We're back. I'm beat. Brain's dead. 5400 miles. Post more later.

the log looks great! (thanks Rob)

-- Lon (lgal@exp.net), June 29, 2004

Answers

YAAYYYYY!!!

Welcome home weary traveller. We'll let your brain rest for a bit, but then we want to hear ALL about it, in detail!! I'll go make some fudgy brownies with toasted local pecans-just so we all have some munchies while read about your adventures!

-- Aunt Bee (Aunt__Bee@hotmail.com), June 29, 2004.

Glad you got back safely. Hope you had a terrific time.

-- Carol (c@oz.com), June 30, 2004.

I don't know exactly why, but somewhere driving along the stretch from the canyons into Salt Lake, I got to thinking about hats........

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There was a time, before the memory of any in this audience, I’m sure, when men wore hats. Now, I don’t mean those flimsy baseball caps that they give you down at the feed store so you can walk around for the next two years like some dumb billboard, advertising chicken feed or a particularly delicious brand of cow cake. Or perhaps, one with the logo of a ridiculously overpaid team of hockey players. You know, the kind that teenage boys wear backwards to prove their intellectual virginity, or sometimes grown men wear that way when they just feel the need to look really stupid.

No, I mean that men wore REAL hats. Double X or triple X or Silver Belly Stetsons. Fedoras from Dobbs Fifth Avenue, or Resistal long ovals. These hats had substance. They were worn, not just perched up there to provide a tidbit of shade which always seems to let your nose burn anyway. And real hats had names - “Old Playboy”, and “The Dude”, “Pioneer”, “Cimmaron”, and “The Gunslinger”. They had brims that actually covered your face and neck, and even in a heavy rain, could be counted on to keep your tobacco dry in your shirt pocket. Hats with silk or horsehair around the crowns, and sweatbands of real leather, that should you wear a new one on a hot day, would send a tiny stream of yellow down your left cheek, like a rivulet of baby shit escaping an overloaded diaper.

My father wore hats back then. I know he wore winter felts, but mostly an old summer straw that I hated. Creased and greasy and stained from his sweat and his hands where he ran them along the curve of the brim, he wore it those last years to both pasture or town, and he wore it the day he died. Now, whenever I think of him, my mind conjures up a picture of his face with his ever-laughing eyes, under the brim of that grimy summer straw hat. I think of this fact whenever I start outdoors and reach for my yellow feed store cap, with the two smiling blue chickens on the front, and I whisper a silent prayer - “Lord, please don’t let me die today”.

-- Lon, of the wandering mind (lgal@exp.net), June 30, 2004.

OK, I admit that the hat thing wasn't the kind of fine literature I thought my muse would grace me with, but it's all I really got to show so far, for 21 days on the road. We did make it into Canada, though, and I got to practice my Canadianian on the natives. I had taken intensive lessons for six weeks, and was anxious to use my newfound linguistic skills as I got off the ferry in Victoria, over on Vancouver Island.

As fate would have it, we caught the bus for the gardens, where there wasn't anybody to talk to except for 600 Japanese tourists and a wonderful old guy and his wife from England. He gave Kit a peice of hard candy, and we tried to communicate a little. Of course, he only spoke "English", but since that language evolved using many of the same words that Texian uses, we managed with a lot of smiling and head nodding.

Later, when we had returned to the city, I spotted an eatery with native Canadian quisine, and as we lingered over plates heaped with manicotti (named for the Manicott Indian tribe, no doubt), I decided to try my favorite Canadianian phrase on our waitress. Well, actually, it was my only Canadianian phrase, but I had been assured by the course's instructor that it was almost universal in nature and would fit in any occasion in that great frozen wasteland. I straightened up my feedstore gimme hat, and gave the fortunate young lady one of them good-ole-boy grins that I'm famous for, and said,

"So, that's a bear, eh?"

She was obviously so stunned by my grin, and by the perfection of my practiced inflection, that she just stood frozen for a second. Then, she roused herself, and returning my smile tenfold, she replied,

"You're from Texas, aren't you?"

Well, bein's as she spoke almost perfect Texian, from watching TV shows like "Rawhide" and "Gunsmoke", no doubt, we became friends by the time she brought the spumoni, which is actually just ice cream named for the great spumoni whales that inhabit those waters.

I had other adventures, as well, but just haven't made them up, er.. I mean just haven't written them up yet.

-- Lon the linguistic (lgal@exp.net), June 30, 2004.

