Houston, Texas
Then we went to Houston, and the discussion came up
about how to pronounce the word "Houston."
In New York, they have a street named
"Houston" Street, and they pronounce it "Howston,"
which seems correct, because they also live in houses, pronounced "Howses."
In Texas, however, they pronounce
"Houston" as "Hyewston." Does this mean that
they live in "Hyewses?"
We met Gloria's nephew, Steve, his wife, Carissa,
and their kids, Kyle, Ammity, and Jackie and went to dinner at a Mexican
restaurant that had reel good food. (I din't know zacktly how to
spell there they're their names reel good, so I jest guessed at it).
Those kids were older,
so me and Sniffy didn't have to worry about getting sticky, we jest had to
worry about getting some of the chips before they were all gone.
Then we got back to the La Piņata Motel and there was some reel good
chocolate chip cookies there, so we had a cool cookie and coffee party in
the lobby.
The next day after breakfast, we got to go and see
the battleship "Te xas,"
but it was pretty cold and windy out there so us guys jest stayed in the
van, also to prevent anybuddy thinking we did anything to that boat in
case something went wrong when we were checking it out. You ken find
out more by clicking below.
Battleship
Texas Website
Then we went to the San Jacinto monument, and that
was a reel tall tower that the old folks went up into and looked out of
the windows. And, like always, you ken click on the line below to
find out more about it from an official source rather than jest my
opinion.
San
Jacinto Monument Website
While the old folks was checking out that exciting monument, Spi nnaker
and me got out and walked over to the fence where they had a reel old bull
cow named "Jack." Spinnaker can talk cow talk cuz he used to be a moose, and they
almost talk the same like horses and cows, and a lot of other similar
animals, so he asked the old guy how he was doing. (Spinnaker said
that cows and horses talk funny, but he can still understand them). The
old bull said he was jest great, cuz he was now retired and all he had to
do was eat and be lazy. He told us a funny story about how he got to
be retired.
When he was jest a puppy, they took him and made him work in the rodeo
where cowboys wrestle and rope little cows and sling them around and stuff
to show the people in the audience how good they are (the cowboys, not the
little cows). Anyhow, there was this reel mean cowboy that got him
with a rope, I think they called it a "lasso," or something, and
then he threw that little cow down and tied him all up and smacked him a
couple of times and made him cry, and the guy jest laughed.
After a few years that little cow grew up into a great big bull, and
they used him in the rodeo, except that then the cowboys jumped on him to
take a ride, jest like you might ride a horse. He said he didn't
mind that too much, cuz every time he jumped around and threw off one of
them cowboys that was trying to ride him, everybuddy in the audience
clapped and cheered fer him, and he was famous. Then one day he
recognized that feller that had hurt him when we was a little guy, and
when that cowboy jumped on him, instead of throwing him off, he raced
around and around the rodeo area and jumped up and down a little, and made
the cowboy get sick, then he went racing reel fast and jumped reel hard
and threw that cowboy off his back and through the air and he landed on
top of the ambulance that they always have to keep nearby at any rodeo,
jest fer such an occasion. He said he also talked to
"Bill," one of the horses that din't like that cowboy either,
cuz he was also mean to him, so he also threw him off into the mud on the
other side of the rodeo place!
After that, all the other cowboys was afraid to ride him, cuz if that
bull doesn't give them a crazy ride, then they don't get no points to show
which of the cowboys is the winner of the rodeo, so they retired
him. By then we saw the old folks heading back to the van, so we
scooted back so we wouldn't get in trubble.
Then we drove the van onto a little tiny ferry boat
that only held about 2 0
cars, and it jest takes you across the river or something little like a
river, cuz they din't never put a bridge there, but that ride was so short
that us guys din't even get no chance to get out and explore.
Nothing went wrong with that boat.
Afte r checking out that river, or
"waterway," as somebuddy called it, I saw that it was so short
that they could have taken all six of their ferry boats and fastened them
together and that would have made a bridge across there and then they
wouldn't have to use their engines to take cars across, cuz the boats
could act as a bridge. Another idea I thought of was that since a
lot of the people around the waterfront down there have their own personal
junk yards, they could take the exter junk from around the banks of the water,
and they
could jest throw all of that into the water and fill the rest of it in
with dirt and then they would have a reel bridge fer almost no money and
they could also hide a lot of rusty junk! I'll have to send my idea
to Texas the next time I get a chance, and if they use my ideas they'll
have to send me four bucks to pay me for my time to tell them that.
Then the next day we took another boat ride all
around the Port of Houston, to see all the big boats and things all along
the waterfront.
Port
of Houston Website
There would be too many pitchers to show of the
tour, so you ken je st
click on the link above and see the reel website that they have with a lot
of more information. The pitcher at right shows the high security in
effect at the time of our tour. This prevents people without a
Phillips Screwdriver from being able to get in without jumping over the
gate.
