Posted on by Phil Strawn

Things Are Cooking In The Cactus Patch


Here Comes The Sun…

I don’t mean the beautiful song by Dear Old George Harrison, son… I mean, it’s hot, damn hot, here in South Central Texas. I shouldn’t bitch too much, we had our chance to move to Ruidoso, New Mexico, and passed, and now we suffer. That’s what Texans do, and we do it well. I should be better conditioned; my family didn’t have air conditioning until the early 1960s. I grew up heat tolerant and blazing tuff and could walk on hot sidewalks barefoot while eating a 0-degree Popsicle that would stick to my bottom lip and rip off the skin. Now, I’m just a pansy-assed old guy. It was 107 degrees here yesterday, with a heat index of 117. I’m listening to Christmas music, just trying to stay cool. My poor plants are stressing, begging for water, and screaming all night. As a dedicated gardener and ornithologist ( birdman ), I must watch out for my flora and fauna. Lots of water and good quality birdseed, although the Crow family is back and cleaning the feeders out in record time. Now they sit on my roof and “caw..caw” for hours, claiming my homestead as their own. I’m a bit nervous because, as a child, I saw Hitchcock’s classic “The Birds,” and it traumatized me to the point that I ran from Sparrows and Parakeets. Crows are enormous birds with large beaks that can take out my good eye with one peck; as long as I keep the excellent seed coming, I should be alright. It’s so hot; even the smaller birds sit in the shade all day.

Reunions And Medical Conditions

The Orphans 1968

Last Saturday, MoMo, myself, Danny, and Dana Goode met Jarry and Benita Davis for lunch at the famous “Lucilles” restaurant in Fort Worth. Jarry, Danny, and I played in the “Oprhans” and “The ATNT” back in the sixties. We were a semi-infamous rock band that played all the DFW circuits, LuAnns, The Studio Club, Strawberry Fields, The Box, Teen A Go Go, Phantasmagoria, etc., traveled around Texas and Oklahoma, and even opened for the “Iron Butterfly.” The three of us are the surviving members; our drummer Barry and keyboardist, Marshall, have gone on to the great jam session in the sky. We revisited some of the good old musical days but mostly talked about kids, grandkids, our working lives, and then, of course, our medical issues, of which we have plenty. We all had cancer and beat it, foot issues, hearing loss (caused by loud rock music and large amplifiers), brain trauma, back surgeries, transplants, nervous breakdowns, plain nervousness, forgetfulness, food allergies, food fears, fear of everything, and upcoming funerals ( our own ). We didn’t start showing scars, but we came damn close. I might have won that one. I believe the patrons around us were glad to see us leave. We promised to get together again, and we will, while there are still three of us.

Discover more from Notes From The Cactus Patch

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

10 Replies to “Things Are Cooking In The Cactus Patch”

  1. Dang Phil…that is hot! The hottest I can remember here was 112 in 2012. Stay cool young man.
    My friends and I get together and yes…the medical stuff comes up now in our 50s…I’m thinking shit…we are getting old. I remember 30 years ago the talk was women and cool cars…now we have older women and basic cars to get us to A from B.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. I have never understood why Texas television and radio stations bother with weather reports. Well, maybe a quarterly report would be useful. Certainly, no more than a five-second mention would do it. “Hello, everyone. Today’s weather — it’s July.” Something like that. That would be a heck of a savings on personnel salaries and retirement benefits. Texas weather goes a long way in explaining Gus McCrae’s behavior in Lonesome Dove, and that, of course, was before popsicles.

    Spoke to a fellow years ago down McAllen way, a Snowbird from Nebraska who sold his farm to his son … monthly payments made up his retirement income. He told me that a few days earlier, he’d received a phone call from his son, who was whining about the struggle of getting hay into the loft and said he’d pretty much decided to invest in a portable conveyor belt. The son said, “I don’t know how you managed without one all those years.” His father answered, “Well, I guess we just didn’t know any better.”

    Texans without air conditioning just didn’t know any better, either. I remember when air conditioning was a glass of iced tea while sitting on the porch, out of the sun. Thinking back, I never saw a colorized television set until around 1966 — I saw it on display in Montgomery Ward. I thought black and white offered a better picture, but then I never was a genius in making predictions. And I still don’t know what a pixel is. Life must have passed me by.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Gus’s behavior? You mean cranky? Woodrow was harder to get along with than Gus.

      When I moved to Texas in July 2002, I had co-workers telling me “we have 240 days of blue skies.” They weren’t kidding but, I found the Austin-area shutdown, during frozen precip, hilarious. I am from NC but, lived in Round Rock for nearly a decade. The hail storms scared the s*** out of me.

      A pixel is one square of color. The smaller the pixels, the clearer an image. The larger the pixels, the more square-shaped blur you get.

      The early color TVs, if you got really close to them, you could see the little RGB hexagons, precursors to pixels.

      Liked by 1 person

  4. So, where are you in the B&W sketched-looking picture?

    I well remember the hot TX sun. I was two hours & 45 minutes directly south of you, in Round Rock. I learned to garden with heat tolerant plants. I also learned that Azaleas won’t grow in the limestone-heavy dirt without being in a raised bed with lots of acid. They have to be babied on the Longhorn campuses. Oh, and I always had a house full of limestone dust.

    I wish you rain and I love your new ID picture.

    Like

Comments are closed.