Cobra Update: The Mrs. opines that she'd like to have the Cobra too!

Family entertainment....

You never know what you'll come across on a daily basis. We are recompleting an oilwell in Andrews County, Texas and I have spent the last two days at the well site monitoring the activity. It's looking pretty good thanks. Today we decided to go into the town of Andrews for lunch and to bring some hot chow back to our hard working crew.

It was a moment of serendipity. A friend on my recent fishing trip had been telling me that he recently bought a Shelby Cobra, and I was quite jealous. On the drive to the well, I mentioned the car to my partner Del, who is also a road racing fan, and we spent some time talking about the history, setup and specs of the original Cobra's as built by Carroll Shelby. Then.....not more than two hours later as we were driving through Andrews we saw it. A Cobra sitting in the Ford dealers parking lot. We stopped. We summoned a salesman.

After the sales guy told us about the car and determined that we were not crazy people he offered to take us for a spin. Well, no said we, we rather had in mind driving it ourselves. This rather flumoxed the sales guy. He wasn't supposed to allow that. But Del and I are rather smooth talkers and after Del explained that he used to have Porsche's which he has driven on the German autobahn, and I casually let it drop that I had attended the Bob Bondurant Racing School, we were in. I was up first. Strapped into the racing style harness, double check the position of the clutch and brake pedal [both far to the left] and I was off. If you've never driven a small light car with 500 horsepower in a 427 cubic inch engine, it's an experience you should try to have someday. Driving mainly in town, I didn't set any speed records but I did have the opportunity to be knocked back into the seat when I punched it in second gear. This is the original and most genuine Muscle Car of the genre. It was hard to get out of the seat.

So now I'm back in Midland trying to convince the Lovely Bride that really and truly the main reason that I might consider buying the car is that it would be a great family togetherness experience. After I get an enclosed trailer for the Cobra we could spent countless hours of quality family time traveling the country racing at vintage car events. I think that family time is most important and this car is only a goal towards that end. Wish me luck, I'll need it.

Spring Miscellania....

It seems to me to be the earliest Spring we've had in West Texas in my memory. As you can see by the photo of our patio above, the foliage is well on it's way to looking like summer. The grass is almost green all over and the shrubbery has it's new growth well underway. However the large trees have yet to catch up. The pecans are just now starting to bud, which actually is a good thing for the lawn......letting much more sunshine in early in the season. Timely and beneficial rains have helped along with a very mild winter all in all, with only one bitterly cold spell that I can recall. But, being West Texas, you never know what's going to happen. We had a very large snow on Easter weekend some 8 or 9 years ago.

My fishing trip was a grand success as usual. No fish, due to very windy weather, but no mind, fishing on the fishing trip is secondary. We always just take up where we left off the previous year in our story telling and asking how the people we asked about last year are doing. We ride in boats up and down the river, take photos, play cards and do some minor hiking up the creek that runs into the main river. Sleeping there with 4 or 5 guys out on the enclosed porch is hell for me. The beds are Army surplus steel cots really and are about 6 ft. in length.....I'm over 6'2". Then there are several guys who are terminal snorers, but who always swear that they don't do that anymore, and do. But all in all a great trip. And the big surprise when I returned home was that the "Lovely Bride" and "Wonderful Step-son" had done all the yard work, cleaned the house and painted one of the bathrooms that had been next on my to do list. Marriage is wonderful.

There was, however, a slight pause in our happy family reunion last night. A misunderstanding caused by my slight misstep of almost burning the house down. Further explanation is necessary. Julie had made a delightful chicken dish and had cut the skin off of the chicken halves. Being the frugal sort and wanting to provide our dogs with extra chicken enrichment in their diet, I had put the skin in water to boil, thus making a healthy dog chicken broth. Then, wanting some quality time with young Jack, I proceeded to the PlayStation2 in his room for some Grand Prix racing. I was 6 laps into the Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang when we heard screeming from the direction of the kitchen. Something about, HELP!, SMOKE!, FIRE!. Racing continued. I was .05 seconds behind Michael Schumaker in his Ferrari with only several laps remaining, so obviously I couldn't pit. More screams. Something like COME IN HERE RIGHT NOW! Only 2 laps to go, surely a reply to the screams could wait, so I had Jack yell, "What do you want?". This, obviously, was a mistake as a very upset wife soon appeared in the door with one of those looks that said, "Buster, You'd better get off that toy, now". I did.

