Kitchen Table Tales - tamales

The story of how Mother and Daddy met goes like this.

For some reason, Daddy (about 14) was selling tamales at the tennis courts. (Why tennis players would want to eat tamales is beyond me!) Mother (about 8) and her friend Jo Bryan managed to steal some tamales and Mother hid them in her chest of drawers at home, and forgot about them. Her mother, noticing a peculiar smell found them, got the story from Mother and made her go apologize.

And the rest is history.

Trying again

Rescanned

Photo right side up

Here is photo right side up. Daddy (note cigarette) and Uncle Bill in their tennis whites. Daddy was about 5'7".

Kitchen Table Tales - Bill Dean and Polio

Daddy was the youngest of four - Aunt Jane, Uncle Bill, Aunt Katherine and Daddy. In 1933, Uncle Bill, the father of 3-year-old Katchie and 15-month-old Billy, contracted polio, which paralyzed his chest muscles. He was kept alive for over 24 hours by friends and family administering artificial respiration while the call went out for an iron lung. One was found in Houston and Bill was on his way in an ambulance when he died near San Angelo. He was 26.

Daddy had been dispatched to Fort Worth to pick up some serum (apparently made from the blood of recovered patients), but it was administered too late to help.

Pecos High School still has an award for a junior boy who excels in academics and athletics named the Bill Dean Memorial Award.

landlord, apes, Miss Margaret

I know I don't blog as often as I should - the trouble is that most of the people I might write about can read....

On another note - I am a new landlord, having bought a house that rents out. I've been agitating to buy rental property for years (and of course would have made a fortune if listened to) and am excited about the prospect of holding a property for more appreciation and collecting rent in the process. We'll see.

I've been listening to Charles Murray's book Human Achievement - 8000 BC to 1950. He is really a statistician, so lots of boring reasons for his conclusions, but I like his assertions that excellence exists. This parallels The Know It All which quotes (I should look this up) someone who said that we're not fallen angels but working our way up from apes with weapons.

We are looking forward to Christmas with the whole family here - can't wait to see Andy and already-standing-ready-to-walk Miss Margaret!