weekend woes

It was mild on Saturday and I thought to prune the rest of the roses but it was also drizzly and not even a heavy drizzle but enough that you would be wet enough if you stayed out in it long enough. So I decided to pull all the plumerias and the bird of paradise and the nun's orchid and the star of india and the angel trumpet out of the garage and give everything a good watering and sweep all the leaves and dirt out in an effort to excavate the kiln with an eye to start casting stuff again and so I left it all out on the concrete apron in front of the barn totally exposed to the north because it wasn't supposed to get any colder than a quick dip to 40˚. Then winter came back Saturday night. Of course it did!

The weather app on my phone sucks.

Went out Sunday morning at 9 AM in 35˚ with a strong constant north wind to meet and hear Beto O'Rourke speak outdoors! about the future we want for the country. 9 AM on a Sunday morning isn't a great time in this religious republican town to attract people to his town hall meeting but it was the only slot available in his very busy schedule. Beto is currently a representative in Congress and he is running to unseat Ted Cruz as one of our senators. About 30 of us showed up but I'm uncertain how many were part of Beto's entourage. I did see a few familiar faces. We think there are more democrats in this town then conventional wisdom purports but, as I've said before, this is a mean little town and the republicans here aren't above punishing democrats who make themselves known by boycotting their businesses or spreading rumors or shunning them in social situations. The rare democrat who has the guts to put a political sign in their yard is brave indeed. Anyway, it was cold as shit but only lasted about half an hour and I'm glad I went. I guess I'm going to get more active in the local scene having signed up and checked the box for volunteering.

And the rest of the day was cold as shit too and since none of the little anemone flowers were open because it was wet and gray and cold, we decided to rent a movie. If you ever saw Kingsman: the Secret Service and enjoyed it and think you might be tempted to see the sequel, Kingsman: the Golden Circle...don't. It was really awful.

And this morning it is 33˚. Did I mention the weather app on my phone sucks? And that the tropicals are still out on the driveway? I do think they'll be OK but I should have waited just two more days as we start a warming trend today. But could I wait two more days? Nooo.

I did make a little progress on the model Saturday, roughing out two of the little flowers.

wine fair on the square

The annual Wine Fair on the Square in Wharton was Saturday and also my day to work at the antique store. This year they had the Wine Fair start at noon instead of 4 PM like all the previous years and ordinarily I would have had to stay til the bitter end which is supposed to be 10 PM but because we are on the 'poor relations' side of the Square, we usually don't have anyone coming in the store past 9 PM. By then all the tasters have used up all their tickets and the band on the other side of the square is in full swing. As it was, I left at 5 PM because of the first of the wedding events.

Last year it was rainy and so none of the food vendors, some of the craft booths, or art cars showed up as scheduled. This year we had excellent weather if a little on the warm side and they all showed up. I did get out to look around a bit and the craft booths were typical and predictable for this little town...cheap jewelry, religious stuff out of wood, painted wine glasses and all sorts of things made from wine bottles, maybe 10 little booths. We had 5 art cars and about that number of vintage cars show up. That's the sop they toss us and the other new little shop on our side of the square for the event. Most of the shops are clustered on the two sides of the square diagonally from us and then down the block off the square so the committee puts everything over there to their advantage leaving us high and dry...every year. We have asked for the ticket booth or the food vendors or the tables and chairs set out for people to sit at and eat and socialize or the stage. I don't really want the stage because the sound level would be too loud. But no, they just look at us and say 'but you get the art cars!' Whoopie doo! This is the first year they have actually shown up and parked on our side of the Square like they are supposed to. Usually they just don't show up.

The Wine Fair, the purpose of which is to draw people to the Square and into the shops, is organized by the merchants and someone either volunteers or gets volunteered to be the chairman, a time consuming and thankless job. They keep trying to get my sister to chair it and she keeps telling them they don't want that because they wouldn't like the result. I told her, IN JEST, that we ought to co-chair it next year and move all the good stuff over to our side of the Square and let them have the art cars since they think that's such a big draw. But then we'd be cutting our noses off to spite our faces because then we would have the unrewarding and thankless job of organizing it and putting it on.

I'll be interested in seeing the final totals since the committee spent a lot of money...on the band, on the warm-up band (I think they wanted $400 for 30 minutes), they paid some young woman $1000+ to do all the advertising and promotion on-line which basically amounted to a search code that led to the already established FB page for the event and the day of the event she brought around slips of paper for the fair goers to pick up encouraging them to tweet the fair and then they only charge the people who want to do the wine tasting so those that come just for the band in the evening, this year The Blues Brothers Tribute Band, get a free concert. Not to mention that they always predict 3 times as many attendees as they usually get and attendance seems to be diminishing.

