up with an adequate description. Smith referred to it as a “clown rock show.”

“It’s an amalgamation of a lot of different things that we’ve come to know and love from both theater and from music and concerts,” he said. “But really it’s an experience that’s got a lot of drumming, a lot of comedy. There’s no fourth wall, so the Blue Men and The Rockstar, the cast members on stage, are looking right at you.

“There’s a lot of audience participation, even pieces from the show that we don’t know what’s going to happen that night. We’ll pull somebody up there and we’ll see what happens. But really, I like to think of it as kind of like a clown rock show to some degree. But really, all of it’s under the goal of us forging a really fun connection with the audience and hopefully getting people from all ages to really kind of reconnect with their inner child, is the goal.”

The Blue Men are three guys in bald caps coated in deep blue face paint. They have been joined in recent years by a performer called The Rockstar, a female DJ drummer. They don’t speak, although there is some narration during the performance. The show is heavy on drumming, and paint, and optical illusions, and audience participation, and the abuse of food.

Imagine watching a show that is a mix of a rock concert, vaudeville slapstick, and magic while under the influence of some far-out hallucinogens. It’s colorful, fast-paced and wildly entertaining. I felt like we went from one belly laugh to the next for 90 minutes. The smile never left my face.

Not since my children were in a Sunday night youth group at church have I seen food so hilariously abused. The Blue Men were catching gumballs and marshmallows – lots and lots of marshmallows – in their mouths and spewing out works of art. They also had a thing for boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal. It was a running gag, and they milked it for all it was worth.

Drumming is a huge part of the show. The Rockstar banged on the drums so frantically it was almost an athletic performance. The Blue Men also did a lot of drumming, often with colored “paint” poured onto the drums so they made vividly colorful splashes. They also “drummed” on creations made from PVC pipe, one of them called a drumbone.

One of the enduring qualities of the Blue Man Group is their wide-eyed expressions as they naively explore the world around them. Their sit-com curiosity and playful antics make for a ton of laughs.

The show has an added layer of visual effects and dazzling lights that overload the senses and keep the action moving. There are times when light and reality blend so well you really can’t tell them apart.

I’ve never seen anything like it, which is part of the reason it is so hard to describe the Blue Man Group. The uniqueness and spontaneity of the show is reminiscent of Robin Williams in his early days of performing when he was so crazy and unpredictable.

So, yeah. It’s so much more than musical mimes. There’s no putting these guys in an invisible box, or any box at all. This is outside-the-box entertainment at its best and I hope I get to see them again someday.

Character counts more than ever

 In my job I write quite a bit about Texas A&M’s RELLIS campus. The other day I paused to think about what the acronym RELLIS stands for.

RELLIS stands for the Aggie core values of Respect, Excellence, Leadership, Loyalty, Integrity, and Selfless service. Those are some great, foundational values. It also got me thinking about character traits. Character is very important to me. Several years ago I took a series of online assessments. The consistent thing they revealed is that I’m character driven.

I owe that to the Christian values I grew up with and reinforced as a Boy Scout. I spent decades as a Scout and Scout leader vowing to uphold the Scout Oath and Scout Law.

Scout Oath: On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

Scout Law: A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.

I can’t say that I achieve all of that all of the time, but I do strive for it. I’ve had my shortcomings. We all do. The main thing is to put those failures behind you and course correct to doing what is good and what is right.

A person’s character reflects how they think and act. What you feed your mind directly impacts the things you say and do. You can’t be a positive person if you fill your mind with filth and negativity. As they say, garbage in, garbage out.

I believe in living my life by the Golden Rule, the biblical principle of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you (Matthew 7:12). I also believe, and sometimes struggle with, the command from Jesus to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:43-44).

After being whipped, beaten, spit on, cursed, and lied about, Jesus hung nailed on the cross and asked God to forgive his tormentors. That is the ultimate display of love and integrity. I can’t imagine going through that and still loving the ones causing you the most harm. I, like many people, get offended at small slights on social media. Sometimes we just need this reality check from Jesus, say bless your heart, and move on.

In recent weeks I have written stories about second chances given to offenders in the juvenile justice system. I think it’s great that our local justice system is focused on reform over punishment. I’ve heard several officials talk about how these kids are not bad people, they’ve just made bad choices.

