Meanwhile, in Texas...

...it's bluebonnet time!

That is my sole surviving stepbrother, Bob Houston, who turned 84 in January, sitting in a field of bluebonnets this week near Ennis, Texas.

The photo was taken by Bob's lovely wife, Linda. I do not know and cannot explain why Linda was not the one sitting in the field and Bob was not the one taking the photograph. Life is strange in many places, but never stranger than in Texas.

The bluebonnet, which is the state flower of Texas, blooms in March and April each year.

Spring has arrived...

...and the daffodils are lovely, yes, but out in Texas, where I grew up, Spring means one thing and one thing only -- bluebonnets!:

(Photo by Michael Wayne Barrett, 2015, courtesy of Texas Farm Bureau)

...and more bluebonnets:

(Photo by Michael Wayne Barrett, 2015, courtesy of Texas Farm Bureau)

...and still more bluebonnets, shown here strewn with an occasional Indian Paintbrush:













Well, enough of that.

In Georgia and Alabama, Spring always means azaleas and dogwood blossoms, which I may show to you at a later date. But to the young folk, Spring means prom season. Dress-up time! Here is my grandson Sawyer last Friday evening with his prom date:

Aren't they stunning? Brace yourself now for something entirely different. Here is my grandson Noah last Saturday evening with his prom date:

Unless this young lady was his prom date:

Or this young lady:

Or this young lady:

Or perhaps these guys. I can't decide if they remind me more of Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi in The Blues Brothers or Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith in Men In Black:

I give up. All I know for sure is that they are:

And here is my granddaughter Ansley, who had just finished singing and dancing in the final performance of the musical Crazy For You, which enjoyed a three-night run last week at her school. Crazy For You is a 1992 re-working of Gershwin*s 1930 musical Girl Crazy with a few extra old Gershwin standards added for good measure. Ansley played one of the Zander Follies girls, all of whom sported platinum blonde wigs. She is shown here with my grandson Matthew, her brother, who just happened to be home on spring break from Duke University:

Finally, my grandson Elijah and my grandson Sam are missing from this post because they are probably somewhere playing baseball and golf respectively, celebrating the arrival of Spring in the way they like best.

My grandchildren are my favorite flowers in any season.

Part Three of the Texas Triumvirate of Very Important Days has arrived

April 21st.

First of all, let me say “Happy Birthday!” to Jerry Ragsdale, a guy I used to work with at AT&T who hails from Conyers, Georgia, and whom I haven’t seen or talked to in about 15 years but whose birthday it indeed is today.

The Texas Triumvirate of Very Important Days (patent pending) is how I refer to March 2nd, March 6th, and April 21st.

March 2nd is Texas Independence Day. If you have to ask “Independence from what?” you are pathetic indeed and obviously weren’t paying any attention in History class. Independence from what? Why, Mexico, of course! Mexico! I say it a third time: Mexico!

March 6th is Alamo Day. Every living, breathing American in my day (perhaps it is no longer so) had at least heard of Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie.

And finally we come to April 21st. The Battle of San Jacinto. Revenge for March 6th, big-time. Dear to every Texan’s heart.

I posted about it in 2009 with a post entitled “Rules to live by: (1) Always post a sentry during the afternoon siesta; (2) Choose your underwear very carefully." and if you want all the gory magnificent details, just read it again.

Here are two more things that are dear to every Texan’s heart:






(Field of Texas bluebonnets; photo by bombay2austin on Flickr. Noncommercial use permitted with attribution)


That’s right. The Lone Star flag and a field of bluebonnets.

And you thought I was going to say George W. Bush and Willie Nelson.

I may have to turn in my credentials as a Texan

Yesterday was March 6th and I did not blog a single word about the fall of the Alamo, which occurred 177 years ago on March 6th, 1836.

I forgot to remember the Alamo!



And four days before that, on March 2nd, I did not blog a single word about Texas Independence Day, which is more important in Texas than the 4th of July.

The big three Texas Dates of Historic Significance (and thus blogging opportunities) are only two-thirds done for this year, however.

There is still the battle of San Jacinto on April 21st, when General Antonio López de Santa Anna got his comeuppance.

In addition, there is Juneteenth if you happen to be African-American, which I am not, not that there’s anything wrong with that.



