Forever Autumn

Aunt Aura sent me a real letter about 16 years ago and I slipped it in a desk drawer intending to answer. I was busy. It never happened. We lost touch.



I Google her and find that she is 87 and still teaching Shakespeare at the University of Texas in Austin. We have a very enjoyable visit. Aura gives us a copy of her memoir. A publisher is very interested in the part where she taught Shakespeare to Mississippi black children in the 1960s.

I scan that and the part where she is teaching the "Crips" and the "Bloods" in South Los Angeles. It's well written, easily as good as the stuff we buy.

Aunt Aura has had some health problems recently. She tells me that she goes to sleep by reciting the names of the nine Supreme Court justices. I'm way overdue to write her a return letter.

Aura is living with her daughter Jo and her husband John. They seem to be living a dream life with a lovely home, four talented children and a a beach house. John explains that his company makes designer analog and digital chips for cell phones and other applications. They treat us to dinner. The hospitality is impeccable.


Aura's memoir is called "Forever Autumn". We also get a CD from the youngest son, Sammy and his group, the "Loose Cannons"... It's good.

Bill Bailey Won't You Please Call Home?

Austin, Texas

We've lost touch with Mrs. Phred's Aunt Aura, but remember that she lived in Austin 30 years ago when I put her last letter in a drawer and stopped writing. Though the magic of the Internet, I find her phone number and address and we make a date to see her Thursday.

Aunt Aura scores 27 million as least common name in America so she is easy to find. She is the only one with her first and last name...she is tied for last place with all the other unique names.

We discover that Aunt Aura, at age 87. is teaching Shakespeare at the University of Texas. Maybe there's still hope for all of us.

I have renewed hope of finding my old friend Bill Bailey. Problem is that there are 181 "William H. Bailey" names. Some of them are about the right age. Some live in about the right places. I try "William Holden Bailey" and "William Holden Bailey, III", but no luck with those.

If you read this and are the right Bill Bailey, please write and tell me the name of your favorite inventor and what my father did to the "Bill Bailey" corpse in Horseheads...or explain "Blue Flame"...

2015 Update....William H. Bailey appeared on the internet this April in the form of an obituary. Goodbye Bill....

I did find some cool shoes on the internet...these are a gottahave item. They're made by Z-Coil. $189.95 plus tax...I want the hiking boots, too...

No Wonder I’m Confused!

Austin, Texas



I try to understand why we keep running into the Colorado River wherever we go in the West. It flows though Texas to the sea and also though the Grand Canyon and out to the Sea of Cortez by California. The deal is that there are two Colorado Rivers in the U.S. One is confined to Texas and the other famous one has formed geologic wonders and huge man-made lake recreation areas. Here they call the Texas Colorado River, "Lake Austin".



As we enter East Texas, we see by the mile markers that it’s 1,000 miles to the western border and El Paso. We’ve covered about 300 of that.



We stop just outside Austin at the Griffin Falls State Park. We’re out of bayou country and into gentle rolling farmland, lakes and lots of oak trees mixed with just a few prickly pear cactus and roadrunner birds.



My first act in Austin is to go for a swim in the pool formed by the upper falls. As I float, I see swallows swooping low over my head to catch insects. They’re a lot like bats with no sonar.



The swimming area is empty except for some turtles. An unfamiliar species of cypress trees line the banks. The falls are formed by a limestone outcropping.



We decide to go to the Alamo Ritz Drafthouse in the evening to see the new Star Trek. It’s a good movie and I see by the previews that a new Terminator movie is coming out this summer, presumably with no Arnold. We order white wine and potato skins to go with the movie.


As we walk, we pass a lot of live music venues. Austin claims to be the live music capital of the world. I have my eye on Antone’s for tonight. They’re doing a Blues group at seven. I'm approached by a person who mumbles something that sounds like it ends with "apple juice". "Apple Juice?", I repeat, somewhat mystified. Yes, she says, she's from Chicago, she's dehydrated and needs money for apple juice. "That's better for you than Crystal Meth", I think to myself and give her a dollar.

They Built a Rubber LBJ

Austin, Texas - 31 March, 2006

We watched over a million bats fly out from under the Congress Avenue Bridge last night, but they were moving to fast for the camera to record.

This morning we boarded the Yellow 'Dillo' and headed for the LBJ Presidential Library. Turns out the Orange 'Dillo' is the only one that goes there so we walked the last mile though the University of Texas Campus. It's the second largest University in the US. We saw a co-ed wearing shorts and elaborately tooled cowboy boots.


The library gets an eight on a scale of ten. It's a huge ten story building. There's a large display of Vietnam era paintings and a blue Lincoln presidential limousine with a 460 cubic inch engine and oversized brakes and transmission. One display is an animated rubber LBJ in a cowboy hat telling folksy jokes with a political point. The rubber LBJ cracks this one:

An old farmer goes to see his doctor and complains about his hearing.

The doctor tells him he has to give up drinking if he wants his hearing to improve.

On the next visit, the doctor asks if the farmer has given up drinking and the old farmer says 'No'

'Why not?', asks the doctor.

'Well, I went home and thought about it and decided I like what I drink a lot more than I like what I hear'.

LBJ should be remembered with charity for the 'Great Society' programmes, his civil rights efforts and his impressive depression era 'New Deal' legislation.


Lady Bird had a big section. She built the library. She was an interesting lady. She started a committee to build hiking trails on the riverfront 'Town Lake' here in Austin and her results were impressive. If you are of a certain age, you will remember that she worked hard as First Lady to get Lyndon to pass the Highway Beautification Act. This called for fences around automobile junkyards and a reduction in billboards on Interstate highways.


The George Washington Carver Museum was a one on a scale of ten. The museum really wasn't about this black American genius who held over 300 patents and invented peanut butter and mayonnaise. Save your shoe leather.

I meet a somewhat inebriated man wearing a cowboy hat at a bus stop. He starts talking to me as I approach from 20 feet away. He says he is sixty years old and a full-blooded Cherokee Indian professional guitar player. We swap jokes and 'Beverly Hillbillies' trivia for twenty minutes until his bus comes.

The 'Dillo Stops Here

Austin, Texas - 29 March, 2006

The yellow 'Dillo stops at the front door. The 'Dillo is a reproduction of an historic streetcar design. It's free to ride and goes to all the places we want to see in Austin.



The Texas tower was occupied for ninety minutes on 1 August, 1966 by Charles Whitman. He killed and wounded 46 people from his perch in the tower. Local citizens brought their own deer rifles on campus to bring him down when they heard the first reports of the shooting. He was a Marine.



The Colorado River runs through downtown. It's called the 'Town Lake'. The river is beautifully landscaped on both banks and filled with joggers. We are encamped just over the river from downtown.

Each day at sunset 1.5 million bats emerge as a black cloud from beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge. It is the largest urban bat colony in America. We plan to take an umbrella tonight and watch them. Why the umbrella? Think about it.

Austin is famous for its music. The 6th Street and Red River Entertainment District Offers restaurants, bars, and live music after the bat show.



The State Capitol complex and Governor's Mansion are downtown, as is the University of Texas, the Lyndon B Johnson Presidential Library, the Texas History Museum, the George Washington Carver Museum and a huge Art Museum. Carver invented both peanut butter and mayonnaise.



The bat pictures didn't come out. Bats pollinate the agrave plant which is essential for the production of Tequila. The Austin bats eat 20 tons of insects each evening. In November they will ride a cold front back to Mexico and then return in March to have pups. They fly the night storm at altitudes approaching 10,000 feet and speeds of 60 MPH.