Many of these kids have never learned the importance of good character and strong moral values. They haven’t been taught at home. Their negative actions stem from the lack of parental guidance and the infusion of negative digital influences. Children need and crave positive human interaction, especially from their parents. Too often in our hurried lives parents let a computer screen babysit their youngsters when what they really need is personal connection.

We’ve got generations who don’t know how to respectfully interact with other people. They are not being taught right from wrong, the importance of winning and losing, being generous and not greedy, and selflessness over vanity. How we right this ship and reestablish a moral compass is going to require a lot of hard work.

One of the foundations is focusing on these positive traits and keeping in mind the core values of RELLIS, the Scout Law, and the teachings of Jesus. We need to unplug from our screens and plug into real life. We need love, adventure, and friendship. We need each other and we need it now.

Oh deer!

 

I was driving home Friday night, March 6, along Boonville Road minding my own business when all of a sudden BAM! Something hit me.

My first thought was that someone heading in the opposite direction threw something at my car, or perhaps I ran over something I hadn’t seen. I was eastbound and had just passed University Drive on my way to Elmo Weedon Road when I heard a thunk that rocked my Toyota Corolla. There was a scarcely used turn lane ahead of me, so I pulled into it and stopped.

I flipped on my hazard lights, turned off the car, and tried to open the door. It was stuck and I had to force it enough to get out. I looked at the side of my car and noticed the door and front quarter panel were crunched up pretty good.

I looked behind me and saw something in the median. At first thought it was a gunny sack. I started walking toward it when I noticed it had legs and a head on a long neck. Oh deer! It was a doe and as I got up to her I could clearly see she was dead. I snapped a couple pictures with my cell phone and walked back to my car. That’s when a gust of wind kicked up and blew the door closed. I could not open it again.

I texted a picture of my crunched Corolla and a brief message to my wife and then opened my AAA app to request a tow. After answering what seemed like a hundred questions, the app confirmed that a towing company had been contacted and help would arrive in about an hour.

As I waited, I opened the back door, sat down and posted a couple pictures on Facebook with the caption, “This is not how I expected my day to go.” As I was wrapping up my post, Sandy arrived to rescue me. She opened up our insurance app on her phone and began filing a claim. That triggered a text to me and soon we were both circling the car taking photos of it in response to instructions from the insurance company.

Most of the hour spent waiting for the tow truck was spent responding to automated queries from the insurance company. In the meantime, there were at least a half-dozen people who stopped to see if we needed help. You gotta love how friendly people are here.

Once the car was loaded onto the tow truck and on its way to a local paint and body shop, we got into Sandy’s car and headed home. I got on my phone and opened my Facebook app to see what kind of response my post was getting. It got a lot! Most surprisingly, a friend from church was driving westbound on Boonville and saw the whole thing happen. She saw more of my accident than I did!

We live in a community about eight miles outside town on Elmo Weedon and we normally see a lot of deer along that road. I always figured that if we ever hit a deer, it would be on Elmo Weedon. I never suspected there would be one on a four-lane divided highway on the outskirts of town. I guess I know better now.

This is far from being our first deer strike. It was definitely the most damaging. A few years ago in Kerrville we were driving out of town to Fredericksburg when a deer ran out in front of us and damaged the front end of Sandy’s car. The deer got up and walked into the next lane and got hit by another car. It got up again, wobbled to the side of the road and collapsed. A passerby in a dually stopped to check on us and then dispatched the deer with a handgun before driving off.

Over the years I’ve contributed to may fair share of roadkill. Mostly it’s been birds and small anim … SQUIRREL! In high school I used to play tag with prairie dogs that lived in a large colony along the road between my house and the school. I normally try to break for wildlife, but that’s not always possible. Sometimes they get that deer-in-the-headlights look in their eyes and the next thing you know they’re scavenger snacks.

One thing I never stopped to consider is what you’re supposed to do about animal carcasses on the road. Most of the local carrion is consumed by vultures and other scavengers. If something needs to be removed from the roadway, the agency to call differs by location.

In Brazos County, call the Road and Bridge Department at 979-822-2127. After hours, call the non-emergency dispatch at 979-361-3888. In Bryan, call the Public Works Call Center at 979-209-5900. In College Station, call Animal Control at 979-764-3600.

So, there is your helpful tip for the day and a lesson learned from a darting deer.

