I had planned on taking a trip out to my Family Farm this weekend and visiting the house my Grandmother and Father grew up in one last time. The house is scheduled, any day now, to be torn down since the flooding we had in the area, the past couple of months) covered the house's first story with water. The water damage inside and outside the house is reported to me by my father as not repairable, leaving the house as a loss. "Just tear it down", my tear laden father told the man at the bank after walking the buckled hardwood floors where he had spent his childhood years. My Grandmother and her Brother (Rufus Branch Junior) were both born inside the house with the assistance of a mid-wife. Rufus Branch Senior (Great Grand Father) had discovered the farm after he crashed a plane there in 1914 flying a routine flight from Millington Army Base in Tennessee. For what ever reason, after his plane crash he came back to the farm and bought the several thousand acres of Black Cat Farms. The farm is still going strong and still in the family today. I am still undecided about whether to go out there or not and shoot a few photographs. I was going to go yesterday but I could not find anybody that wanted to go. Also, how sentimental am I about the house? Not a whole lot. I have pictures of the house back in hay day of the 40's and 50's when the house was really in full swing. Why do I want to go rummage through a dank, nasty house for old memories? Some of my co-workers have tried to encourage me to go because they missed out of something similar. What am I missing?? Dad reported to me the place has been looted many times over, that the 700 pound Mosler Safe (nothing in it) was also missing. I cannot even imagine how they accomplished moving that thing. Why again do you want to go for a last viewing before they bury her like some funeral? Its just a dam house.
The house is by the wing strut.
So instead I created another skate board and then went for a walk. On my walk I stopped and took a photo of a yard, down my street, that must have 10 German Sheppard's in the back yard and another 10 kenneled up in or around the house. Some days when you walk by the smell of dog shit is stifling (sti-ful-ing), not to mention the constant barking.. barking... barking. In this particular moment as I was walking by all ten dogs lined up in front of the fence barking and all taking a piss at the same time. I did not have my camera ready in time, what a shame. Why had all these dogs decided to re-leave them selves for the audience of just me, I was not sure if I should be flattered or insulted. After they had time to shake off the final bits I got my camera phone ready and snapped a single photo. I put my phone/camera away since the lady of the house came out to fill up a water bowl, plus there was another dude out on the side of the house- I have never met these people before. I was hoping to get a photo that I could later post on FB with the caption "Average security system in Memphis." Maybe its not even that funny, comedy is full of failures but I was only there for some selfish giggles and craptacular snap shots. I abandoned my photo shoot and get maybe two blocks further down the street when this Grey Chevrolet truck pulls up and rolls down their window. Its the dog lady and I am guessing her husband driving the truck. "Why are you taking pictures of my house?", she asks in a snarky tone. "I wasn't, just one, it was a joke that is not going to work," I replied. She then explained to me that she ran a dog rescue, has an illegal amount of dogs and is fending off complaints from neighbors regularly. That she did not trust anybody and would appreciate it if I did not take pictures of her house. Wow, I had not meant anything by taking a picture and I had no intention of saying anything else about it but now she has pissed me off. Come to think of it the house is a nuisance to the neighborhood. Go run your cash cow of a business in a place that is suited to house 20 dogs, not a 1000 square foot house that is on less than a acre in the middle of Berclair Nieghborhood. She said, "We run a dog rescue....", and you don't have another job, neither does your husband. So for every dog you get there is money in your pocket and for every dog you sell, more money in your pocket. I was willing to look the other way, just another anomaly of a house in Memphis. But no, she had to chase me down and read me the riot act about taking pictures of her house. Does she not understand I have the right to do what ever the hell I want. I guess that is what she is afraid of, or maybe I should stop dressing up like a under cover cop and acting suspicious. What ever lady!!
Chickens in Front Yard
Dog Rescue
My latest creation, shape and art.