It seems that I had left the dogs chicken broth on a little to long and the water had all evaporated leaving burning chicken fat in the pan. I'll admit that there was a lot of smoke, greasy chicken smoke, and it had enveloped at least half of the house but, there was no actual fire. As I told Julie, "Baby, if there had been a fire, I would have quit racing and come to the kitchen. Well OK, a bad fire. But when you have a shot at winning the Malaysian Grand Prix, you can't just stop for small things". I realize now that this too was a mistake.

But things are now back to normal, wedded bliss reigns, the chicken smell is mostly gone from the house, and tonight I won the British Grand Prix at Silverstone by a sizeable margin, with no interruptions.

Will you miss me.....?

I'll be gone for the weekend, fishing right here. It's my annual "Let's Go Fishing" weekend on the Colorado River with a good group of my old fraternity brothers. A pilgimage really since this is the 29th year of it's occurance. I started going in 1982, I believe, and although I have missed making the trip some years I do my damnest to go. Next year, being the 30th anniversary there is talk of going possibly to Costa Rica or some other more exotic fishing locale. On the 25th anniversary, the group went "fishing" at Lake Tahoe.

I don't know many people, except possibly military groups, that have had such a long standing annual affair. Most of my buddies are from either Dallas or Houston, and strangely of the 16 or 17 in attendance most all are either in the medical field or real estate. Besides these two factions there's one engineer, one attorney and me, in the oil and gas business. It's great to not only catch up with good friends, but to hear the news from the big cities, especially Dallas where I lived for so many years.

The website linked above is actually a joke [if you couldn't tell]. A joke website that has been my tradition now for 4 years. But, the picture is real, of the fishing cabin where we stay. Owned by the Carpenter family of Dallas, they consider it a cabin. I suppose that when you own insurance companies, have freeways named after you and you built a whole new super city near Dallas [Las Colinas] you consider something like this magnificent house with two full time cooks, situated on several miles of river front and surrounded by a 10,000 acre ranch....a fishing cabin. Me, I consider it a fishing mansion. For the first several years that I attended we stayed at some maggot infested rat trap called "Lemon's Camp". God it was awful. The kind of place that smelled like the prior guests had cleaned their fish in bed. So thanks to the Carpenter Family, and our attendee Doug, who is on one of their boards for allowing us to stay in their cabin for the last 10 years.

Last year, I had to assure Julie that this was not some kind of wild "guy" thing. All but one of us is married now, and besides we're of an age where a wild time is motoring up and down the river in the big pontoon boat. Sometimes I think that I won't go, but it's worth it for the camaraderie, the excellent food, fishing and to me just to get outdoors in a gorgeous place and take some photos. But I will miss my little family. Julie, Jack and the dogs and I'll be more than ready to come home on Sunday. See you then.

Here are photos from last years trip: Let's Go Fishing 2003
And the 2003 humorous Fishing Foundation website

Images..............Update

Less than 24 hours after completing the story yesterday concerning my "photo duties", I received the following email from Joe Galloway.....

"spent two hours in studio being interviewed today by Oliver North for his "War Stories" program on Fox. his producer would like 5-6 of best LZ XRay digital pix emailed to him. might also toss in 4-5 best of the b&w images from other parts of Nam."

Can do! For those intesested, Joe tells me his War Stories on Fox will probably air sometime in May. I'll update when further details are known.

Images.....

As mentioned here in the past, my close friend Joe Galloway wrote the 1994 NY Times best seller, We Were Soldiers Once and Young later made into the Mel Gibson film We Were Soldiers. In the year preceeding the movie release Joe made the decision to publically display for the first time some of the photos he took during the battle at LZ Xray in 1965. Consequently he had the photo department at "U.S. New and World Report", where he was senior writer, scan his negatives in very high resolution, put them on a CD and ship them to me for use on our website and in printing them for sale.

For the last two years I have been the keeper and processor of these digital images for use by those media, educational institutions and individuals whom Joe authorizes use to. Frankly at times, like before the movie premiered, I have spent considerable time and effort doing custom reformatting, resizing, cropping and cleaning the images. But it sure has been worth it. I've met some really interesting people, along the way.