Musical memories take you back in time

 

It’s funny how a certain song can suddenly teleport you back in time and overwhelm you with emotion and indelible memories.

We were talking about musical memories the other day in the newsroom and immediately certain songs came to mind. Every time I hear “La Bamba” by Los Lobos I instantly return to a Pizza Hut in Rochester, Minnesota, in the fall of 1987. I was an assistant manager there and it was by far the most popular song on the jukebox. It played over and over and over. I got sick of it – almost as sick as I was of the job.

Most songs, however, take me to a happy place. Whenever I hear “Roseanna” by Toto I’m suddenly at the Ben Delatour Scout Ranch in Red Feather Lakes, Colorado, where I was on camp staff in 1982. That song is one of my all-time favorites, probably because of the incredible memories of my time at camp while the song was popular.

Similarly, whenever I hear Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” I’m back in the locker room at Everly-Montgomery Field in Longmont, Colorado, dressed in my football gear and getting psyched up for a big game. I rarely got to play, but the emotional attachment was strong. On a side note, that song was a shoo-in to be our senior class song at Niwot High School until some goofballs nominated “Wasted On The Way” by Crosby, Stills and Nash. They did it as a joke and I was livid when it won.

If you go through the playlists on my iPhone, you will see it’s mostly music from the 1970s and 1980s. Although I don’t sing and can’t play an instrument, music had a profound impact on me in my junior high, high school and college years. There are very few rock and roll songs that I like after the 1980s and even fewer country songs after the 1990s.

I think that’s the norm for most generations to latch onto the music they grew up with. It explains our ability to sing along with songs that we haven’t heard in years, while at the same time we can’t remember why we walked into the room.

As a boy I listened to classic country and hated rock music. Waylon and Willie, Glen Campbell, Ronnie Milsap, John Denver, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Barbara Mandrell – ah, that is good music!

My Baptist upbringing taught me that rock was the devil’s music. I had no need for it, that is, until I got into high school and started listening to it with my buddies. I became a hardcore ’80s rock fan. Helping to ease that transition was the Oak Ridge Boys when they came out with crossover hits “Elvira” and “Bobby Sue.”

I started going to concerts in high school and College and saw .38 Special, Journey, Night Ranger, the Beach Boys, and many more. Over those years my interest in rock music from the ’60s and ’70s took off. In college, my musical taste took a twist when MTV started playing old “The Monkees” TV shows. I was instantly hooked and became obsessed with Pre-Fab Four. My friends and I saw them in concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater. Weird Al Yankovic opened for them. I bought all of their cassette tapes and reveled in their new music. Years later I even tracked Micky Dolenz down while on a solo tour and did a pre-show interview with him.

Depending on which Monkees song comes on, it takes me back to Adams State College or to Red Rocks. I have a tendency to become musically obsessed at times. In the 1990s I went through my Garth Brooks phase. I got to cover one of his concerts and even asked him a question at a press conference. Other obsessions have ranged from Donna Fargo to ABBA to, more recently, Neil Diamond. The movie “Song Sung Blue” triggered me emotionally and I have Diamond earworms most days.

When it comes to music, the one thing that lights me up more than anything else is hearing the “Star Wars” theme. The 11-year-old kid in me pushes to the surface and does his Jedi mind tricks on me. I’m awestruck and inspired each time I hear that iconic music by John Williams. I love a lot of movie soundtracks, but nothing comes close to the original “Star Wars.” That music takes me to a place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Sometimes it keeps me there.

How about you? What songs send you to your happy place?

Back where it all began

 

Here we go again, back to the place where it all began for me – and Texas!

Saturday is the big annual celebration at Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site in honor of Texas Independence Day. Each year the historic site celebrates the signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence on the weekend closest to the March 2 date. It was 190 years ago on March 2, 1836, at Washington-on-the-Brazos when 59 delegates signed the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico, birthing a new nation on the North American continent.

Washington-on-the-Brazos is also the place that birthed my interest in Texas history and my participation in the Texas Army reenactment group. When Sandy and I moved our family to Rosenberg, southwest of Houston, in 2008, we came here flat broke and with little knowledge of the state’s unique history. In February of 2009, we learned about this free historic event going on at Washington-on-the-Brazos, or WOB for short, and we decided to check it out.

