A Day to Remember-

While visiting Corpus Christi, and taking a  walk to view the   yachts moored at the  city’s T-heads  we were surprised to see three old wooden ships moored among the sleek, moderns yachts.  

A sign  informed us  that these were replicas of Christopher Columbus’s  ships, and were were gifted to the city of  Corpus Christi by Spain in commemoration of Spain's  500th anniversary of the discovery of the new world.

 Imagining those tiny  ships  out on the ocean,  mere specks in the that   great expanse of water was awesome. 

 Later,  one of his ships, la Nina,  was housed at their museum, I believe the other two  were returned to Spain.

While visiting again, we decided to take a close look at  this little ship.  Fortunately, there was a museum worker  nearby  who volunteered to take us on a deck tour that was very impressive.  

 The crew worked, slept, cooked and ate on this tiny deck, which was probably less than  fifty feet long, and with no protection from the  weather.  Their food was stored in barrels  below deck,  and was  mainly salted  herring and  hardtack. 

 After week after week of hardship and maggot infested food, the crews were at the point of mutiny when land was sighted and everything changed. It was October 12,1492, and everyone believed they has discovered a new continent. 

That  belief stood for  centuries before research proved it wrong. The ships had made  landfall in the Bahamas. 

  One would assume  the ship would remain  on  display  as an important part of the exploration  and settlement of America-but no,   wood does not last forever. It gets wood rot and is attacked by woodworms .  The expense  of its upkeep was  thousands–more  than the city could handle, so  it was cut into pieces  and  destroyed.   

But la Nina's history  remains. On August 3, 1492,  Christopher Columbus set sail from  Spain  with three  ships, la Nina, la Pinta and la Santa Maria.  He hoped  to find a western route to China  and  her spices. 

The Nina and  Pinta have been  estimated  as measuring about 50 feet long from bow  to stern. They belonged to the Caravel type of sailing  ships  known for their speed, ability to sail into the wind and  their mobility. Santa  Maria was the flagship,  It was little  larger  and had sleeping shelters  for its crew, a luxury the other ships didn’t  have.

 The  date was made a national holiday, falling on the second Monday in October.  A  number of states have changed Columbus Day  to Indigenous Peoples Day in  honor of their contributions to our history.https:rottckingwithdannie.blogspot//adaytorememberhtp

  As a long-ago student  who was taught "Columbus discovered American on October 12 , 1492,"  the site of the landfall is no longer  very important. The  courage of those seafaring men  and  the hardships they endured on board those small ships,  is.   Their trip  opened  the door to exploring, colonization and eventually the settling of America.

Columbus Day --a date to remember!

GONE

https://rockingwithdannie.blogspot.com/2024/08/gone.html

Sounds and sights  that won’t be heard again:

    A biplane passing  overhead–so low you can see the pilot. He’d wave at  the watchers below.

    A coal-burning locomotive blowing its whistle at a crossing and little children, with  their heads out car  windows, making the blow your  horn  motion.

The “ogglifng” sound of the horn of an old Model T Ford,

The eight, twelve and five  o’clock whistle of Weathreford’s oil mill

The smokie  flavor of food baked  in a  wood-burning stove’s oven.

  Also gone but hopefully, somewhere near-by:

The call of a Whippoorwill

 Hoot owl or screech owl’s lonely hoot

Painted Bunting

   

These  birds do not like populated areas so  when people  move in, the birds  move  out to the  near-by  county.

Where will  they go  next as businesses and apartments follow?  New  homes are  filling scenic  areas.  Housing developments a taking farm land. No  farms, no  food, especially the fresh unadulterated

 vegetables  from the truck  farmer.

So what do we do?  Limit expansion?

Thoubling thoueghts  a dreary day–all because of a random thought about missing the night-time call of a whippoorwill. It doesn’t   take much to  set me   off!

Dannie

A. Senior Citizen

https://rockingwithdannie.blogspot.aseniorcitizen/2024/8/tpl

While looking through a collection   of old blogs,  I found this. Replace  the 

word 'bank’ with the name of  any business  we deal  with daily; add a heavily accented voice and  we  can  share  her reaction to today’s world.