We was watching the news while the old folks was
gone to dinner, and the feller was talking about the U. S. Government has
some "Strategic Stockpiles" of certain important things that
they store up in case of an emergency. A couple of items they
mentioned were, Oil and gasoline, bacon, gold, silver, platinum, and a
bunch of other things that I din't know what they were. The feller
also said that the supply of bacon was very low cuz of how all the fast
food places are now promoting hamburgers and other sandwiches with bacon
on them, and the demand has exceeded the supply.
I think he forgot to tell about the Strategic
Stockpile of rusty junk that we seen all around the waterfront and also a
lot of other places throughout Texas. We saw one pile of exter rusty
junk that was about a hunnert feet high, and a big steam shovel thingy was
loading some of it into a big boat. Then they had some other piles
that weren't very tall. There also was a reel tall pile of old
fridgerators, washing machines and water heaters. That even looked
like an important Strategic Stockpile, fer sure! Us guys are
sleeping a lot better now since we know that even if we run out of bacon,
there will still be plenty of rusty junk on hand for emergencies!
That night when we was asleep, us guys got woke up
by a crash we heard outside. I got up and looked out the window to
see what was going on. Pretty soon two guys came out of their room
and went over to a long piece of what turned out to be part of the rusty
rain gutter from the roof of the motel. The brackets that held it up
had finally got so rusty that they broke and let that piece of rusty
gutter fall to the ground. Well, one of them fellers said,
"Golly, Buck, that's sure a good piece of rain gutter. Let's
put it in the back of the pickup, cuz I been needin' one on the front of
my house fer quite a few years now, and this one's still got a lot of good
spots in it." Then they loaded it into the back of that
feller's old, rusty pickup.
The next day the old folks found a bike trail that
went from a park to somewhere else, so they decided to go fer a bike ride,
so us guys jest natcheraly natchurealie naturally stayed
in the van. After they left, me and Leroy got out to stretch out legs and
paws, and we found an abandoned train locomotive sitting on the track in
back of the park, behind a fence, so we jest had to go and check it out. We
was inside playing "Drive the train," when Leroy pushed a green
button and we heard a loud hiss, then a squeak, and that locomotive sta rted
to roll down
the hill toward the end of the track. Both of us jumped off and
watched it take off and finally it ran off the end of the track and got
stuck in the sand. If they would have had a decent brake handle we
could have easily stopped it, but I guess that's what they get fer having
such a complicated brake handle that we couldn't figger out how to
use. Better yet, they could have left the engine running so we could
have jest put it into reverse and backed it up out of that sand so nothing
would get ruined. That was about it for
Houston, so after the old folks got back, Jim noticed the locomotive
sitting off the end of the track and took the picture of it, and since it
wasn't our fault, we jest kept quiet. Then we left for Corpus
Christi. Corpus Christi,
Texas
The next day us guys got up in Corpus Christi, and went
and had breakfast downstairs in the La Piņata Motel breakfast room reel
early before the people got there, and we found another stale donut that
was so fresh it din't have no dust bunnies on it yet, but it was jest a
little crunchy, so it was reel good, and we also found out how to open the
door on the little fridgerator and get out one of those little boxes of
milk, and we all had a reel good breakfast and were back in the room
before the old folks even woke up. Then the
old folks went to have breakfast with Gloria's brother ,
Tom, and his wife, Pat. Then they went sightseeing and went to see
the big old aircraft carrier boat named "The Lexington."
It was so foggy that we din't get no satisfactory pitchers of that big
boat, so you'll jest have to click on their website if you want to see
that boat. The drawing at the right is just a representative drawing
of what it sort of looks like. USS
Lexington Website Us
guys din't even get out of the van cuz it was Spring Break time and there
was a lot of smarty-looking big kids all around that big boat and any one
of them might have got to messing around with us guys and threw us in the
water or something. Judging by the crowd that
was there, and the brochure I saw, I'll give this a heart-pounding rating
of 6.  We
did manage to get the binoculars and look around, though, and we seen this
pitcher of how they fix plumbing pipes there in Texas. That way you
ken also get it back apart if you ever need to, in order to fix something
else that might be connected to it. When everybuddy got back, we
took a pitcher of it so we ken pass along this information.
The
next day us guys stayed in the motel and slept all day, but the ol d
folks went with Tom & Pat and checked out a lot of Texas where there
are some lakes and they also have a lake cabin up there. This here's
a pitcher of Lake Corpus Christi, taken from a park pavilion nearby.
