I found out the hard way that Marilyn liked reading in depth historical fiction with her favorite author being James Michener. Since I like to read so much I didn’t think anything more about her reading other than noticing and being glad that she also liked to read.
There were two instances that brought the differences in what we liked to read clearly to my attention. In the first one, I was a very supportive and participative guinea pig...
We were in Houston and because of the heat and humidity drinking a lot of ice tea. She had just finished reading Centennial, the story of Colorado from the raising of the Rockies to at least its centennial, or the U.S.’ Centennial, or… (I never read it so really don’t know the full story.) Anyway, the book had quite a list of teas that the Chinese workers building the Transcontinental Railroad used and she decided we should try every one of them. Some of them were hard to get but we managed. The one both of us agreed was not to our taste was Lapsang Souchong. It had a smokier coffee-like flavor that wasn’t as good as coffee, not that either of us drank coffee. (Although she did have a Melitta coffee strainer and we have had at least two other coffee makers. I believe it was and still is used mostly for parental visits.)
The second incident occurred much later when our whole family was snowbound in a rental house in Arnold. A local trip to a movie rental store was fine but our intended drive up to Bear Valley was cancelled. This time the book was Texas and the only movie she deemed suitable for children in the whole store that she also wanted to see happened to be the movie made from the book. I still don’t know how closely the movie “Texas” followed the book because none of us watched it through. Now though, none of her children would be able to be enticed to read Michener.
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Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Showing posts with label Texas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Texas. Show all posts
Monday, April 20, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Seeing Texas: San Antonio
While traveling to San Antonio was a distant second to Mustang Island, we did go there three or four times. Our first time involved camping in a park close to the city, again Friday and Saturday night.The camping was memorable for two reasons: There weren’t that many campers, the moon was full, and there I was carrying Marilyn piggyback on the park road singing “the moon at night is big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas.” I think I may have injured my knees but I certainly didn’t notice it then. The second memorable camping experience on that trip was the late night arrival of at least two motorcycles, loud motorcycles. They were gone by the time we were up the next morning and both of us commented on the likelihood that they hadn’t paid their camping fee.
Still, our first tour of San Antonio involved Marilyn wanting to see all the missions in and around San Antonio. Unlike the Alamo, most of the others were still active churches. One in particular appeared to be closed but my wife wanted to see it so I tried the gate and it was unlocked. We saw the mission. She later confided that she wouldn’t have been so bold but I didn’t see it as bold at all. I felt that if I hadn’t “opened the door for her,” so to speak, she would have done it herself. I wasn’t being bold so much as chivalrous.Every time we went to San Antonio, we walked the Riverwalk. I think it was this first time that we went to a relatively fancy Mexican restaurant just off of the Riverwalk and enjoyed not only the food but a roving Mariachi Band.
One of our other trips to San Antonio was to show her parents another place in Texas. We camped at the same park and this time our night was interrupted by some woman in a nearby tent shouting: “No! No! No! Yeesss!” Marilyn didn’t take the hint, her parents were in the next tent.Another of our trips was to visit her sister and brother-in-law. Kroger had moved them for him to take on the management of one of their stores or district in their expansion into Texas. They showed us another great time on the Riverwalk and at some bars/cafes directly on it.
In all of our trips there, we never did ride on the boats that plied the river. Like most other places, Marilyn preferred walking. Most of our trips included stopping by the Alamo. Every time we stopped, we learned something more but the inside was too “touristy.” We much preferred the grounds outside and the juxtaposition of the city buildings with a spot that was reminiscent of a much emptier space. Plus, when I was younger, I always pictured the walls as much higher. Even the sections that hadn’t been reduced to the point that horses could easily jump over weren’t that high.
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Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Seeing Texas: Laredo
When I was a young singer in one of the K-12 grades’ choruses, we learned several western themed songs. One had a line about being a cowboy on “the streets of Laredo.” The reality didn’t match up to the romanticized version I had created in my mind. I don’t think Marilyn had any such romantic image. She was a consummate realist but one who enjoyed seeing new places, even places she never intended to return to again.
Part of the problem was that we traveled south in Texas in the heat of the summer. I swear it was over 100 degrees even after the sun had set. My memories of Laredo are actually three, two of which are not even of Laredo.
The first thing we did was park and walk across the bridge into Nuevo Laredo and have lunch. Marilyn asked for water and I unconsciously took a sip but no more after I noticed the water worm in the glass. I pointed it out to her before she took a sip. It would be another 27 years before we would return to Mexico.
The only thing I remember about Laredo proper is our walking around the downtown before we went back to the car to find a restroom for each of us. We ultimately stopped in a hotel where the bathrooms were in the basement. In Laredo, the physics of heat rising and a lesser temperature underground, didn’t seem to apply. We did compare notes and I learned of her techniques for using the facilities in strange locals. I still don’t know how she did it without truly sitting down. But this experience was the start of something that turned into a running travel joke between us and perhaps a goal: writing a travelogue of our travels titled “whizzing through America.”