Prior to the movie release I worked directly with the Paramount Pictures media people providing some of the photos they used in their advertising. I talked on the phone with producers at The Today Show, The History Channel, 60 Minutes II, and even sent some hard copy images FedEx to Dan Rathers home in Connecticut. I had several images blown up to poster sized proportions to take with me to a book signing with Joe and co-author Gen. Hal Moore [Mel Gibson's role]. For magazines, to name just a few, I've emailed or ftp'd images to "The VFW Magazine, "Soldier of Fortune Magazine", "The Digital Journalist" "The Alabama History Magazine" and "The Hong Kong Foreign Journalist Magazine".

And because of Joe's generosity, it is not only to the large scale media that we have provided photos. I have sent custom digital image files to a student at Texas A&M doing a research paper on Vietnam, to cadets at West Point and the Air Force Academy and to an aspiring journalist in Kansas City who had her story on Joe's tours in Vietnam picked up for major newpaper publicaton. We sent photos and personal stories to a high school student in Mountain Home, Arkansas who won an award for her essay on Vietnam and had her story reprinted in the local paper. She sent us a copy. I have sent complimentary photos to Privates, Sergeants, Lieutenants, Captains, and Sergeant Major's who just wanted a photo or were going to use them in unit displays, awards or visual programs. Two Four Star Generals have our photos in their offices. I personally gave one to General Tommy Franks here in Midland and one to my friend the SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Tom Hill. And........one that I sent to Washington for a Medal of Honor ceremony was presented to President Bush.

I bring all of this up because today I was at it again. This time for Joe's publisher, Random House. It seems that they are going to reissue the book in mass market paperback form and want to use new photos to spice up the cover and to better illustrate the storyline . I spent the better part of the morning downloading and setting up the publishers in-house file transfer system on my computer, talked to Ron the publisher and away went more photos. As I said....it's work, but great fun and somewhat of a thrill to see something that I had a minor hand in come out for public consumption. But, of course, the greatest thrill is sending a photo or two to the soldiers who were actually there.

Photo courtesy, Mrs. Julie Craig

When pet worlds collide..!

It's a well known fact that I love animals. I am only half kidding when I say that I know more animals I like than people, and the perpetual quote at the bottom of my emails states, "The average dog is a nicer person, than the average person". So we run a small menagerie of canine, avian and reptilian specimens. Two dogs and at last count 6 desert box turtles, not to mention the assorted species of birds we feed and way to many squirrels. All the creatures are very welcome, except the squirrels who became a detriment when they started to eat the house.

I must exude some turtle like pheremone because all the turtles in our collection have quite literally wandered up to our home. One was actually waiting at the front door when I opened it one day, and two came strolling up the driveway when I was working out front, just as if they knew they were supposed to show up here. Maybe they heard that I'm a very gratuitous turtle feeder. Canteloupe, bananas and occasionally strawberries in season. Tres, the Big Gold Dog, has always gotten along very well with the turtle population, his plan being to basically just ignore them, even when they walk over his feet while he's dozing on the sunny patio.

But then came Julie's dog Daphne. Daphne is, to put it mildly, rather raw and untrained in her habits. Wild is another way of stating it, or possibly, as Julie thinks she is in need of medication for dog attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It was an interesting study in dog behavior traits when Daphne moved in, disturbing Tres' well ordered existance. He tried to ignore her too, but it soon became obvious that this wouldn't work, so he took to turning tail and going whereever she wasn't. They were like two children vying for our attention. Whatever Tres had, Daphne wanted [rawhides, bones, rope toys etc.], whatever Daphne had, Tres definetly had to have. They took to hiding things from each other, or better yet burying them in the backyard.

We have put Daphne on a strict training regimen, and she's actually showing some improvement. But what was worrying me as Spring approached and the turtles came out of hibernation was "how would Daphne react"? She had been sniffing around their holes and even pulled one out before he was ready. Thankfully, after a stern "NO" and a swat on the snout with a rolled up newspaper she seemed to have gotten the message that the turtles were off limits. Until....Julie gave our big male turtle Bob [L. Bob Smitherman, in full] a strawberry yesterday. L. Bob loves fresh fruit. But now that Bob had a strawberry Daphne decided it was her favorite treat too. The photo above graphically shows the confrontation.

