THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER

Mrs. Charm is the television consumer at the rancho. Unless you count Mr. Boy’s periodic consumption of Sponge Bob. Her fave Roku show these days is Mad Men, a soaper return to the early 1960s urban advertising game, with lots of skinny ties, incessant smoking and martini lunches. Also the girdled wives and girlfriends, which [...]

Driving Mr. B. to his scout meeting last night, I was startled when he suddenly said “Wow!” and pointed at the sky. It was just after dusk and the sky was still bright enough to illuminate a dense crosshatching of airliner contrails (condensed water vapor) overhead—east, west, north and south. ’Twas a busy evening up there, apparently.

Whew. A few more days of winter break and… Well, nevermind. Mr. B. goes back to school today, in about twenty minutes in fact. Nor will he be around much this weekend, either. It’s the Lumberjack campout starting tomorrow evening, where the boy scouts spend the weekend cutting down trees and building shelters on some [...]

First of several American war in Vietnam photos I’ll be running here. This is my old headquarters unit from RF-PF advisory days in 1969. Guy on left is my RTO holding my M-79 while I take the pix. Next to him is Mr. B.’s future godfather in his younger days. I hope the rest of [...]

Our several long days of soaking rain, which ended Monday, have been really welcome here at the parched rancho. According to our amateur rain gauge we’ve collected a little more than two inches since the steady showers began at the end of last week. Now Mr. B. has something extra to look forward to on his Boy [...]

I happily ended November with six more ebook sales for Alamo and Knoxville—including twice as many of the latter. Which brings that one to a total of 91 since its first month in April, 2010—finally edging in on breaking even for the cost of ebook formatting. Hardly bestseller material here, these single-digit sales months. Haven’t [...]

I have rented a violin, embarking upon an effort to learn the instrument. Next is finding a teacher near the rancho. I have no illusions. It took me years to learn to play the trumpet and I was never very good at it. Likewise the acoustic guitar. Violin is just something I’ve been thinking about [...]

They won the second game, 2-1, thanks to Ian, Elvis, Josh and Michael, in the top of the ninth. Whoo-eee, what a game. Then Neftali closed the Cards out. The chant title is from Mr. B’s old T-ball team, back in ’06, which was also called the Rangers. Now home to Arlington for three, which [...]

It’s bad enough to learn that a friend has died, but even worse to find that he died six years ago and you didn’t know it. Douglas S. Godbey Douglas S. Godbey, age 55, passed away Saturday, December 17, 2005. Doug was born in Dallas to JJ and Louise, where he was raised with his [...]

Very quiet around the Rancho these days, with Mr. B. at his week-long camp at Lost Pines, the pine forest near Bastrop, about an hour east of Austin. Weather service says it’s a bit cooler out there than here, especially at night with the breeze off the lake. This is Boy Scouts, so much of [...]