A  SENIOR'S LETTER TO HER BANK

inn

  Shown below is an actual letter that was sent to a bank by an 86 year old woman. The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in the New York Times. 

 Dear Sir: 

I am writing to thank you for bouncing my check with which I endeavored to pay my plumber last month.  By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the check and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honor it.  I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire pension, an arrangement which, I admit, has been in place for only eight years. You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account $30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank. My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways.  I noticed that whereas I personally answer your telephone calls and letters, when I try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become. 

 From now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person. My mortgage and loan repayments will therefore and hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank, by check, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate. 

 Be aware that it is an offense under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope. Please find attached an Application Contact which I require your chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative. Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Notary Public, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be  accompanied by documented proof. In due course, at MY convenience, I will issue your employee with a PIN number which he/she must quote in dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modeled it on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. 

  

Let me level the playing field even further.   When you call me, press buttons as follows: 

IMMEDIATELY AFTER DIALING, PRESS THE STAR (*) BUTTON FOR ENGLISH 

 #1. To make an appointment to see me 

#2. To query a missing payment. 

#3. To trans fer the call to my living room in case I am there. 

   

 #4 To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping 

#5. To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature. 

 #6.. To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home 

#7. To leave a message on my computer, a password to access my computer is required. Password will be communicated to you at a later date to that Authorized Contact mentioned earlier. 

 #8. To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through 7.  

 #9. To make a general complaint or inquiry. The contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service.

 #10. This is a second reminder to press* for English. While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration of the call. 

 Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement 

  Your Humble Client 

(Remember: This was written by an  86 year old woman -'YA JUST GOTTA LOVE? US  SENIORS" !!!!! )

And remember: Don't make old people mad. We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to set us off. 

Dannie

 

Expressions Our Grandparents Used https://rockingwithdannie.blogspot.com/2024/07/expressions-our-grandparents-used.html

 . "Waking up on the wrong side of tthe bed”........

refers to some who woke-up in a bad humor.  Goes back to a Roman superstition that positive forces await on the bed’  right side and  bad  energy on the left.

"Can't hold a candle”.......... .

Often useed  to compare one person’s work with another’s.  Gones back to the  17th century and refers to an  apprentice being so  incmpetent he couldn’t even  hold a  candle  for his master.

  Baeking up the wrong tree.............

having the wrong idea or accusing the wrong person. Goes back to tar 1800s when huntingg  with 

packs of dogs  was a popular sport.

Cold feet...........

a term used fur losing interest or backing out of a deal.

Rule of thumb.........

refers to careless  builders compared to those who use a square and rule for careul construction. Earliest record of  the term’s use is by  a Scottish preacher in describing the lack of  diligence of some of his church members.

It's comin' a toad-strangler...........

raining really hard

Bury the hatchet”........

When  the chiefs of two Native Americans   tribes  decided  to settle their differences and live in peace, each buried a hatchet in the ground..

Have you lost your marbles?..........

you’re acting peculat

I love you a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck ..............

It'll all come out in the wash.........

Everything will work out.

Does that picture look cattywampus to you?............

Is it crooked?

Last time I saw you, you were knee-high to a grasshopper............

meaning you’ve really grown.

  I'm as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full o' rockin’ chairs............. 

no explanation needed

Dannie

The FBI ’s Begining

https./rockingwithdannie.blogspot.com2024/7/the FBIsbeginingtpl 

In 1900, William McKinley, our 25th President,   faced  several  serious problems... Anarchists, who wanted to bring down the government, and increasing crime. In his second term he was assassinated by  an Anarchist  and his  Vice-president, Theodore Roosevelt, former Governor of New York, became President.

 Rosevelt was a strong believer in laws and their enforcement.  He appointed  Charles  Bonaparte, a man of  like beliefs,  as  US Attorney  General.  Bonaparte soon .discovered he had very few men to carry-out  the investigations  his job required. He solved  the problem by “borrowing” well -trained, men from the Secret Service.  This was  very  expensive, and  these   men made their reports to  their boss, leaving  Bonaparte  in the dark.

When Congress  decided there was no law  authorizing this expenditure  they canceled the funds  After a long and  complicated session with Congress an agreement  was reached, and funds were made available for the Attorney General to form an  investigative force  of his own.