Give this round, and the strawberry prize, to L. Bob. Julie helped decide the standoff with another short rap with the newspaper. However, perhaps, a better lesson for young Daphne would have been to leave L. Bob to decide it for himself. Turtles are amazingly fast at times, and L. Bob has got a powerful bite which would have left a lasting impression on Daphnes nose.

Merde en Francais
So now France seems to be in the sights of the Islamofacists. According to a letter purportedly written by a local arm of the peace loving group Al Queda, the letter warrns that, "We will plunge France into terror and remorse, and we will make blood run to your borders." Further describing France as as a country of "wine, pigs, loose morals and nudity," the letter warns that "France will not be secure in its own country nor at its interests abroad."

I cannot help but agree with the assesment of France's morals, and I certainly don't want to see bloodshed, but I wouldn't mind seeing some remorse from the French, for once. Some remorse for believing that if perhaps we were just more respectful of Islam, or just nicer to Arabs, or perhaps sold their dicatators more weapons that then they'd go back to their goat skin tents and leave the civilized world alone.

And what has brought on this sudden vengefulness against the French. They have outlawed the wearing of the Muslim head cover in their schools. Actually more of a "political correctness" move than a slam agains Islam, since religous symbols of all varieties were banned, be they Christian, Jewish or Hindu. Hopefully, the attacks won't happen, but it would be very interesting to see the reaction from the Left if a European country were attacked just for being PC. Who would they blame the violence on then? Oh, I know, somehow the U.S., but sane people would know that they were full of Limberger.

La oveja de España....

Moooooo! says the Spanish cattle to the Islamic wolf,
Please don't eat me, just let me graze peaceably in my field.

Baaaaaa! say the Spanish sheep to the Islamic wolf,
take all my wool, but please don't eat me.

And so another once great empire joins the Neville Chamberlain school of international appeasement. The film clip of British Prime Minister Chamberlain in 1938 is hard to forget, smugly announcing after the Munich conference with Hitler that he had achieved "peace in our times". Just two short years later London was under the Blitz and the free world was in mortal peril.

So now, the majority of Spanish voters have chosen a leader who was against the liberation of Iraq and who like the other once great empires of France and Germany don't understand that this was only one front on the war against terror or that it is a war and a fight to the finish. Mr. Zapatero "vowed that fighting terrorism would be his first priority as he sets about creating an administration that will work for peace." A grand aim, peace, but an oxymoron as long as the Islam fundamentalist movement is alive and naive cowards back away from fighting it. One imagines that what he really means is preventing terror in Spain, the rest of the world be damned.

Terrorism is a faceless thing and the perpetrators are rather amorphus to the general naive public, but terrorism has goals, purpose and demands. Will terrorists in the U.S., Australia, or Spain be satisfied until their demands are met?

We demand that....
*you declare that there is only one true religon.
*you swear true allegiance, in the strictest sense, to Allah.
*only the word of Allah be shown on your TV.
*women should stay at home, or be covered from head to toe in public
*you not drink alcohol in tapas bars.
*women should be stoned to death if they fornicate outside of marriage.
*men be allowed to fornicate outside of marriage with no penalty.
*you repent for the actions of the Crusaders 800 years ago.

Apparently the sheep in Spain think that these terms just might be acceptable......

Iraq: Good news...and some bad

Before my good friend Joe Galloway fled Washington D.C. for the sunnier and more pleasant climes of Kauai for a weeklong vacation he filed this story. Some good news not typically reported in the "mainstream" American media, but worth considering. The bad news being the caveat of what might still lie ahead.

Good news (and bad) from Iraq

By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers

The best news: Between February 19 and March 2 not a single American soldier was killed in Iraq.

This is testimony to the fact that the American military units operating there - even in the midst of a huge movement of soldiers as the old U.S. force of 130,000 is replaced by a fresh new force of 110,000 - have ground down the opposition Sunni guerrillas to a much more manageable level both in terms of numbers and effectiveness.

