New Years eve used to be a much more important holiday event than it is now.  We used to have grand parties planned and would meet with friends for a night of frivolity, drinking, eating and  all the other stuff that goes along with celebrating the passing of the old year into the new.  It has morphed into a much more sedate event in the last few years.  We normally go out to dinner, at a very early hour in order to avoid the crowds, and call it an evening at an equally early hour.  We are almost always in bed before the bewitching hour of midnight and take offense to be awaken by the neighbors who feel they must celebrate by having a fireworks display in the street in front of our house.  Although the city makes repeated announcement prior to the nite, that fireworks are against the law to have in your possession inside the city, well, it makes no difference.  I feel the only way to stop such lawlessness would be to shoot at them with my shotgun.  Dorothy frowns on that approach.  She claims that it is unneighborly.

I can remember a year when we went to a rock and roll review featuring some of the greats of that music genre.  Little Richard, Bo Diddly and the like.  We are more the Lawrence Welk type now.  Not that I dont enjoy music from the 50’s , its just that my body wont move to the beat of that music anymore.  I can really do the hesitation waltz, that being a dance where both dancers simply stand in one spot and sway back and forth.  It is stimulating and at the same time, not all that tiring, unless a hip goes out.  Being raised as Church of Christ, such a display would simply be a greased path to the gates of hell but I found out later in life that there were other actions that would get you there much quicker than dancing.  Really, the only licentious thought I ever had while dancing was whether I was gonna step on her foot before the song ended.  Oh, and besides that, most dance halls dont allow much licentiousness on the dance floor anyway. 

I saw a picture of cars at a drive in movie and the caption was ” Share if you remember what this is”.  I didnt share it but I remember what they were.  I think it is amazing that Pecos once had 3 drive ins at the same time.  The Texan, The Eagle and I think the Sun.  The one on the east side of town was the Sun, I think, but I could be wrong.  Spent a good deal of my formative years at the first two.  I can remember that some of you were there at the same time, watching the same movie, I think.  It didnt pay to do a lot of looking in other cars while you were out there.  I wish they would bring them back.  Wonder how much fun you could have by going to the drivein in a RV?  You could cook your own popcorn, would not have to get out and walk up to the snack bar to go pee, knowing that everyone knew where you were going or you could cook up a pot of chili and make your own hot dog.  Now that would be some fun. 

All of these thoughts are about things past.  That is what New Years eve is about i guess.  The past giving way to the new.  What new things are in store for us is unknown.  I hope we all are blessed with good health.  I hope each of us see fit to attend our next meeting of the class of 1961.  I hope we are prosperous.  I hope we dont start seeing more obits of people we knew and know.  I am doing a lot of hoping but I guess that is what keeps some of us going.  Hope springs eternal.

G 

We are at the tail end of what I consider to be a pretty good year.  I know, we all probably lost a few folks that we didn’t want to go, we have had some friends that were sick but I still think we did all right.  We will probably even survive Obama care and whatever else he manages to throw in the fan before he gets through.

I hope each of us remember how blessed we are in what we now have and what we will surely gain in the future.  I hope each of us remembers how many friends we have and how precious they are to us.  Most of all I hope each of us remembers old friends.  Our forever friends are those folks that never leave our hearts and minds.  Those are the friends who know things about us and are kind enough not to tell stories on us.  Mostly because they know that we know the same type things on them.  It is not necessary to see those forever friends on a daily basis but maybe we think about them frequently.  oh, hell, you know what I mean.

My New Year resolution is going to be to try to stay in touch with more folks from the past.  I know that many of you read my ramblings here but I am gonna try to give more of you a call.  I do like the sound of your voices.  Just to touch base and to see how you are doing.  I will try not  to call you at dinner time but don’t be surprised if you get a call from me some evening.  Not a long chatty call but just a brief “howdy do”.  More to let you know that I am thinking of you.  Some of you might try doing the same thing.  We could start a whole new trend in communications.

I wish all of you a Happy New Year and hopefully many more.