Oh well. While it is aggravating to be blown off by the other merchants, it's not my store and not my worry.

edit to whom it may concern: we are NOT chairing the next wine fair.

next post: the wedding

a bump in the road

Sometimes I could weep for this country.

My sister and I were out yesterday going to a couple of estate sales, one of which was in Victoria, a small city about an hour's drive away, which is a post all in itself. Neither of us is familiar with Victoria and once turned off of our projected path, would be totally lost. We were well out of town on our way home, out in the country with corn fields all around on the very long business 59 road that would eventually carry us onto the actual freeway, and we were in fact finally parallel with the freeway and could see the merge point up ahead, when we came on a wreck at an intersection whose cross road lead only into a small neighborhood to our right.

The wreck must have just happened as there were no emergency vehicles on site yet. The demolished SUV in front of us was crosswise on the road we were on with an also damaged 4 door sedan pulled over further up on the left. Hard to tell who was at fault but there were two people, a man and a woman, standing in the road, waving frantically and directing traffic to turn off the road and into the little neighborhood instead of letting people go around on the shoulder and continuing on.

My sister and I were not so easily swayed, we could see that we could easily get around the damaged SUV so we ignored the frantic arm waving of the woman and proceeded on slowly at which point the woman and the man started yelling at us to STOP STOP. My sister stopped, rolled down her window, and the man approached and put his head in the window and being very loud and aggressive, told us we could not go forward and to back up and turn.

Now, usually, I am very laid back and bumps in the road generally roll off me, but we were not in a place where we could just turn off and not be totally lost without any indication of how we might be able to get back on the road ahead and for some reason this man's barking commands just pissed. me. off.

“Are you a cop?” I demanded across my sister to him. When he repeated that we not continue, I asked him again if he was a cop. “No”, finally, “I'm just a good christian man trying to help”. When we indicated that the road was clear, he said “We don't want you to get hurt, my wife got hurt.” When my sister told him that if his wife was injured then perhaps he should be over there ministering to her, this 'good christian man' strode off and stood in front of our car to physically prevent us from moving forward. Then the woman had to have her say and she came up to the window.

“There's radiation oil on the road”, she says as she gestures to the coolant leaking from the busted radiator of the SUV. “We're just trying to save your life”, she screams at us as we back up and turn onto the cross street.

Radiation oil?

So now we are turned off into this neighborhood and Siri is no help as she is telling us to turn around and continue on the way we had been going. We went around a block and came back to the same intersection with two cars ahead of us. In the few minutes it took us to go around the block, a sheriff had arrived and was directing the cars to turn, go around the wreck on the shoulder, and continue on but he stopped us and made us go forward under the freeway and in the opposite direction we wanted.

Why us? The other two cars were able to turn. OK, fine. A firetruck had pulled up maybe looking for the radiation oil spill.

Anyway, it was easy enough to get turned around and going in the right direction. In rural Texas there are cross-overs connected with farm roads and county roads that allow you to u-turn on the highway if you don't want to get off. So we came upon one quickly and that is what we did and passed over the ruckus and got home.

So why does this make me weep for this country?

Because in one moment I was faced with the sanctimonious and hypocritical, holier than thou self described 'good christian man' who was forcing us to bend to his will because he had decided what was best for us (while ignoring his injured wife) and to hell with how it would affect us and the astounding ignorance that is the result of our current majority political leadership with it's complete scorn of education, not to mention separation-of-church-and-state.

I know that both people must have still been in a form of shock, still absorbing the completely wrecked cars and whatever injuries the wife had, and their adrenaline and fear was probably making them act crazy, I've been in that situation. Still, it was a lesson in how ingrained the christian patriarchy is and the mindset that let's them think they have the right to control women (and men) and how uneducated some of our communities are.

I mean, really, radiation oil? I still can't get over that. I'd think it was just a mispronunciation in her stress, that she meant radiator and oil, if she hadn't followed it up with the screamed “we're trying to save your life!”. I'm pretty sure coolant and oil are not going to kill me if I drive past it in my car.

small mindedness, casual racism, and incorrect weather predictions

I woke up with a headache this morning. That's usually when I get them, I wake up with them although when I went to bed last night I could feel it coming on and I should have taken some ibuprofen then but I didn't. I always have this unrealistic hope that it will go away before morning. My morning headaches are always on the left side and when they are really bad, they throb. I haven't had a real pounder though in many many years. These days they just make me feel nauseated and achey besides the pain in my head. Sometimes I'll try and wait it out til after breakfast because I don't like taking pain meds on an empty stomach but this morning I caved and took some between my two cups of coffee. The good thing though is, once I take some ibuprofen, it generally goes away within about half an hour. I'm already feeling better.