This wasn't achieved with a few big battles or a few massive sweeps, but rather by a slow, steady weeding out of the bad guys, taking them down or out by ones, twos and threes and primarily doing it with information provided by Iraqis who want to see an end to this war and a future for themselves. Read More >>>>>>

Ten Years.......

It's been rough and rocky travelin',
But I'm finally standin' upright on the ground.
After takin' several readings,
I'm surprised to find my mind`s still fairly sound.

Willie Nelson

It was 10 years ago today that alcohol last touched my lips.........and gullet. Actually ten years and a day, though the anniversary is about one's first completely sober day, so today's the day. I won't go into the whole story with it's sordid details, but I will say if I hadn't given up drinking I would be long dead and gone today. I had had an alcohol related seizure that nearly killed me in 1992 but soldiered on in my miserable condition for another year and a half before something happened and a touch of sanity prevailed.

I will not pat myself on the back one bit for it was family and a few close friends who stuck with me through the deep dark years and it is they who deserve the credit. They and the people at AA who never gave up on me. Those good folks who, at the time, I thought were self righteous idiots of the highest order and who are now some of my closest friends. They are akin to my combat veteran friends, close beyond belief. For too, they are combat veterans also. We share the same horrific stories, the same amusing stories, the stories of friends lost along the way and the friends who have never really recovered from the battle.

I quote Willie Nelson because this stanza from his song "Me and Paul" seems to pretty well sum up my feelings. And because I had the good fortune to meet Willie in 1996 and spend several hours talking with him. One of the subjects was alcohol. Willie had given up whiskey a few years earlier [though he admitted to still smoking herbal remedies] and we both shared the stories of our close calls, misery and amusing andectotes of our drinking history. And, by the grace of God, even after all the abuse I put my body through, my mind and body is still fairly sound.....in some peoples opinion.

The most fitting word for my state today is gratitude. Not only would I most assuredly not be here today, I would not have the wonderful life, wife and step-son, family and friends that I possess today. Thanks to everyone.

Martha, Martha, Martha....!

Personally I'm more than a little shocked that Martha Stewart was found guilty today. Not that she was innocent, just that a jury of her lesser peers would find her so. I would have thought that a jury would have a hard time arriving at a unanimous guilty verdict for America's homemaker.

I do have mixed emotions. I like Martha's style and it's nice to see a divorced housewife make it big. Too, it seems to me that there are bigger fish to fry in the prosecution of corportate criminal mischief. I lost very nearly five figures when my Enron stock took a vacation from existance and many people lost their life savings.....my preference would have been to go after those guys and save Martha for later. But on the other hand, being a law and order conservative, I don't believe that anyone should profit from playing fast and loose with the rules, which Martha undoubtedly did. The saga of Martha is not over though. There will be appeals. Even though she lost $120 million today when her stock plummeted, I suspect she has enough cash left to remain unincarcerated until the next decade.

I know Martha will be busy until the final determination however, so I've decided to pitch in occasionally with some helpful household tips in her absence. Later I'll give you my recipe for a lovely peach parfait and then discuss some options for recovering your car seats with chenille. Stay tuned.

Drain Cam©.........

I won't go into the cause of why we had the Roto-Rooter© guys out to the estate several days ago. Or....the cost involved which was in the three figures. I'll only say that I'm impressed with their services, being one who several years ago thought that the company was only involved in the most basic of services. To wit: Roto-ing and Rooter-ing. Actually they do quite alot more now.

The estate is about 50 years old now and Roto Rooter has been out before so I'm on a first name basis with our service technician, Jose. It's a story for another time, but it's a blessing to live in a town this size and be able to get the same guy to continually come out to work on the equipment of modern life, whether it be electrical, air conditioning or plumbing. They know the history of the equipment and where it is located without a lot of questions asked. All our service guys are nice hard working folks and besides shelling out big bucks for the privelage, it's nice to see them. I even trade photos with my A/C guy, K.C.

Anyway, back to the point. I was really impressed that after cleaning out our lines and installing a drain cleanout point which we lacked, they brought in the high tech plumbing equipment and ran a digital Drain Cam all the way down the line to look for root incursion. It was really a sharp clear picture of our main drain line in it's totality, and being a digital guy, I thought just pretty darned cool. You can check out the results at my latest Mirror Project submission