Gary

This has been and looks to continue to be a very blessed week for the Cowan family. Yesterday, our youngest daughter (resides and is from Germany) received her PHD.  We now have to call her Doktor Nadja and we are pleased as punch to do just that.  A number of years ago, Dorothy and I , through the urging of our daughter got involved in the exchange student program.  Our first student was with us for only a short period of time but it was instant love between all parties.  What a treasure she was, and is.  When it came time for her little sister to come as an exchange student, well we were the logical choice.  We fell in love with her also.  They are two very different young ladies but have all the characteristics that anyone would want in another human being.  After we visited with them and their family in Germany we gained a complete family of new friends and that friendship has only grown over the years.  The girls visit us on a regular basis.  Anna, the olderst is a news producer for German television.  Nadja, the doc, is employed for a worldwide consulting firm.  To say they are successful would be an understatement.  They fit well with our bio children.  We are proud of all of them.

Today at 1:30 pm I become a rancher.  Yep, it will be signed, paid for and keys in my pocket.  Tomorrow will be the first day of a new approach to filling my spare time.  My son, Kyle and I will spend tomorrow getting oriented while doing some mowing, cleaning of the outhouse and ridding the deer blinds of wasps.  We will work on the tractor, make sure the generator and water well work and its off and running.  I ordered a chicken calendar, a calendar featuring the world’s most exotic chickens, and it arrived last nite during dinner.  When I opened the box, Dorothy looked at me as if I had lost my mind.  She didnt know that at one time in my life I raised chickens in my backyard there on Eddy street.  We got a few eggs from time to time.  I dont plan on raising chickens on the place now but a calendar of chickens from around the world is going to be a nice thing to reflect on while I am sitting on my porch drinking coffee made in a percolator, heated on a butane stove, and sipped from a chipped cup.  There will be no sticking one’s pinkie finger out while drinking coffee at the “DIAMOND 5 C RANCH”.  I have a John Wayne cup that is going to get some usage.  I am stocking the pantry with vienna sausage, sardines, crackers, hot sauce, coffee and tea.  If company comes by, well I may have some bologna set aside for special occasions, LOL.

Next week after we open more presents than we should be allowed to have presented to us we will sit down to a fine meal, prepared by a professional chef, and dine with friends and family.  We will thank the good Lord for our blessings and all that we have received.  If it was to cover all that we have been blessed with the prayer will be a long one.  We will mention the high points and hope he understands.  Even the good Lord wouldnt want to let the gravy get cold.

I hope each of you have a wonderful holiday season.  I hope you realize your blessings as I  do and thank the man upstairs for them.  We wish you each a healthy new year and hope to see all of you at some time in the near future.

Gary

I am part way to becoming a South Texas rancher.  That is a person owning 20 or more acres of scrub brush in the brush country of South Texas.  These ranchers normally go out to their land holdings on Saturday or Sunday, build a nice charcoal fire and butcher a goat.  A day of drinking beer, eating tortillas and carne guisada and then they forget about the goat and it ends up burnt.  If the beer is cold enough they don’t really care about the goat.

My wife came from a ranching family and had little desire to even go to the ranch.  She has consented to me buying one of my own.  Now how do you explain that?  Must be love.  Makes no matter the reason cause boys I am happier than a pig in “you know what”.  I have been traveling to Sanderson Texas for the last 15 years to go “hang out with the boys”, doing a bit of cooking, a bit of drinking and generally having fun.  It was a brutal 8+ hour drive and we finally had to give the place up because of the distance.  We will now have a place 1 1/2 hr from the house, with cell phone coverage and a real house to sleep in.  One temporary inconvenience, no bath room.  No shower.  There is one of those little houses with the moon in the door and it even has a real commode seat instead of just a hole in the wood.  Guess what the first addition to the house will be.  A real bathroom.  One can only be so primal before good sense takes over.  I have always had a deep-seated fear that my wallet would fall thru the hole in an outhouse.  Do you think a psychiatrist would think something about that fear? 

It will take a couple of weeks before closing on the place but that gives me plenty of time to make detailed plans of what chore to tackle first.  However, I think cleaning the outhouse will be real high on the list.  Mowing the cockleburrs down will be right behind it.  Then its time to fire up the pit and kill a wild hog and sit by the fire and eat pulled pork and drink ice tea.  Retirement cant get much better than that.

I have two types of western hat.  I have a straw that looks like one that LBJ would wear and I have a panama.  I havent decided which look I am going to adopt.  The blue bibbed overalls farmer Brown look has been somewhat vetoed by a higher authority.  The higher authority just doesnt seem to understand just how much room is in the seat of those overalls. 

Chuy the goatherder