I don’t remember much about the day beyond the few memories preserved in digital photographs. Being a Colorado native, it was my first exposure to the history of the Texas Revolution. I remember being impressed with the Star of the Republic Museum and really enjoying the musket and cannon firing demonstrations. There were also booths where you could experience skills from the 1830s or buy furs and various trinkets.

We went into the replica of Independence Hall and my kids got to write with feather ink pens on parchment. The most significant part of the day was lost on me at the time, but that’s when I first met guys who would become some of my closest friends. We visited the Texas Army camp where we met some of the reenactors and asked the typical touristy questions.

We enjoyed the festivities and made several return trips over the years. We also visited the other major Texas Revolution sites, including Gonzales, Goliad, San Jacinto and the Alamo. Eventually I got the bright idea that I would write a coffee table photo book about the Texas Revolution from the standpoint of the reenactors. I started following them for a few years, taking photos and doing interviews.

After a while, the guys in the Texas Army cajoled me into joining them. We went to Washington-on-the-Brazos in 2018 where I was loaned an outfit and a gun. That’s all it took to win me over. A bunch of us went to Independence Hall, where I filled out and signed my application to join the Texas Army.

Since then, I’ve completed my qualification to become a colonel in the Texas Army and am now serving as an elected member of the command staff. A couple years ago at WOB I got my first experience on a cannon crew. I’ve done it a few other times, but my preference is to fire muskets with the infantry.

So, here we are, back at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a two-year hiatus while the site was undergoing a major renovation. Several replica buildings have been built on the townsite, and the Star of the Republic Museum has been gutted and rebuilt to provide a more hands-on experience.

If you have not been to Washington-on-the-Brazos, or it’s been a while, you really need to go. In addition to my duties with the Texas Army, Sandy and I became volunteers at WOB and Friday we participated in the first Echoes of Independence: A Lantern Tour of the new townsite. We will spend the day Saturday dressed in our 1830s garb, demonstrating skills, visiting with guests and posing for pictures.

Although Washington County’s burn ban will prohibit us from having outdoor fires and firing cannons, we will still be doing demonstrations and firing our muskets. Firing demonstrations will take place on Saturday at 11:30 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Admission to the site is free on Saturday and there will be a lot to see and do.

On Monday, March 2, the Sons of the Republic of Texas Lone Star Chapter will host the Texas Independence Day Celebration at the site’s amphitheater. State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst will be the keynote speaker at the event. The program begins at 1:30 p.m.

I’ve been nickel and dimed by Dave Ramsey

 

I’ve been nickel and dimed by Dave Ramsey!

Actually, I did the nickel and diming myself. I was just inspired by Dave Ramsey.

If you’re not familiar with Ramsey, take a few minutes to look him up before you read on. It’s OK, I’ll wait for you.

When Sandy and I were married in 1999, we began following the teachings of Larry Burkett, who was a pioneer in the field of Christian stewardship of personal finances and the founder of Crown Financial Ministries. His passing in 2003 left us in lurch, but then along came Dave Ramsey to fill the void. Ramsey took Burkett’s teachings to the next level and then skyrocketed from there.

Ramsey’s primary focus has been to use biblical principles to help people get out of debt and to thrive financially. He is best known for his seven baby steps program to help people discover financial freedom. Those steps are:

1. Save $1,000 for a starter emergency fund.

2. Pay off all debt except the house using the debt snowball.

3. Save 3-6 months’ worth of expenses in a fully funded emergency fund.

4. Invest 15% of your household income in a retirement fund.

5. Save for your children’s college fund.

6. Pay off your home early.

7. Build wealth and give.

I met Dave Ramsey on Oct. 7, 2011, at Katy Mills Mall while he was on a book tour for “EntreLeadership.” I was invited to interview him in the parking lot on his tour bus, which he informed me was the former Madden Cruiser. It was a hot day and after he welcomed me aboard he gave me a bottle of water to drink. I took a deep swig and then set it aside while we did the interview.

I don’t recall how long we spoke, but I remember being enthralled by what he had to say. At the end of the interview his assistant used my camera and took a picture of me and Dave together. As I was leaving the bus, Dave called out to me and handed me my unfinished bottle of Deer Park water and said, “Don’t forget this.”

I went inside the mall and covered his appearance at Books A Million. He gave a short motivational talk and then sat down to sign books and pose for pictures. As I left the mall I finished drinking the water on my way home. I was reluctant, however, to throw away the plastic bottle. It was a gift from Dave Ramsey and a visual reminder of not only our meeting, but the biblical and financial principles he espouses.