Welcome home, Lon!! Hope you enjoyed your trip to Victoria as much as I did a few months ago - sounds like you did :-)

Speaking of welcoming home... anyone know where Robert the (non)Cook has gotten to?

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), June 30, 2004.

Hey Lon, good to see you made it back. And you're welcome for the 'Log'. I hope it gives you a smile or two. Redneck did a great job summarizing things too.

Good Sir of Cooke? Hmmm. Yep, I noticed he's been gone a while too. Maybe we should send our Chief FRLian Investigatress after him. Uh oh!... Now where did she go off to?!?!?!?!

-- (sonofdust@missing.FRLians), July 01, 2004.

(((Lon)))

-- helen (gathering@the.chicks), July 02, 2004.

No, no, Lon, you got it all rong. It's diein with ther boots on that folks is concerned about, not with ther hats on. You been soakin in kits new hot tub so long its shriveled yer mind. I mean yer feet. I mean...heck, you got me all mixed up now to. But it remines me of a couple o funerals I been to where guys got buried in the clothes most familiar to em. One uz in his ol fishin togs but his wore out wadefishin tennies uz stuck down beside him an maybe his cap to. I only remember the canvas shoes which uz bleached white here n there but mostly kind of sandy brown like gulf surf water. I didn think itd be rite to bend down an sniff to see if theyd washt em. I guess he uz barefooted in thuh casket. Thuh other un uz in his overhauls, lookin regler as could be. I been wonderin how they get the rite clothes on a dead man. I bet it aint easy an takes morn one guy to do it. If I got a grin on mah face someday as you file past youl no its cause I managed ta imbearis J by fallin off the little trolly an bouncin down the church isle or somethin. Thatd be nice. I ken jes about see my frens an folks a day after thuh funeral gettin tickled an beginnin ta laff about somethin like that. Thatd be really nice. I hope yer peeple got that kind o sens o hewmer to. Now if I kin jest keep mine frum killin me ta try it out.

-- Redneck (Redneck@brainfried&.hatless), July 23, 2004.

Truth is Lon, my beloved father always loved his felt Stetson. You sent me down a meloncholy road when I first read your post. My Pop, just wanted to keep his head warm, by my Ma, always insisted on the very best for him. He loved it, and his chapeau.

Truth is, in my youth, I used to watch him turn and work the brim, just so, and seeing his pleasure in his efforts, smiled to himself, and went about his day. And me, watching, knew he was off on the right foot. Silly little memory really, but one engraved in stone, seeing how such a small thing empowered him to take on the day.

It is one of my favorite memories, my dad and his hat. When he passed, my mother asked if I wanted one of his hats. I said no. Nothing can replace a memory or the love that it brings. They are only things. Symbols yes, but not the love and warmth that your heart remembers.

Thanks for nudging that one back into my memory, and love it brings.

-- Aunt Bee (Aunt__Bee@hotmail.com), July 24, 2004.

Hats. I used to get hats, cowboy hats, when I was a kid. There's a Christmas picture with me over at the tree in my new hat and wearing my new sidearm, some kind of capgun. Unlike the real thing, toy guns were double action, so you could get two snaps (usually not two pops out of a capgun, their actions weren't built for such abuse)in super- short order by squeezing the trigger with one hand at the same time you began fanning the hammer with the other. I don't know what happened to those hats. Or the guns for that matter.

Later, I had a couple of real white straw hats like Daddy. But only for a little while. We'd go into some cafe, and I'd leave my hat and not notice until we were miles down the line. It was impossible for me to keep a hat, or for that matter a wrist watch or pocket knife when I was a little kid. I learned, though, and quit wearing and carrying them through high school and college. I'm better organized now and don't lose things so much anymore. Except glasses.

As an adult, I acquired a couple of cowboy hats, but they don't fit. As a result, they're pretty much unworn and still in the boxes. Both are Stetson's, too, though not the really hi-dollar jobs. One's a Rancher in Sand Pebble that I bought at the old Joske's in Dallas before they went out of business, the other a special-edition brown with a fancy Winchester-logo lining. If I can ever get one of Lon's kids over here to help me with eBay setup, I'll try to find out if they'll sell. I decided I really didn't like cowboy hats very much. They put a red spot in the middle of my forehead and hurt the back of my head, too. That's why I was always taking them off (and thus losing them)as a kid. Finally, not too many years ago actually, somebody mentioned a "long oval." Whassat? My problem was that I was buying regular hats to push down on a long-oval head. Who knew? Lon, apparently. And he never told me! Some friend. Redneck probably knew too, but I never went hat-shopping with either of them and so remained ignorant. Isn't it strange how easy it is to get behind everybody else.