We camped further down the Texas side of the Rio Grande at a park that I may remember the name incorrectly but believed to be Zapata Park but it may have been all the way to Falcon State Park. It was a sandy park, certainly so in the camping area. It was also hot all night. With our discovered interest in facilities, we couldn’t help but note that this park just had the equivalent of Porta-potties, well used and stinking ones.
It may have been this trip that we were tooling by the King Ranch, a ranch the size of Rhode Island, going about 80 mph on a two lane, one each way, road with literally no traffic. As we zipped through one crossroad, I thought I noticed a snake. As soon as I could slow safely I turned around and confirmed that it was not only a snake but a coiled rattler. With the windows down we could definitely hear the rattling. We stayed safely in the car, did a U-turn around the snake, rolled the windows back up to use the air conditioning more effectively, and proceeded on our way, at speed. Texas was big and our time was limited. Besides, we were in a 280Z and gas was, relatively, cheap.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Part of the problem was that we traveled south in Texas in the heat of the summer. I swear it was over 100 degrees even after the sun had set. My memories of Laredo are actually three, two of which are not even of Laredo.
The first thing we did was park and walk across the bridge into Nuevo Laredo and have lunch. Marilyn asked for water and I unconsciously took a sip but no more after I noticed the water worm in the glass. I pointed it out to her before she took a sip. It would be another 27 years before we would return to Mexico.
The only thing I remember about Laredo proper is our walking around the downtown before we went back to the car to find a restroom for each of us. We ultimately stopped in a hotel where the bathrooms were in the basement. In Laredo, the physics of heat rising and a lesser temperature underground, didn’t seem to apply. We did compare notes and I learned of her techniques for using the facilities in strange locals. I still don’t know how she did it without truly sitting down. But this experience was the start of something that turned into a running travel joke between us and perhaps a goal: writing a travelogue of our travels titled “whizzing through America.”
We camped further down the Texas side of the Rio Grande at a park that I may remember the name incorrectly but believed to be Zapata Park but it may have been all the way to Falcon State Park. It was a sandy park, certainly so in the camping area. It was also hot all night. With our discovered interest in facilities, we couldn’t help but note that this park just had the equivalent of Porta-potties, well used and stinking ones.
It may have been this trip that we were tooling by the King Ranch, a ranch the size of Rhode Island, going about 80 mph on a two lane, one each way, road with literally no traffic. As we zipped through one crossroad, I thought I noticed a snake. As soon as I could slow safely I turned around and confirmed that it was not only a snake but a coiled rattler. With the windows down we could definitely hear the rattling. We stayed safely in the car, did a U-turn around the snake, rolled the windows back up to use the air conditioning more effectively, and proceeded on our way, at speed. Texas was big and our time was limited. Besides, we were in a 280Z and gas was, relatively, cheap.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Traveling Marilyn (Texas)
Even though I “captured” Marilyn with a fantastic traveling vacation, I didn’t truly understand how much she loved traveling until we moved to Houston, Texas. (Come to think of it, she did take me to a Canadian Rail Travelogue documentary at The Ohio State University. That was what prompted our long and unfulfilled desire to visit Banff.) She was an unabashed tour guide. She always loved to show her visitors the sights, many of which she had already scoped out, in person. She read tour books. She read the travel section in the newspaper. She watched all the travel shows on TV. Once based in our Houston apartment, we were able to put her research into practice.
She went to the tourist spots but also liked the out of the way spots. Our first year in Houston was spent at work during the week and on the road every weekend. It slowed down when we bought our first house and slowed even more when we started having children, but it never stopped. As our children got older, it picked up again. She loved the planning, the anticipation. She made all our trips a great experience.
Over the eight plus years we lived in Houston, went everywhere in and around Houston and Texas, except Big Bend and Amarillo. She always wanted to see Big Bend in the spring for all the desert flowers, but we were otherwise occupied: new house, new children, other uses for our limited vacation time.
We did see most of the rest of Texas, sometimes several times. Many of these are worthy of separate topics:
• Spots in and around Houston, including Bayou Bend, Gilley’s, San Jacinto Inn, Johnson Space Center, Galveston, …
• Mustang and Padre Island, along with Corpus Christi. (We returned regularly to Mustang Island.)
• San Antonio
• Austin
• Several camping and cabin excursions north, west, and south of Houston
As in many of our living places, if you could find a native Houstonian, Marilyn, and because of her I also, had visited more places and knew more about the local area than they did. If she did encounter an exception to that rule, she would usually pick their brains for recommendations on where to go and what to see, of course, she would also do this with her less traveled encounters. Everyone had been somewhere and she wanted to know about it.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
She went to the tourist spots but also liked the out of the way spots. Our first year in Houston was spent at work during the week and on the road every weekend. It slowed down when we bought our first house and slowed even more when we started having children, but it never stopped. As our children got older, it picked up again. She loved the planning, the anticipation. She made all our trips a great experience.