I didn’t want to keep a plastic water bottle sitting around like so much clutter, so I came up with a plan to use it. I turned it into a piggy bank of sorts. At the end of each day I dropped my nickels and dimes into it. The opening was too small for quarters, and I didn’t feel pennies were worthy of Dave Ramsey. So, I started nickel and diming my way to saving money.

It was a slow process. This was about the time we were shifting from cash to debit cards to pay for things. Pocket change became scarce and in the last few years I’ve hardly had any at all. Still, the bottle sat on my dresser, slowly filling up with the small coins.

This week, after months of stagnation on the project, I broke down and got a dollar’s worth of change to top off the bottle. Sandy also chipped in her nickels and dimes. After nearly 15 years I managed to save a whopping $49.11. (Yeah, a very dirty and beat up penny snuck in.)

I’ve often wondered what Dave Ramsey would think of my little project. At the time I started it I thought it might take a year or two to fill the bottle and that I would have enough money to take my wife to dinner and a movie. Thanks to inflation, we can either do dinner or a movie.

The wise thing to do would be to use the money to help pay off debt or to tuck it away in a savings account. I think that’s what Dave Ramsey would do. The smart thing to do would be to take my wife on a date, especially now that she knows I have the cash on hand.

That leaves me with one problem. Now that I have emptied my deluxe edition Dave Ramsey Deer Park water bottle, what am I going to do with it?

True hope for a happy Valentine's Day

 

“In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” – Alfred Lord Tennyson

“On Valentine’s Day a young man’s fancy becomes laser focused on thoughts of sex.” There, I said it, so you don’t have to. Let’s face it guys, it’s true (and not just on Valentine’s Day).

Valentine’s Day means different things to different people. For the women, it means love, romance, flowers, chocolates, candies, cards, special meals at a favorite restaurant, and time spent in scintillating conversation with that special someone. For the men it means trying to do all those things without screwing up or breaking the bank.

A woman wants her man to gaze into her eyes and flatter her with sweet nothings. A man wants to stare at her chest and undress her with his eyes. For women, Valentine’s Day is about relationships. For guys, it’s about getting lucky.

With Valentine’s Day upon us, I thought I’d take a moment to do a little research (Googling). Like many of our holidays, Valentine’s Day morphed over the years. The most widely accepted version is that a priest named Valentine was arrested for violating the Roman emperor’s decree forbidding young men to marry so they would be fit to serve in his army. Valentine married couples in secret until Emperor Claudius learned about it and had him imprisoned. While in jail, he fell in love with his jailor’s daughter. On the day he was put to death, Feb. 14, 272, he sent her a letter signed “From your Valentine.”

It is also believed that the pope established Feb. 14 as St. Valentine’s Day in an effort to combat the pagan celebration of Lupercalia, a time of honoring fertility. In the Middle Ages, a common belief arose that Feb. 14 marked the beginning of the mating season for birds. (My rooster, being the male of the species, has proven that mating season is a year-round event, so there!)

Eventually all of these beliefs and the practices of writing letters and giving candies transformed Valentine’s Day into the celebration of love that we have today.

So where does Cupid come from? The winged cherub who flies around shooting arrows of emotion at people got his start around 700 B.C. as the Greek god Eros. Roman mythology called him Cupid, the son of Venus and Mars. He evolved into a flying, cherubic infant with mischievous intent. It wasn’t until the 19th century that images of Cupid began appearing on Valentine’s Day cards that he became a symbol of the holiday.

Valentine’s Day is one of the most popular days for couples to become engaged. Feb. 14, 1999, was the day Sandy and I formally started dating. Engagements lead to weddings. For most of my life I believed that the concept of marriage originated in the Bible as the union of one man and one woman. The oldest known record of marriage dates back to 2350 B.C. in Mesopotamia. It was primarily a contractual tool for formalizing family alliances, transferring property and producing legitimate heirs.

Many cultures over the centuries have recognized varied forms of marriage, including polygamy and same-sex unions. In many cultures women were considered property and the marriage was more about contracts and property rights than it was love and commitment. (Ever hear of arranged marriages?) In fact, the concept of marriage being exclusively based on mutual love is only a couple centuries old.