And here is a skateboard that I designed and did a little rip off Sheppard Fairy art work on (yes, I just painted over stickers.) Looks real nice dont it. Well, all I can say is this Memphis summer time heat makes us all a little crazy in the city. Will I make it to the house called Black Cat, will you get to see pictures of a dead architectural structure that once was the center of the universe?? I cant answer all these questions right now, to me it is insignificant to take pictures of something whose beauty is lost in decay. People will say that there is something artistic to come away with pictures of this old beast. To be honest, I have never liked pictures of despair and decayed ruins that have bordered oak frames hanging in some sweet art gallery. Maybe I am wrong after all, maybe I just need a helping hand or maybe, just maybe I have better things to do. Later.
San Antonio is very hot temperature wise, hotter than Memphis my place of homeliness. Will you go back to San Antonio (SA)?? Not sure, it has the River Walk, Sea World, The Alamo and a bunch of old Spanish Mission buildings along with staggering heat. I think if I was visiting Austin and took a side trip it has possibilities, that is if I ever make it back to Austin for anything other than business. There are no beaches, mountains or mild weather in SA, so the draw becomes less and lesser. SA is a place you take your kids to visit on Thanks Giving, very much a family place, not sure what else other than for business. I saw a lot of European's walking the streets, so maybe it is like visiting Oxford England for a yank like me. I hear that if you go to Oxford on the weekend of graduation that you will have the opportunity to have splendid conversation with overly educated drunk people. SA River Walk (RW) is a tourist trap, kind of a one sided Epcot Center with a real world scenario, people don't ask you for spare change at Epcot. The neatly dressed Mariachis lined the droves of mediocre Tex Mex food establishments as boats of eager tourists passed by listening to stories of how Davy Crockett fended off the Mexicans just beyond that wall, all this very marvelous after the the first hour or two. Then after that you are left flat, what else, go into another place that has Texas in the name?? The best places were not even remotely Texan, they were Irish. I found two bars on the RW, one called Waxy Oconnor's and one named Durty Nelly's Irish Pubs. I went to Waxy's two nights in a row. Really nothing special other than it was like you had escaped the RW. That was what I thought was nice about it, you walk into Waxy's and there are no Mariachis waiting to serenade you, just the smell of stale beer along with Bangers and Mash. Waxy's has a guy play guitar Sunday through Thursday which is fairly entertaining where as Nelly's has a guy playing piano. I think that Nelly's smells worse which is great. I ended up at Nelly's for just a minute on my last night, just to check out the Mayhem. This guy was centered in the middle of the packed bar sitting in front of a wide angled mirror allowing the whole bar to view the maestro's melodious anthem. There was not a seat to be had so I wondered off back into the wilderness of La Cucarachas and Steak Fajitas. O yeah, I also remember going into a Coyote Ugly's the night before, for about three minutes, for that is all it took. I mean, come on, you got some scantly clad bar tender walking around on top of the bar with a micro phone insulting guys sitting at the bar while pouring drinks on their heads. Fun, just not my style. I told my date she could stay if she enjoyed getting hit on by chicks with short hair that wanted her to sit down with them. No probs. Then there was Mad Dogs British Pub which reminds me of Hooters hyped up on the Beatles and Union Jacks. All the waitress's wore short short kilts, black stockings and tight British flag Tops. I thought Austin Powers was going to jump up around the corner at any minute and ask my friendly date for a shag. I take Waxy's as a regular hang out in the end where my Scot/Irish blood feels as it belongs the most, some place cheap.
Did you learn anything about San Anotonio? Yes.... It smells just as bad in the summer as Memphis.
Do you have any advice for could be travelers to the area? Yes.... Stay in doors, don't drink the water and don't let your kids swim in the river..
Was there a favorite attraction in down town San Antonio? Yes...Public restrooms.
What would be your favorite moment while staying there? I can't remember her name...