The  year was 1908. and considered the year the fledgling FBI was born in the form of the Bureau of  Investigation. It operated under. this name (((or BOI),  for a number of years then changed to the Federal   Bureau of Investigation–the FBI.

From a  beginning work force of about forty, it has grown  to 35,000 including over 10,000 special agents and others with special knowledge and talents.

 

Mothe's Yard https://rockingwithdannie.blogspot.com/2024/07/mothes-yard.html

petunia

In the 30s  and 40s,  green close clipped lawns were a rarity.  Although lawn mowers had been invented, these were years of the Great Depression and very  few people had money for  such a non-essential item. 

 So yards were bare ground  and  either raked smooth or swept, depending upon the type of soil. My mother's yard was of deep sand.  Sweeping was a hopeless  project, and raking almost  as bad, so she pulled up the weeds  and bought a few packages of flower seeds.

Of course, they were annuals, but when  the flowers are allowed to mature, and  drop their seeds they’re almost as nice as perennials Every petunia and phlox seed must have come up.

Snapdragon and larkspur were not as plentiful, but had enough blooms to pick a few for playtime–like making necklaces by stringing their flowers together, or popping  the snapdragons“mouths” open.  Hollyhocks towered over it all.

The sandy sidewalk was lined  with jonquils, the smaller, fragrant version of daffodils  Perennial sweet-pea grew nearby.   It was actually a  vine,  but mother contained  it with a wrap  of chicken  wire to  hold its  tendrils in a  bush-like mound. 

There was no place for a vine to grow  because the  only  fence  was between the house  and the field,  and was covered with a trumpet  vinevine, and both ends  of the front  porch were covered with honeysuckle and Seven  Sisters rose vines.  

 It’s an understatement to  say  my  mother loved flowers.

My Civics Class 1941 https://rockingwithdannie.blogspot.com/2024/07.html

The most memorable teacher of my high school days was my civics teacher, a man named Kroeger. He had a distinct accent, German , we thought, but made the lesson absolutely clear; and with good reason. He had immigrated to the US to escape the rise of Nazism in Germany.

  

Each day we were tested on the previous day’s lesson. We groaned and protested, but  nothing changed–Mr. Kroeger continued to pound the details of our government into our heads, always stressing that it would be our responsibility as adults to not only vote, but also take part in community affairs.

It was the fall of 1941 and inspire of the daily tests, we liked Mr. Kroeger.  We were pleased that he had chosen our county because of its system of government, but mostly because he was a likable person. His lectures on our freedoms fell a little flat on kids who had never experienced anything else.

Then, the attack on Pearl Harbor happened, and our level of patriotism shot up as we  considered the posibility of Nazism or Fascism setting foot in our country.

Mr. Kroeger did not return the next year. Whether his contract wasn’t renewed. or he simply moved on, or, since we were at war, fighting Nazism’s take-over of Europe. he may have enlisted. Its something I’ve wondered about for years.

 

I am grateful for that class, although today I use Google more than my memory.

Two Friends

https://rockingwithdannie.blogspot.com/2024/07/two-friends.htm

I  have been asked to post  this  spoof   again

I have a friend named Bessie Mae, who  comes over and drinks coffee with me each morning.We sit around the table with our coffees and talk about our ailments—I’m ninety and she’s eighty—so we have a lot to talk about. 

Anyway, sometimes we talk about other things, like our kids and recipes, and stuff like that.  So one morning we got to talking about a recipe for a sherry cake. Let me tell you, that is one delicious cake, but I’ve never made one myself because I don’t keep sherry in my pantry—at least not real sherry, and that’s what the recipe calls for.

Well, the more we talked about how good it was, the hungrier we got for that cake, so we decided we’d run out to the liquor store out on the highway—well of course I don’t mean we were going to really run out there—we’re not that lively anymore. In fact, we don’t walk too well, but you know, it gets pretty boring just sitting around all the time, even if you do have a new ailment to talk about every day, so we decided we’d just make a little trip to the liquor store—in Bessie Mae’s car, of course. I don’t drive nowadays. 

It’s not because I can’t—I just didn’t want to fool with taking a driving test again. My gosh, I took one a few years back—well, I reckon it was about seventy years ago, but anyway, I’ve parked my car for awhile. I may change my mind about taking that test, though. It’s just that I don’t hear too well and might irritate the trooper if I kept on driving after he said stop.

