My Weekend

[flaco]

This is a sort of belated "Well, yeah," for Jason. Who asked what we were doing this weekend.

 

I was eager to complete as many cold rust blue passes as possible on the barrel and receiver of project #2, and my brother threw a belated 80th birthday party for our father.

 

The brother has 20 acres in a formerly rural area where the Hollywood refugees have chosen to relocate, and wine growers have moved in. Still, it's a nice place, on a saddle overlooking the canyon, if a little hot.

 

(This is hot, I guess, by any standards, over 100, but dry heat, with no appreciable humidity.)

 

We've heard more than a few insults aimed at California, and it's not my intent to deny anything--believe what you will--but mine is an old California family, whose ancestors crossed the Plains back in 1848, 1849, 1850.

 

I've always felt that the Eastern tenderfeet waited for my ancestors to kill off the Grizzly bears, and then moved out. On the train.

 

Anyway, I think it's new transplants that are wafty. Not the old timers.

 

 

This is a photograph of my Dad's mother, circa 1904. She's the one with the reins. Wouldn't you know it?

 

She was a second generation Californian native, as it was her Grandfather that crossed the Plains.

 

Like I said, it was a celebration of Dad's 80th, and, well, he's no Spring Chicken. In his time he was a pretty smart guy, with advanced degrees--CPA, MBA--and he's still okay, but not exactly the sharpest tool in the box.

 

Oh well.

 

Both of his brothers were there.

 

I liked this.

 

The oldest was a medic who landed in Normandy on D-Day plus three. Or four. Not certain it makes a difference. He moved around, but was always attached to infantry companies on the American left flank, near the Limies.

 

Ten battle stars, as Dad was proud to add.

 

Dad's younger brother was there too. With his hearing aids and bypass and all.

 

He was blind in one eye, so a noncombatant.

 

Dad was a Navy corpsman on a hospital ship, and pretty happy he wasn't chosen to accompany the Marines. (We all know that in general Marines don't think much of the Navy. Except those ballsy corpsmen.)

 

So it all made me a little sad.

 

It's a more than good guess that these three brothers will never be together again--alive--and that's sort of depressing.

 

I asked some family history questions, but who can trust the answers?

 

Sometimes memory fails.

 

I spent a goodly amount of time with my cousin, a retired PD captain. He used to build rifles. I've been trying to talk him into going shooting with me.

 

I brought it up on the way home.

 

"I don't know what I'd shoot," he said.

 

"You've got safes full of rifles," his wife corrected.

 

As it turns out, seems the best prospect is a Husky 7x57 in a mannlicher stock.

 

Sounds like fun to me.

 

flaco

 

 

 

 

[fritz]

That is an interesting photograph. It's good to have preserved some of those.

 

While that photo was in California, it could have easily been one of my German ancestors here in Texas. I was born and raised on a farm, and still live on the one a mile from where I was born in 1943. The women worked along side the men in the fields, but it was nice they let her have the reins. She obviously knew as much about farm work as the men, my mother did.

 

I cannot say if it was the newbies that made California the joke it has become, but they probably were. Wouldn't it be great if everyone today had the work ethics of those old timers?

 

I have to admit that I do not work as hard as my father did, but there are so many things now that make my work easier. It still ain't no piece of cake, but if the outsiders just leave us alone, we will be better off.

 

fritz