I have heard it said that the Roman Catholic Church used to claim, “Give us a child until he is six, and he will be a Catholic for life.” I do not know whether that particular alleged boast is true. My mother, a non-practicing Jew, and my dad, a lapsed Methodist, were not religious when I was very young, so I never went to church or synagogue or anyplace else except the Pawtucket (Rhode Island) Day Nursery. When I was around five, I did visit the Woodlawn Baptist Church in Pawtucket a time or two with my dad. We didn’t own an automobile and Woodlawn was within walking distance of where we lived in the third-floor apartment of the house at 61 Larch Street.

In August of 1947, though, when I was six and a half, something momentous happened. We moved lock, stock, and barrel from Rhode Island to Texas.



The Catholics or anybody else may have you until you’re six if they like, but if Texas gets you when you’re six and a half, you’re pretty much doomed very fortunate indeed a Texan for the rest of your life, like it or not.

This is true even if you move away when you are 20 and hardly ever go back. I speak from personal experience. Even if you try to put Texas out of your mind, you cannot. I think it has something to do with bluebonnets.


(Field of Texas bluebonnets; photo by bombay2austin on Flickr. Noncommercial use permitted with attribution)

I know I'm getting old, but next year I simply must remember to remember the Alamo.

From the archives: It’s bluebonnet time in Texas. (April 8, 2008)

I grew up in Texas, my family having moved there from Rhode Island the summer before I entered second grade. I left Texas at the age of 20 -- how can it possibly have been 47 years ago? (Editor’s note. It isn’t; it’s 51. --RWP) -- but even though I now live in an area of the country where every spring is absolutely gorgeous with white dogwoods, pink dogwoods, purple redbuds, purple tulip trees (Magnolia soulangiana), white Bradford pear blossoms, pale pink cherry blossoms, azalea bushes in many shades, daffodils, phlox, forsythia (I could go on and on), every year around this time I become nostalgic for flat land, mesquite trees, and a field filled with bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush.

The photograph (click on it and it will get larger) could have been taken from the front yard of my childhood home (it wasn’t, though --I found it on the internet). All it needs to make the scene complete is a dirt road and what people in Texas call a “bob-war fince” (barbed wire fence). If the photographer had then turned and taken a snapshot in a different direction, you might see a pasture full of Hereford cattle, the reddish-brown kind with faces of white. And if the photographer had turned in still another direction, you might see my mother picking blackberries or peaches or roses or lilacs, or you might see my father coming home from work, carrying his lunchpail, walking up the lane all the way from the paved road where his carpool dropped him off.

As an old poem says, “Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight, / Make me a child again just for tonight!”

I don’t really want to go back; it was not an idyllic period of my life. I am just missing the bluebonnets today as only someone raised in Texas can.

“I could while away the hours, conferrin’ with the flowers...”

Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, there are four ways you can spend Sunday afternoon:

1. In the park with George:

(A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, oil on canvas by Georges Seurat, 1884-1886 -- click to enlarge)

2. In rehearsal with Sutton Foster (8:45)

3. With Texas Bluebonnets and a Pit Bull named Sharky (0:41).

4. With Texas bluebonnets, a Pit Bull named Sharky, and a Guinea Pig named Penelope (1:52).

Please tell us which one you prefer and why.

If you pick number 2, state whether you would rather be on stage or in the audience.

If you pick number 4, state whether you would prefer to be Sharky, Penelope, or the bluebonnets.

If, all in all, you would rather be a bee, buzz off.

Bluebonnet time in Texas

I grew up in Texas, my family having moved there from Rhode Island the summer before I entered second grade. I left Texas at the age of 20 (how can it possibly have been 47 years ago?), but even though I now live in an area of the country where every spring is absolutely gorgeous with white dogwoods, pink dogwoods, purple redbuds, purple tulip trees, white Bradford pear blossoms, pale pink cherry blossoms, azalea bushes in many shades, daffodils, phlox, forsythia (I could go on and on), every year around this time I become nostalgic for flat land, mesquite trees, and a field filled with bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush. This photograph (click on it and it will become a full-screen version) could have been taken from the front yard of my childhood home (it wasn't--I found it on the internet). All it needs to make the scene complete is a dirt road and what people in Texas call a "bob-war fince" (barbed wire fence). If the photographer had then turned and taken a snapshot in a different direction, you might see a pasture full of Hereford cattle, the reddish-brown kind with faces of white. And if the photographer had turned in still another direction, you might see my mother picking blackberries or peaches or roses or lilacs, or you might see my father coming home from work, carrying his lunchpail, walking up the lane all the way from the paved road where his carpool dropped him off.

As an old poem says, “Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight, / Make me a child again just for tonight!”

I don't really want to go back; it was not an idyllic period of my life. I am just missing the bluebonnets tonight.