Palo Duro Canyon June 2011

When I started studying Texas History in earnest a few years ago, I read many accounts of events taking place in or near Palo Duro Canyon. I read Stories of Texas Rangers or the US Army chasing Indians that would just disappear out on the Texas Plains. Early settlers did not know about Palo Duro Canyon as It was so far into the plains from the settlements that they had never seen or heard about it. The stories I read piqued my interest in going there.

For my birthday this year, Cecelia planned a surprise trip to the canyon as a present. After doing lots of research on the trip, she found out that April was not the most desirable time of the year to go if one wanted to partake of all the events available. Texas, the play, doesn't start until June and everyone told us we had to see it if we were there. The play is a musical romance of Panhandle history. So, we decided not to go on my birthday but, instead go in June. We did and just returned on Sunday, June 19Th. The biggest problem with going in June is the weather. It gets hot in the canyon and it was very hot, reaching 110 degrees one day.

What Cecelia had planned for our trip would have been so special, but it just didn't work out. For one, on the west rim of the canyon near the entrance to the State Park, there are a few rock cabins that were built in 1934 by the C.C.A. The cabins are very primitive, and one has to take everything for sleeping and cooking with them when they stay there. I am not even sure they have air conditioning. Besides that, we could only rent one for one night and we wanted to stay longer. They also don't allow pets in the cabins and we had our little dogs with us. We could not leave our dogs home because our pet sitter was out of town. In fact, we were meeting them at the canyon. I suggested the idea of renting a trailer and camping in the canyon.

We rented a 19-foot trailer and pulled it 1145 miles to Palo Duro and back. We camped at the state park for four nights. It was very hot and we spent most of the hot parts of the days in the trailer. One day we went into the town of Canyon which is just outside the park. There is a very good museum there, and while Cecelia did some shopping, that is where I went. 


One morning we took a horseback ride into the canyon and another morning we took a three-hour jeep ride to the very bottom of the canyon. We had a very talkative guide that had lots of information to share with us. I would like to go back sometime in the spring or fall when the weather would let us do some hiking or bike riding on the many trails available.

My Cat Story

This story goes a long way back; to the time I lived in Colorado. I was married to my late wife Sharon at the time. I am not a cat person, never have been. When I married Sharon, she had two children, a dog, and a cat named Sparkie. Now this cat was not friendly and would not let me near it; probably was a brilliant idea on the part of the cat. Well, anyway, this cat would poop in the flower pots in the house and kick the dirt all over the carpets while trying to cover it up. As one might expect, this drove me crazy, and it went on for years. Soon I started hating this cat.


I saw the cat, sparkie, setting in the driveway, one day as I was leaving for work. I stopped the car, got out and picked up the cat and put it in the car. I don't know what came over me. I should not have done that. I began looking for a new home for the cat as I drove to work, I wanted a place where he would find a good home. I went into a neighborhood that I knew had upscale homes. I stopped the car and let the cat out. As I drove off, I looked in the rear-view mirror, and the cat was just setting in the middle street looking around.


I never told the family about what happened to the cat, and at the time, they thought it had run off. It left the house often for days at a time, so it was not unusual for it to be gone for a while. One night during dinner, the phone rang and when I picked it up, there was a lady on the other end and she asked if we were missing a cat named Sparkie. I told her we had lost a cat named Sparkie, but that we were not missing it. I could hear her kids talking and laughing in the background, so I asked if she wanted to keep the cat. She said her kids really did liked it, and she would be happy to keep it. I don't know how she got the cats name because while driving the cat to it's new home, I removed all of it's tags except the rabies tag. Maybe she called and got the name that way.


Years later, while cooking out in the back yard, I had a few beers and made the mistake of telling Jodi, my step-daughter, who was grown now, the cat story. I thought she was old enough to think it was funny, but she really got mad at me. She was mad at me for a long time and maybe she still is, who knows. She told me recently that when I told her that story she almost burned an old picture of me and my mother that was on the wall in our house. Sure glad she didn't!


I don't know what came over me for doing what I did to that cat because, it was not a very nice thing to do. It sure is funny now when I tell the story to people that don't like cats. We have a wonderful big black cat now, but I still like dogs much better.

My Sailing Advenetures

January, 2021

The first experiences sailing were while in high school. One of my friends at the time, Pinkie Taylor, was a sea scout, and he had access to a large wooden sailboat belonging to the Sea Scouts. The scouts kept the boat moored in the middle of a small bay at the marina in Corpus Christi. We didn't have access to a boat to take us out to the moored sailboat, so one of us would just swim out to the boat and then pick up everyone else at the dock. Usually, when we went sailing, the only person on board whowho had any experience was Pinkie, but he would teach us what we needed to know to get by as deckhands each time we went out. 

