Hello to All:
It has been a quiet week out here. A Christmas week should be quiet, mostly.
I recall that when I lived in town in a quiet residential neighborhood. We usually had a nice clear day like we had this year. Early in the morning you could look outside and the little kids up and down the block were already out riding their new tricycles or bicycles. A few of them wrecked and got the first scratch or dent. The little girls had their new “Baby” wrapped up and showing them off to the other girls. At my end of the block we would have a football game started up. As we were playing on a paved street there was supposed to be no tackling. Ha. And there wasn’t anything said about running someone into a parked car. One year the guy across the street and down two houses got a new baseball and glove so we were out playing “catch” and one of us missed. The ball bounced on the street and on the sidewalk and bonked the hubcap of Mr. Armstrong’s car. He comes out yelling at us to “you boys watch out, that is a $2,000 Cadillac you are throwing that ball at”. I was impressed at the time. That might have been 1949 or 1950.
Reading some of the “Letters To Santa” in the local news papers I notice some things have changed. There were 5 and 6 year old kids asking for a new Iphone 11. A few years ago that phone would have been a block of wood with the numbers painted on it and it had wheels and you pulled it along. And, “Oh, Santa may I have a new lap top this year? I have been really good.” A six year old with a new Iphone will have more computing and communication capability that the first space ship that landed on the moon. The crew at NASA would have loved to have had a modern laptop.
This year we didn’t do too much. Judy had to go “sit” with her elderly person. There were to be her grandchildren and maybe great grands. So, I went to San Angelo to Kelly’s house, my youngest son. His wife, Mari , had started on the Monday before making tamales. She had one of the boys, Matt, and daughter Karen in the kitchen helping making tamales. They had a 10 gl. pot stuffed with fresh hand made tamales. There was extra spicy and regular. They did a great job. It can be dangerous for me or my son to sit down at a table loaded down with fresh made tamales, salad, beans, and hot garlic bread. I did manage to stop before I hurt myself. Maybe. I was sitting next to Kelly and we had a stack of husks pilled up so high you could barely see the person on the other side of the table. And yes, there was dessert. Mari wrapped up a dozen or so tamales for me to take home.
I left Angelo and came back through Ballinger and stopped where Judy was working. Some of the expected company had arrived. I hung around a while and decided that I would just be in the way. Judy gave me a couple of samples of the cookies and cake that she had been baking.
I drove on back to Talpa and had Christmas dinner with Tobi and Angel, the cats. We just sat on the porch and watched a perfects sunset. I took Thursday off and just tried to move now and then and digest enough to let me buckle my belt again.
So it goes out here in our quiet little corner of Coleman County.
Talpa Bob