Don't get me wrong, San Antonio was a great city to do business in while then staying at a super nice hotel located on the River Walk. There was lots of great architecture and interesting things to do. Its just not my kind of city, kind of like the city I live in now but ten times the Hispanic population. It is funny how you go on a trip to a place that you would never seek out and figure out more about yourself. I will never waste my time in Texas again unless I have to drive through it like I did last summer (Feel Free to Read). Working in Texas is fine but living and visiting there does not interest me in the least, not anymore. I am ready to go back to Colorado, visit Salt Lake City and visit my friend who is a dog sledding guide in Bozemon, Montana. What I learned on this trip for some weird reason is to never just settle for things, to keep pushing and the right things will come along. I know what I want now and this trip opened my eyes. Time to get off my ass, Thanks San Antonio. Later.
I did not sleep well last night. It was a series of falling a sleep, waking up and falling a sleep again until 4am in the morning, when finally my phone rang at 8am sharp. It was my boss asking where I was, that I was suppose to be helping a coworker with a class at that minute. "I will be there in five minutes", was my only response as I lay in bed. I had not known I was scheduled to be in this class for they had changed the schedule around when I was out of town on business for them last week. Anyway I got dressed, took a spit bath lathered in lotion and derangement, cleaned teeth and arrived seven minutes after my phone conversation with my boss. The day went fine, the class was 8 am til 4 pm, no worries. I even ate lunch with my boss and his boss with no mention of my blunder. There was a email to me late last week stating the change, my bad!! Nobody asked me why I had not taken a shower or smelled weird, thank ja.
After I got free of the entanglement of classroom study I headed back to my room and changed into my freshest skate outfit. T-shirt, shorts, trucker hat I bought yesterday, my backpack full of pads and camera. I was headed to Martinez skate park that I talked about yesterday. The park is 3.3 miles south of the hotel. It took around 45 minutes to get there through downtown San Antonio and then through South Trinity Neighborhood where I found Martinez park. And yes, I rode my skate board the whole way, helz yeahs.
The park was adjacent a soccer field that was dirt and rocks, then there were a few park benches for siting and basketball court. Then once you made it through that maze I found the skate area. It was just like Thrasher.com said, it had some steep steep hubba ledges and some steep banks that all collected in a general slope. At the top was a half bowl with an extended inner bowl you can see from the pictures. The concrete surface was butter smooth, fast and kind of slippery. There were a group of kids skating with their dad, Adam, who intermittently talked to and told my story of why I was there. Adam kind of shed the light of scary for me. Then out of no where these older guys showed up and started ripping the bowl. The main guy, Norman, who I talked briefly with was riding a very nice and new Flip Lance Mountain board. This guy could rip it, he was fluid and fast. After about an hour of skating doing nothing special and feeling sketchy as hell on my long board I took off back toward the hotel. Adam said there was a crap load of people about to show up, there were drug dealers in the park over there (watch if a cop shows up he said, they will run off) and I was the only white guy among the all the people there. It was when Adam joked about jumping the guy selling ice cream and water because he had no money that made me feel uneasy. I was in a Hispanic nieghborhood and I had to skate out, so I opted out early. I skated the 45 minutes back and here I sit after my first shower of the day writing to you.
I made a friend today in class and we are suppose to go to Waxy Oconnors and watch Joe Walmsey sing Irish ballads, he is from Liverpool by the way. Wonder if he follows football or is a Everton fan?? Who knows, I meet Brits in the States that hate football because the English are such crazy super fans. Facebook Photos Here. (anyone not on facebook should be able to view these). Cheers mate.