Over the eight plus years we lived in Houston, went everywhere in and around Houston and Texas, except Big Bend and Amarillo. She always wanted to see Big Bend in the spring for all the desert flowers, but we were otherwise occupied: new house, new children, other uses for our limited vacation time.
We did see most of the rest of Texas, sometimes several times. Many of these are worthy of separate topics:
• Spots in and around Houston, including Bayou Bend, Gilley’s, San Jacinto Inn, Johnson Space Center, Galveston, …
• Mustang and Padre Island, along with Corpus Christi. (We returned regularly to Mustang Island.)
• San Antonio
• Austin
• Several camping and cabin excursions north, west, and south of Houston
As in many of our living places, if you could find a native Houstonian, Marilyn, and because of her I also, had visited more places and knew more about the local area than they did. If she did encounter an exception to that rule, she would usually pick their brains for recommendations on where to go and what to see, of course, she would also do this with her less traveled encounters. Everyone had been somewhere and she wanted to know about it.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Rodeos in the “real” Texas
When we moved to Houston, it was already well into a boom that had brought many “foreigners” into it. While not impossible, you often had to ask several times to find the native Texan and even more to find a native Houstonian. But just outside of Houston was a remnant of the real Texas, a weekly rodeo, the rodeo that Deng Xiao Peng had been to just the year before.
While still at the hotel, we decided to sample the “real” Texas. I don’t think rodeos were Marilyn’s cup of tea but going at least once just had to be done. (She never did express any interest in the Huntsville prison rodeo, or any other rodeo and to my knowledge never watched any rodeo on TV.)
It had all the aspects that I now associate with rodeos but from my understanding was like a minor league. Individuals would accumulate points that would allow them to qualify for the more prestigious rodeos. Maybe a better analogy would be NASCAR or qualifying for the U.S. Open in golf.
But the thing that made it an unforgettable experience was one of the filler dialogs between the announcer and the clown about the clown’s recent marriage.
Basically the announcer congratulated the clown on his marriage and commented that he had heard that the new wife was a nagger. The clown affected not to understand so the announcer repeated the statement. This went on for a couple exchanges with the announcer finally almost yelling that he had heard the wife was a great big nagger. To which the clown said: “No, a little white girl about so high,” while gesturing with his hand about chest high.
Needless to say, we, recently married, liberal, almost Easterners, were shocked. But the rest of Texas, including some of my work experiences, which will not be written here, were substantially better and far less shocking. Perhaps I was taking the wrong perspective. Maybe it was a statement of how far we had come that a Texan would simply respond and not be offended by what was the implied suggestion.
Coming in a few topics will be a Family Tradition topic, namely an initiation that I, Marilyn, and our children went through. I have great pictures but do not want to give the initiation away as my children are recently married with spouses who have yet to be initiated. It's all volunteer and everyone who has gone through it has had fun, just not as much fun as the observers. It's still a great way to join the family.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
While still at the hotel, we decided to sample the “real” Texas. I don’t think rodeos were Marilyn’s cup of tea but going at least once just had to be done. (She never did express any interest in the Huntsville prison rodeo, or any other rodeo and to my knowledge never watched any rodeo on TV.)
It had all the aspects that I now associate with rodeos but from my understanding was like a minor league. Individuals would accumulate points that would allow them to qualify for the more prestigious rodeos. Maybe a better analogy would be NASCAR or qualifying for the U.S. Open in golf.
But the thing that made it an unforgettable experience was one of the filler dialogs between the announcer and the clown about the clown’s recent marriage.
Basically the announcer congratulated the clown on his marriage and commented that he had heard that the new wife was a nagger. The clown affected not to understand so the announcer repeated the statement. This went on for a couple exchanges with the announcer finally almost yelling that he had heard the wife was a great big nagger. To which the clown said: “No, a little white girl about so high,” while gesturing with his hand about chest high.
Needless to say, we, recently married, liberal, almost Easterners, were shocked. But the rest of Texas, including some of my work experiences, which will not be written here, were substantially better and far less shocking. Perhaps I was taking the wrong perspective. Maybe it was a statement of how far we had come that a Texan would simply respond and not be offended by what was the implied suggestion.
Coming in a few topics will be a Family Tradition topic, namely an initiation that I, Marilyn, and our children went through. I have great pictures but do not want to give the initiation away as my children are recently married with spouses who have yet to be initiated. It's all volunteer and everyone who has gone through it has had fun, just not as much fun as the observers. It's still a great way to join the family.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
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