Oh well. Back to our trip to the liquor story. I got my walker, and Bessie Mae got her cane—she’s younger than I, remember, and she’s one lively lady. I think it’s because of her red hair. Anyone with hair that red just has to be lively.  Come to think about it, I don’t remember her hair being red when she was younger 

Oh well, back to our trip to the liquor store. It wasn’t far, so we made the trip without any problems. One guy kept honking at us, but we didn’t pay him any attention. We just figured he was trying to get Bessie Mae’s attention on account of her hair. She has that effect on guys, you know. 

Well, anyway, here we were at the store, so we parked---well actually we parked several times. Bessie Mae kept ending up kinda catawampus with the lines. But she finally got parked straight enough so nobody would bump in to us—she’s had her left fender repaired three times because of the careless way people park. 

We had a little trouble at the door. I can tell you it’s not easy to hold a walker and open one of these heavy doors some stores seem to like nowadays. And then the darn thing kept trying to close before I could get out of the way. 

So there we were, and I can tell you that there were so many bottles we didn’t know which way to turn, No one paid us any attention, until my walker knocked a couple of bottles off a shelf. That’s when a clerk came over and offered to help us.

When we told him we needed a bottle of sherry so we could make a sherry cake, he tried to tell us we needed cooking sherry. When we told him the recipe called for real sherry, he just shrugged and pointed to another aisle and said “Take your pick, ladies.” and walked away.

Well, I thought he could’ve been more helpful, but that’s the way it is nowadays. Anyway, we found the sherry without any more help, but we had no idea there were so many kinds. Finally, Bessie Mae picked out a bottle she thought was pretty and said “Let’s get out of here,” so we paid and left. No body asked us to come back, which I thought was a little rude, but it really didn’t matter, because I had no intention of ever visiting that place again.

I think Bessie Mae was a little annoyed, though, but she didn’t let it affect her driving. She obeyed the speed limit and didn’t get distracted by all those people that honked and waved to get her attention. They all seemed to be in a hurry and looked like they were out of sorts about something, so we were glad to get back home and take a little sip of that sherry.

That cake can wait until another day.

Caring Animals

http://rockingwithdannie.blog.spot.com/2024/7/caringanimals.html 

 Recently, I read  a Peta post that  stated “all  animals have  the capacity  for thought, intuitiveness, empathy and  decision-making That’s an intriguing statement so I checked it out. .” Examples were given. 

 One,  my favorite, tells of a fat, pot-belly pig,  named LuLu  saving  the life of her owner,  who had  fallen to  the floor with a  heart attack. LuLu managed  to squeeze  through the doggie door, cutting her  belly  in the  process, then running  to the  road and laying  down in  the middle until  someone stopped. Then she led  the person  to the heart attack victim, saving her  life. 

  So, animals see our dangers and  decide what action  to take. And it’s not jist domesticated animals....Wild animals are the same. Scores of  stories  telling about unusual rescues appear each  year, especially of porpoises, and even whales, rescuing people who would   have drowned otherwise.

Another story, also from Peta, tells of a pride of lions helping police rescue a kidnapped girl. Police were closing  in on  the kidnappers, forcing them to move. The cries of the 12 year old kidnapped girl caught the attention   of the lions, so they investigated. Their arrival  caused the men to run away, leaving the girl with the  lions. Then the lions did  a  surprising thing– they  sat in a circle around  the girl until the police  arrived. Then they quietly disappeared back into the forrest.

 On the home front, on a cold, icy day, a  family friend needed   to  go out to  his farm and  break the ice on the water trough, so his cattle could drink. The ice was worse at the farm, causing him  to  slip  and fall. He twisted and turned, but could not get enough traction to get to his feet 

He was  beginning  to worry about his predicament when  Wimpy, his herd bull, appeared  at  his side, lowered his head so our friend could  get  a tight grip, and was lifted  to his feet.

Then, there was a recent story about a dog running fouir miles to get help for a man trapped   in    his wrecked  car.

Animals are truly wonderful, but don’t expect such caring treatment when you meet a wild animal on  a hike. They can be vicious.