What comes to mind when you think of San Antonio?? I always think of the great hold up against the Mexicans that Davey Crockett faced at the Alamo. Some people think of the ghost tours from watching the Discovery Channel. I am actually staying across the street from the Alamo. It is the size of a large Denny's with out the breakfast and entry costs around $20. People who have gone say that you walk in, take the tour and leave 30 minutes later. Well, the Alamo has been the last thing on my mind since the get go. There are ten skate parks in San Antonio and since this is the seventh most populated city in the United States it is of no surprise. The two parks that i have targeted are Martinez Park and Lady Bird Johnson Park. Martinez is a smaller park that has a half bowl with the claim that their concrete is smooth as butter. LBJ is a larger park that has a couple of bowls of different sizes and is the hallmark of San Antonio park skating. If I can find a ride I might hit LBJ but I might just keep it to the Martinez park since it is less than three miles away, I have no car and I can skate there in under 30 minutes from the hotel. Plus, LBJ is going to be busy for sure and according to the Goodtimes skate shop I visited this after noon, Martinez will be pretty mellow. Just what I need, thanks for the advice guys at the skate shop.
The first obstacle that I had to encounter was yesterday when I boarded the air plane. I had to take a skateboard on board the plane which I had never done and had some general reservations about having never done it. According to a Silverfish Long boarding thread, I should be able to take my backpack and the 39 inch Dogtown board on as my carry on luggage after checking my main bag. The thread said to ask the flight attendant if I could put it in the coat closet at the front of the plane. This worked on both legs of the flight, as I went past the closet, I asked the attendant if I could drop it in with no major question. I arrived in San Antonio with my board and luggage with no hassle. Lets see on the way back.
Tomorrow I will attempt to skate to Martinez. later.
I guess I have to give a little bit of a back story before I can just release the main story since Subiaco Abbey is not a normal high school. Subiaco Abbey is first and foremost a Benedictine Monastery, it is a High School, a church, a retreat center and summer camp as well as other things. I belonged to the High School part of the Abbey where they house around 200 students every year that live, eat and breathe high school education. And yes, we lived there too, it is a boarding school. When school is not in session there is a retreat or a summer camp going on. And no, it is not some place where you send bad children, the place is rich with tradition where some of my class mates fathers and brothers graduated Subiaco. Then again yes, there were kids there that you might consider bad children. It was just all fun and games to us, did not matter who you were or where you came from as long as you enjoyed toilet humor. Come on, I guess I forgot to mention it is a all boys school, need I explain any more?
I began attending Subiaco Academy in the summer of 1989 (August). I had been attending the famous Little Rock Central High School for my 10th grade year and attended Henderson Middle before that. During my time at Central my family life was very dysfunctional due to my parents irresponsibility to me and divorce, they did not get it and were self involved. While hanging out with the Central High crowd I met several kids who went to Boarding School in other states. When they would come back in town they were like Rock Stars who went to boarding school and got to do what they wanted with no crappy family life. I quickly wanted to be like them, not live at home and come back into town to bask in boarding school fame. Half way through the school year I was bugging dad to send me to Darlington, Baylor Prep or Saint Andrews Swanee, all of which were in the Boarding School Catalog of schools. Subiaco was not in this catalog of schools and I knew it, I was masking the idea of going to school there because I heard it was military style barracks and no girls, boo to that. Subiaco Academy had burned down in 1927 and had to close for a year until 1928 when it reopened. Only schools that were over a certain age appear in the Catalog of Boarding schools and since Subiaco closed its doors in 27 it was out of the range because the catalog stipulations. Then at the end of my 10th grade year my dad invited me down to his office for lunch one day and broke news to me that if I wanted to go I could go to boarding school at Subiaco Academy. One of his business associates told him about the school, awe man, not there...... So a week later we went up to Subiaco and I interviewed with the headmaster at the time, toured the campus and the semi private rooms I would stay in at Heard Hall. It was not so bad, very beautiful campus to say the least and they had lots of sports to choose from. I would be free of family dysfunction and their rules, so why not.
1989 before I came up to Subi. Lincoln Smith to my left went to a school on the East Coast, I thought he was so cool and he still is very cool.
Later that Summer I would go back up to Subiaco and spend my last two years of high school there with pleasure. Ok, so is this the part of the story where I tell mad stories about what went on at the Abbey? Nope, back to the reunion....
