March 25, 2005 - Big Sandy, TX

We're here for a SOWER reunion and Board meeting.  The facility we're parked in is called ALERT, and it's an academy where young people are trained in the skills of aerial search (they have their own landing strip and airplanes), land search and rescue, underwater search and recovery, community service and humanitarian aid.  And that's just from the little brochure we got as we checked in.  We'll take a tour tomorrow and know more about it then.  But in the mean time, I'm still trying to get caught up here.  But first, a bunch of us are going out to Mexican!  What a deal, eh?  These SOWERS know how to eat, that's for sure.  Or maybe it's a RV thing.  Either way, we're not loosing any weight.

This sequence of the squirrel trying to get to the bird seed was taken at Lake Medina TTN.  As you can see, the Cardinal got the seeds.  But we sure enjoyed watching the squirrel try to.  Every morning we'd wake up to a flattened bird feeder, and I was blaming it on the squirrels or maybe a raccoon.

The squirrel was happy with what it found on the ground along with the doves.  We had both Inca doves and white-tailed doves here.  And of course, the chickadee.  We really enjoy feeding birds, and where it's allowed, we'll put out the feeders as soon as we get set up.

This place is overrun by white-tailed deer.  This appeared to be a doe and her last years fawn. Barb suspected these were the guys knocking the bird feeder down every night.  Eventually the pole broke, and I got a piece of rebar to replace it with, and installed a squirrel guard to keep the furry-tailed rats from robbing us blind.

Friend John insisted that we not miss the LBJ ranch, regardless of my less than hearty endorsement of the mans politics.  So off we went.  At the very least, I could get our passport stamped.

First stop was the original homestead of the Johnson's.  Where the volunteers are keeping things as they were, including cooking the biscuits in a Dutch oven, and wearing period garb.  I loved the old boots being reused.  See them?  They're hanging on the antlers with the foot part cut off, and just the uppers used as a container for something.  The kitchen/dining room/living room was on one side of the house, and the bedroom on the other.  The two halves were separated by a "dog trot", which you'll see in a moment.

There was a small room that appeared to me to be a tack room/ work shop.  There were harnesses and saddles in here too.  And can you imagine what that old oak would tell us if we asked it?

While she's hard to spot, Barb is standing on the kitchen side of the house.  Nobody there could tell us for sure why it was called the "Dog Trot" house, but speculation was that the dogs could trot through the house without opening any doors.  The area between the sections was used to get out of the heat.  Then onto the tour bus for a tour of the active ranch, which was about 15 miles west of the park entrance.  LBJ liked Hereford cattle and there were still some around the place.  Lady Bird is still alive and fairly active, and while she has a home in Dallas, she comes to the ranch on a regular basis, so the home isn't part of the tour yet.

LBJ was born in this house.  Well, almost this house.  It's a restoration/rebuild of the house he was born in.  Like many politicians, what you see isn't necessarily what you see.  And that's the church he attended when he was on the ranch.  Kind of interesting to note that the man was born into poverty and never did much of anything except public service, and yet he amassed great wealth.  When somebody on the tour asked about it, the guide carefully said something about Lady Birds wealth from owning radio stations, and dropped the subject.  He became President while I was in the Viet Nam area in the Navy, and later when that fiasco became more public, his policies were..........well, enough of that.

His tombstone in the family plot, and then the cemetery from across the street.  The one thing we all have in common, regardless of our station in life, is our death.  No matter what we accomplish or accumulate, we leave it all eventually and forever.  Sure glad I know the next chapter in the story!

Rather than a traditional brand (not needed, as these cattle don't get off this ranch except during an auction) the horns are branded and they're tagged for identification.

All babies are cute, Barb tells me.  OK, that's easy enough to believe.  When I was a kid we had a few cows around the place, and raised some beef for the freezer as well.  One of my chores was to raise the calves, and I taught them to drink from a bucket by getting them to suck on my fingers while in the bucket.  So when this little guy came over to where we were standing, I stuck my fingers out, and he latched right onto them.  Barb thought that was strange, and put hers out there too, and the calf latched right onto them.  Some of the nearby tourists thought it pretty strange as well, and I just cracked up.  City folks.

Well, that pretty well took care of the tour and it was interesting enough.  Thanks, John, for the suggestion.  Ron and Barb Hoffmiester (www.movinon.net) spent some time here as volunteers and enjoyed it greatly.  They have a couple of books about full time RV'ing, and were kind of our mentors through their books when we first got started back in 1998.