So I did something last night I don't do very often. I went out and socialized. Well, we went out and socialized since I made Marc come with me. There's a couple here who bought the building next to the antique store and they have been working on repairing and restoring the old building for the last three years with an eye to opening a little cafe but they aren't getting any support from most of the other people on the square or the business council. There's a lot of small town small-mindedness involved. Their ideas for the place have been fluid. The original idea of a restaurant (the building used to contain a restaurant but all the kitchen equipment needs to be replaced besides all the general repairs) has morphed into a wine bar and bistro/cafe, something this town really needs. They've already refurbished both bathrooms and rebuilt the front exterior wall with two new gorgeous 9' doors. They built a stage in the back Garden Room for the music venue and they are renting out the space for parties and events towards getting the new kitchen equipment. Last night they had a little party for their supporters with musical entertainment and dinner and wine. Caroline and Wesley have been swimming upstream for three years so I wanted to show my support for them. They are really nice down to earth people who have been facing a smear campaign almost from the get go. It pisses me off and I don't let comments I hear in the antique store or elsewhere go by unchallenged.

Speaking of small town small-mindedness I had two women in the store yesterday, sisters who live in different towns having a day out together and 'away from the husbands' as they put it. At one point they were bashing some members of their family as being worthless lazy takers who were bleeding their aunt dry and then realized I was hearing their conversation and remarked that they probably shouldn't be saying those things. I just shrugged and said true is true. “Well, they're half-Mexican” she says to me as if that explains it. That's another thing I can't let slide...casual racism. I told her that I had to argue with her there, that being Mexican didn't have anything to do with it, that Mexicans were some of the hardest working people I knew and that there were lazy people across the board. She agreed and went on to say that their (white) mother hadn't demanded much of their children either. The white mother was just as poor a parent as the Mexican father but it was the Mexican part that they attributed the bad behavior to. I don't know these women and I don't know if they are truly racist, surely they must know or interact with lots of latinos and they may not have realized how that sounded. Maybe since I pointed it out they will be a little more thoughtful.

So the cold rainy weekend the weather predictors had predicted did not materialize. It didn't rain and it's not cold. It's feeling like spring and I have noticed new growth beginning to emerge. I'm wanting to get out there and start cutting back dead foliage but it's still only February 1^st and February can go either way. My grandson was going to come out and help me with an outdoor project this weekend but because of the bad weather predicted I postponed it til next weekend which is my regular Saturday off. Just as well, I guess since his mom told me yesterday that he was sick and I wouldn't have wanted him out here anyway. She's right about that. Although I believe I have a strong immune system, I try to stay away from sick people.

Well, my headache is well and truly gone now and the sunny day is beckoning and my wonderful husband is cooking breakfast. If anyone needs me later, I'll be outside.

Saturdays on the square

Some of you may remember that I work at the local antique store in this little town on Saturdays. Well, all but the first Saturday. Plus I pick up occasional other days when I don't have any work.

Before this last Great Recession, it did OK for itself with buyers from other antique stores coming from the city and a small 'shop Wharton antiques' billboard on the highway before the first exit to town but the last hurricane blew it down and TxDoT won't allow it back up. The store hasn't really recovered. Same story for most the other shops on and around the square.

Wharton residents don't exactly support the small businesses in town, not with a Walmart in town and a major shopping plaza 30 minutes away so most our business comes from day trippers or from the other small towns around us.

During the week there are days when no one comes in. Since I work on Saturday, that doesn't happen to me very often though I do have days when just a few people come in. The owner sometimes talks about closing Miss Hattie's as she is supporting it with her day job but so far it's just been talk.

Mostly Saturdays are a day of forced inactivity for me. I play a lot of spider solitaire, shell pecans, read. Sometimes I bring other stuff to do. I chat with the people who come in.

The shop is on the courthouse square which is the center of activity for a lot of events. I got to work one day last month to see the Martin Luther King Day parade was assembling but by the time I got the shop open and came back out to get some pictures, they were already marching on down the street so all I got was the tail end.

Across the square from us is the veteran's memorial and so I see ceremonies going on over there sometimes too.

Also on the square is the gazebo which is not directly across from the shop but a little caty-cornered and it is a popular place for weddings and photography. I've seen several weddings and lots of photo sessions for weddings or quinceneras or proms.

I try to sneak my own pictures, shooting from the door or through the shop window on zoom but occasionally I get caught like during yesterday's Quincenera photo shoot.

This bride was wearing cowboy boots.

It's a nice window on life in a small town.