The reunion started on Friday, goes Saturday and ends on Sunday after a big breakfast. I was not sure what to do when it came to register for the reunion, should I go up there Friday or Saturday?? Who would be there and would they even talk to me, it has been 20 years for most of these guys and 19 for a couple of others (there is a homecoming revisit story that happened in fall of 91). So I went for a safe bet, get there Saturday afternoon, attend 4pm mass and then that nights activities. I got there around 230, got my room squared away and headed down to the pool. There at the pool I met a few class mates - Anderle, Beans, Jones and Fleetwood. I had also briefly talked to Benard Tougas on the way down there leaving Coury House. I did not recognize David Jones from the pool because he left Subiaco after my first semester.
We made our way back up the hill and attended 4pm mass. I sat next to Eric Lacerte and his family during mass. Then this guy from the 1981 class sat on the other side of me, this guy ended up being a ass later on in the story. Mass was mass, I have been so many times, it was great....yah. After mass we headed over to the Round House where most of the nights activities would happen next. The round house is a big parish house that has a large room full of tables, perfect for our banquet. The class of 91 had a grouping of tables where I got to shake hands and talk to Roger Lisko, Kieth Schulterman , Nino Ardnemagni, Steve Schmitz, Eric Chapman, Brian Koch, Leon Guidry, and Jason Taylor. Later I would talk to Kenny Seiter and catch up. Most every body is married and the majority of everyone has kids with the exception of me, no marriage and no kids. There was a full bar inside and plenty of beer out side. After everyone had there drink of choice the live auction started offering up items such as a weekend in Stuttgart, a 22 caliber rifle, a Walnut Coffee table, a TV and other non notable stuff that went for a lot of gravy. Then they served up steak and potatoes buffet style, I had two of each. After every one had there fill of food the silent auction got started on the items in the hall way. It was a fairly uneventful affair, the most fun was sitting on a bench with Guidry while watching his son draw on the auction sheet. Nobody knew the bench we were sitting on was for sale, I think one person bid on it, good for them. After the silent auction a few of us went out back to help Chapman load his new Walnut coffee table into his Honda Pilot. So for the next two weeks the table, his wife and four little girls are going to keep close company.
Chapman all loaded up.
This was the Jerry Springer guy from 81.
Once we got Chaps loaded up we noticed that the beer had disappeared and people were filing over to the official Beer Garden. Here we relished in stories of the past and present while some of us threw back what ever that was in those kegs, hopefully Bud Light. The night was going round in a fairly normal mood, nothing out of the ordinary, just basic conversation and laughs, then out of no where there was screaming. David Jone's wife was yelling at the top of her lungs at the guy who sat next to me in mass. She was exclaiming that how dare he try to kiss her, to never text message her again and to leave the premises, her area now. Apparently he had fooled her into giving him her number, he later texted her something about her lips being soft and then tried to lay one on her right there in the Beer Garden. I could tell the guy was a bit of a turd during mass because during mass he kept trying to be funny but failed on all attempts. So here we are witnessing something off the Jerry Springer show, what fun. After that, 2 am rolled up and everyone went to bed including me.
The next day I went to breakfast at 9am sitting with Kenny and his father (who graduated in like 67?). I Had eggs and sausage flushed down with weak coffee and juice. There was a short presentation and then we all said our good byes, we all went on our way, back to our lives. Except Chapman, he still has two more weeks of the unknown with a Walnut Table and Family. I got in my car feeling kind of depressed, I did not want to leave. I had been nervous about seeing all these guys again, that is why I had played it safe and only come up Saturday but as I drove off towards Memphis I wished I had been there since Friday. I had no idea this experience would be so great and refreshing. To see all these guys and nothing much has changed, they are still the same but grown up. In the end we were just still high school buddies shooting the breeze, some of them with kids and big jobs, some of us single and working hard, no matter what- we are still the class of 91! That part has not changed, fun times. Can't wait to see these guys again. I have been invited back next year, lets do it.
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