That proves that there really is water in lakes in Texas! That
day was a slow news day around town. The news reporters got so
desperate fer something to report about, they interviewed a feller at a
furniture store to find out just zaktly what kind of a couch he was
looking fer and what happened to his old one. Then a lady news
reporter was interviewing a guy painting a house, and asked him if there
was an increase in house painting ever since that hurricane a couple of
years ago...he said, "No, there's jest a lot of them that need
painting." Then we got to see a breaking
news flash that showed a car stalled in the parking lot of a grocery
store, and then they showed all the chaos they went through to get
somebuddy with a set of jumper cables that still had the clamps on both
ends to give the guy a jump start so everybuddy in the parking lot could
get back to a normal life. Next they found a
guy at that grocery store who was buying 6 packages of hotdogs, 8 bags of
buns, several jugs of mustard, 12 bags of chips and 3 cases of soda pop if
he was stocking up for the bad weather we were having (it was raining
outside a little), and he said, "Shoot, no, we're jest having a
family picnic!" It got so bad that us
guys turned the TV off and took a reel hard nap. That's when we
missed the report about the trash truck that backed into somebuddy's fancy
car...but we got to see it in the paper the next day! The
following day, the old folks decided to go to Galveston, which is
nearby, but
not too much nearby, but we got there pretty early anyway. We parked
sort of downtown, I think, and went on a tour of an offshore oil drilling
platform that wasn't reely very offshore, but it was still in the water,
so I guess that counts. Ocean
Star Oil Derrick Museum
You
ken click on their website to see more and get more information, and it
shows how they drive one of those oil rigs out in the ocean and put down
some reel big legs into the mud. Then they ken drill holes with a
reel long drill bit that they can drive all over the place and even drill
crooked holes to find oil when they don't feel like starting up the rig
and driving it somewhere else to drill. That
was a reely sturdy oil drilling rig, cuz no matter what us guys checked
out, nothing went wrong or broke or nothing. That's my kind of
museum! It was still cold and rainy, so that's
when the old folks decided to jest head up the road, so we crossed that
river thing on a different little ferry boat, and headed fer New Mexico. New
Mexico
On the way, we saw this "Recycled Napkin
Factory" in Bootlick, New Mexico, so  we
went in fer a tour. We thought that he was recycling old napkins,
but instead they make new napkins from old newspapers. There was this here
reel old feller who had a reel old paper cutter called an "Oswego
Paper Cutter," outside behind the main building, and he uses it to
cut old newspapers so they are all the same size, about 12 x 18
inches. He powers the paper cutter with a long
flat belt that he puts on the big pulley on the side of the cutter and
then drives up an old rusty tractor and runs the cutter with the belt
hooked up to the power take-off on the tractor. Then
he takes the trimmed newspapers and puts them on a reely old paper folder
that he keeps inside the building so it won't get rained on or get sand
blown into the working parts and ruin
something. I forgot to take a
pitcher of that old folder, so I found the drawing below in o ne
of Jim's old printing books, so that will have to do. There wasn't
no lady in a dress running that folder, cuz it looked reely dangerous, and
the old geezer ran it reel good. He had a lektrik motor hooked up to
it with a piece of rope that he used for the belts to drive the pulley. The
pitcher at right is the rope he used fer the drive belts. He had to
unwrap the end of the rope and weave it together cuz if you try to jest
tie a knot in it to make it like a drive belt, that knot will get tangled
up in the pulley and jump off or damage something. And since he had
to make two rope belts, he had to splice them so they're both the same
length, and he told us that is reel difficult. To
run that folder he jest hooks two wires together and the lektrik motor
starts up. Then he moves the rope belts onto a different pulley and
the fo lder
starts running. Then he puts a pile of paper on the board shown at
the right of the drawing, where he can then pull one piece of paper at a
time and put it into the machine, and after going here and there and
jumping around and clunking and banging, it falls out the bottom all
folded reel neat like a reel napkin. He said
he ken make almost 800 napkins per hour with that machine. As noisy
as it was, you would expect it to turn out about a million per hour.
I don't know who he sells those napkins to, cuz he wouldn't tell us, but
they will probably have ink all over their faces if they try to use them,
specially the ones that came from the parts of the newspaper where there
is a big pitcher that used a lot of printing ink.
| What really
happened. We
drove into New Mexico and spent the night in Carlsbad, then went to
see the caverns the next morning. There was no napkin factory. |
Carlsbad Caverns
We got
to the Caverns early the next morning and the old folks and Sniffy took the elevator
down the 750 feet to the cavern floor. Sniffy went along cuz he came
from the gift shop at Ruby Falls, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and he spent
a lot of time checking out the cave that leads to the falls behind the
gift shop, so he is sort of the cave expert in the family. He gave
that cave a "Heart-Pounding Rating" of 2, cuz it din't have no
cool waterfall at the end, like the one in Tennessee. He said it was a great tour, and
the old folks let him walk along on his own, even though he said it was
pretty dangerous, cuz if a feller was to fall over the edge, he would be
all gone. It was pretty dark to take good pitchers down there, so
you ken jest click on their website below to find out more. Carlsbad
Caverns Website You
ken also find out more about Ruby Falls in Tennessee, where Sniffy
originally came from, by clicking below. Ruby
Falls, Tennessee, Website Us
guys got out of the van fer a couple of minutes, but the wind was blowing
reel bad, so we jumped back into the van before somebuddy got blown
away. Pretty soon after our nap, the old folks and Sniffy got back
and we took off fer Albuquerque, which is a hard name to pronounce and
spell, so I had to take the name off the map to get it right. On
the way we went through a town called "Roswell," and there was
an unusual number of UFO aliens walking around there. I heard that
some flying saucer landed there a long time ago, and they still live
there. You ken find out more about it by clicking below. Flying
Saucer Website
|