I feel the same way about computer technology. I was hot to learn about it a couple of times early in my career, but got sidetracked with reassignments and heavier workloads. Then, one day, I looked around and a couple of people with less responsibility had acquired technological job security and I'm the cave man. One guy was actually a little snotty about it when I discovered stuff for the first time, like it was my fault I didn't know how to use things I didn't even know existed or anybody else in the department was using. It never occurred to me to go around every so often and ask "hey, are you guys sharing software nobody told me we had, and if so, what is it?" Sometimes opportunity just gets on the other elevator. Sometimes you've gotta network with the troops more, I guess. Otherwise you'll be blamed for not having heard stuff. Communications wasn't our department's strong suit.

Okay, it's bothering me, and ya'll are my friends so I know you won't laugh at me for not knowing already. Do they make long oval computers?

-- J (ignorant but@of.what?), July 28, 2004.

Well, J, I'm not sure if they make oval computers, but if I find out, I'll be sure to let you know. Any suggestions about what to do with the hats that don't fit? I seem to have a few that lie uncomfortably these days...

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplnanet.net), August 02, 2004.

T-the-C, I found a hat like one of mine for auction on the net with a starting price of $110! Good news is that mine is better (I have the box and factory plastic protective coverings, etc.). Bad news is that it appears the guy's price is optimistic. For hats with much "character," finding a buyer might be iffy. But what do I know? I see them in cafe decorations occasionally and figure some interior decorator gave a couple hundred for them. But I seldom run onto the right person who has money and needs what I'm trying to get rid of. If you want to browse and reminisce, try "Stetson hat" on ebay for a trip down memory lane and to see what's out there.

Another item seen at antique malls and firearms shows the last couple of years is used cowboy boots. Almost any worn-out pair will be priced at $40. Having said that, I've never seen anybody buy them. I sold a decent pair of bullhide ones with long stovepipe tops at a garage sale we had a couple of weekends ago. A guy came by late on the last day, shed his shoes and put one on, then limped over and gave me a wrinkled five, put on the other one, grinned and drove off wearing them. I do appreciate a satisfied customer! I figure Redneck must have told somebody about the boots.

-- J (jsnider@hal-pc.org), August 03, 2004.

Where did I go off to?

Nobody gave me the new password. :-(

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), August 05, 2004.

Gayla, we just naturally thought it would be right on the tip of your tongue! Welcome back, from wherever you've been. Are you in Houston now, or Oklahoma, or travelling? We sure could use some nice photos or stories or just about anything. It's been awfull slow, and when someone does post, it's usually Redneck, and I ain't sure which is worse.

-- oleloveablelonhisself (lgal@exp.net), August 05, 2004.

Hey i heard that. Easy ta see why I warnt about to share that password with nobody. Sorry you got froze out Gayla. Glad you finely got back on track. But it does take a toll. I gotta quit now. Hard to type with splints on mah fingers from past efforts at tryin ta type that password mahsef.

-- Redneck (Redneck@I'mjesinitferthuh.abuse), August 05, 2004.

Gayla! Sorry!

-- red-face helen (mule@kinda.blushed.too), August 05, 2004.

Could it be the Kooks are in the same boat as Gayla? Anybody with Georgia particulars might want to check it out. However, let me make it clear that I categorically deny that I miss his puns. And what about SAR01 who submitted "Conversatin with God?" She appeared to be a newbie who participated in that window while the site was open (one of the few who didn't seem lost, nasty or hostile). Redneck needs a sparring partner to keep him occupied. Otherwise, he causes me trouble and lost work time with his antics. Also, anybody got an update on the Kritter?

-- J (J&Redneck@it'scoldot.there), August 06, 2004.

Hi Gayla, glad you're back. I was locked out for a while too and I reckon Robert might be as well. I second Lon's request for a photo from you. It's winter here and that's the only way I'm gonna see any sunshine.

-- Carol (c@oz.com), August 07, 2004.

Geez, Helen. With all that we pay you we thought that the pswd would be sent to all us regular FRLians, even Good Sir of Cook.

What? You don't get paid nothin'?

Oh. . .

Uh, nevermind...

Maybe it's time to decloakify anyway.

-- poopie (sonofdust@de.cloak), August 07, 2004.

I tried to post some pictures from my most recent trip, but it seems the HTML commands are turned off/not allowed? :-(

Lon, I was at Butchart Gardens, too. I love Victoria Island.

I have a lot of catching up to do around here...

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), August 07, 2004.