I’m glad that marriage is based on love and not economics. If the institution of marriage were still economic, there is no way I could have ever gotten married. And I certainly couldn’t afford my wife! She is priceless to me. I am blessed beyond measure to have Sandy to hold ’til death do us part. Our relationship is only made stronger by the third person in it. Ours is a Christ-centered marriage. We are a cord of three strands that is not quickly broken (Ecclesiastes 4:12).

So, as we look at Valentine’s Day, love and marriage we can appreciate the evolution of families and relationships and the impact that they have made on the world as we know it. Let’s not stop celebrating and sharing love once this day has passed. We should honor Valentine’s Day as a reflection of love, romance, commitment, openness, sharing, vulnerability, and the eternal hope of getting lucky!

Super Bowl memories

 

Here we are just a day away from the kickoff of Super Bowl LX (60) and once more I have no vested interest in the outcome.

I’m sure I’m not alone in that regard. It’s been 10 years since my favorite team played in the big game. I’m a big Denver Broncos fan and this year we came within an injured quarterback of returning to the Super Bowl. I’m also a big fan of the Houston Texans, and when Denver and Houston comprised half the teams competing for a chance the represent the American Football Conference (AFC) in the Super Bowl, I had high hopes one of them would make it.

Thanks to the New England Patriots both teams will be sitting on a couch watching the game on TV like the rest of us. It’s a place the Dallas Cowboys know really well.

Like the rest of America, I’m sick of seeing the Patriots and the Kansas City Chiefs in the championship game. I felt that way about the Cowboys back in the ’90s but then so did much of the country.

Every football fan wants their favorite team to make it to the Super Bowl and win it. We long for our team to establish a dynasty but deplore it in other teams. If your team can’t be there most people opt to root for any new teams or a loveable underdog. Of the two teams playing tomorrow, the Seatle Seahawks have gone the longest since their last appearance 11 years ago, also against the Patriots. New England has gone back three times since then.

In the 60-year history of the Super Bowl, only four of the 32 teams have never gone. The Detroit Lions and Cleveland Browns haven’t been there, but they have won NFL championships prior to the start of the Super Bowl in 1966. The other two, the Texans and Jacksonville Jaguars, are among the newest teams in the NFL. It would be great to see these teams get their shot at glory rather than the usual suspects we’ve been stuck with for the last couple of decades (my Broncos excluded, of course).

It would even be nice to see teams with long Super Bowl droughts finally return to the big game, including the New York Jets (56 years), Minnesota Vikings (48 years) and the Miami Dolphins (40 years). I doubt we’ll see the Jets contending anytime soon, if ever, but you never know.

Traditionally Americans celebrate Super Bowl Sunday with more interest and gusto than your typical national holiday. I can honestly say I’ve never been invited to a President’s Day party. And don’t forget those warm, cozy family gatherings on Columbus Day. Super Bowl Sunday, however, is all about parties, food, drink, dressing up in your favorite team’s gear and watching pre-game programming that starts the week before the game.

Sandy usually puts together a pretty good spread of food for game day, whether we’re hosting a party or going to one. Sometimes it’s just us, and we eat well, probably better than we do at Thanksgiving! This year I won’t be crunching nachos, scarfing burgers or tipping back a cold one. I recently had oral surgery, and all that good stuff is still prohibited. Instead, I’ll be enjoying even more lime Jello, vanilla pudding, and plain Greek yogurt – yum!

When we were living in the Denver area, I remember going to church on the Sundays when Super Bowls XXXII (32) and XXXIII (33) were played. Everyone was so decked out in Broncos gear (myself included) that you’d think we were at Mile High Stadium, not church. It made me wonder who we were really worshiping those days.

In 2017, Houston hosted Super Bowl LI (51) between the Patriots and Atlanta Falcons. I didn’t get to attend the game, but I was credentialed to cover the “week of” activities. Sandy was a volunteer and worked at some of the venues. We had a great time with that game. I was pulling for the Falcons but was amazed at the comeback the Patriots made.

Since that game I really haven’t cared who won. That brings me back to tomorrow’s game. I’m sick of seeing the Patriots and I’m still miffed that they beat my two favorite teams to get there. I can’t bring myself to root for any team that beat the Broncos in the Super Bowl, so that excludes the Seahawks. Maybe it’s not too late to join the “I’m just here to watch the commercials” bandwagon.