 This boat had a wooden bow sprint that was reinforced by two chains, one on each side. For sport and to cool off, in the hot Corpus Christi summer days, we would take turns hanging from the bow sprint chains and letting our bodies drag in the water while sailing. Another stupid sport we had was for two guys to jump off the boat as we were sailing. To get back on board, the boat would come about and sail right toward us and luff the sails. As the boat approached, each guy, one on each side, would grab his bow sprint chain and climb on board. What can I say, but we were young and not too smart.

The waterfront in Corpus Christi is protected from wind, waves, and storm surge by a line of rocks curving all the way around the front of the marina. It makes a great place to water ski or sails when the wind is up, as it usually is in Corpus in the summers. On the leeward side of these rocks in places, small sand beaches have developed over time, and they are great for beaching a small boat to spend time in the sun, have a picnic or party on, which we usually did a lot.

One day I was at the helm, and we were sailing back and forth inside the rocks, and as I passed near one of the small beaches, everyone on board jumped off the boat and left me all alone. Needless to say, I was shocked and alarmed. I hadn't been sailing that long. I didn't know what to do as the boat was almost too large to sail alone. Like a pro, I turned the boat around and headed for the beach, luffed the sails, and ran the boat up on the beach. Everyone was shocked that I knew what to do, and so was I.

In those days, they always had a dance on Wednesday nights on the middle T-Head in the summers. We called them Ritter dances because Tex Ritter was a country performer at the time, and they were playing country music at the dances. On Wednesday night, we sailing around in the dark during the dances, and someone on board came up with the idea to try to pick up some girls from the dance. The plan was to sail the boat as close as we could to the T-Head, have someone step off the boat, and go after girls. The boat would come back by to pick up our scout and any girls with him. As the boat approached, he would just step back on again. Believe it or not, this worked out pretty well. 

Sometimes, if the wind was not just right, and we got too close to the T-Head, we would not get the boat off the concrete. The boat would scrape along the T-Head, doing some damage to the boat's railing, I am sure. This went on all that summer, and we had lots of fun sailing that big old, slow wooden boat. I don't remember all the details now, but we lost access to the boat, and my sailing experiences stopped.

After moving to Colorado and finding myself divorced, I met a new lady named Sharon Weiss Lefforge, whose family owned a condo on Lake Dillon, which is in the mountains just west of Denver. 
One weekend we were up there watching the sailboats out on the lake, and she said, " I wish we could go sailing." I said, "well, let's go." She said," before one can rent a boat, they make you take a test to be sure you can sail. I tried and couldn't pass it." I went down to the office, inquired about the test, took it, and passed. The next thing I knew, we were on the lake sailing. It is one thing to take a test and another to actually do the deed. When a big puff of wind hit us, and I could not control the boat, I realized I didn't know that much about the craft of sailing a small boat in lots of shifting wind on a lake that's water level was at 10,000 feet above sea level.

Once back in Denver, the next weekend, we found someone to take sailing lessons from, and that was the start of a process that lasted for many years. When Sharon and I married, we still had the desire to sail, so we bought a small sailboat (Venture 22), put it on a small lake in Denver called Cherry Creek, and started sailing every weekend. We joined the Denver Yacht Clubmet lots of nice people at the lake, and sailing became our way of life. The big sport at Cherry Creek was sailboat racing, and I soon found out that the boat we bought was not very fast. In fact, it was the slowest out there. There was one other boat like ours in the club, and he and I usually raced to see who would not be last in our club races. 

After a few years, we outgrew the 22-foot boat, and at the end of the summer of 1986, we bought a Catalina 25. There was a large fleet of Catalina 25 boats in our club, and the racing competition was fierce. The first race I entered with the new boat was a Wednesday night fun race, and I finished first overall. I was hooked on racing! The next summer, I won every award that was given for racing in our club.

After a few years of lake sailing, I wanted to try a new adventure, bareboat sailing in the Virgin Islands. I had never sailed in open waters before, except in Corpus Christi, and was looking forward to the challenge. Many of our club members went sailing in the Islands in our winter month, and I was envious of them. The problem was that to charter a boat down there, one needed a crew, and I didn't have one. One needed good sailors had time to go away for a week or so and had the money to spend on the trip. I could not find anyone that met those requirements until one night at a party at our home. We were hosting a Christmas neighborhood party, and I met our new neighbors, the Harneys. She was from California, and he was from Australia. They had the money and time, and he claimed to have some experience with boats. We met and planned our trip for the following January. 

I will follow this story up with another, and the title is "A Bad Ending To A good Trip."