Sometimes it's just the smallest of things......

Call me crazy, call me odd or just call me nuts, so to speak, but yesterday I found something that continues to bring me the broadest of smiles.

I've lived in Texas for over 40 years and I've never seen before this curiously-designed, almost-personified happy little item, just laying on the ground. We were at the Dallas Arboretum and there it sat with all of its many little brothers and sisters either waiting to be swept away by workmen with their leaf blowers or taken back up once again high in the trees from which it first grew by a resourceful squirrel making ready his winter cache'.

I give you the Bur Oak Nut.

I'm very familiar with most of the native trees of this Great State starting with, of course, the pecan, the state tree. Texas has over 250 natives trees, including over 50 oak trees alone. One reason I am so familiar with all of the different trees is that for the last 30 years I've had to dig and scoop thousands of pounds of wet leaves out of swimming pools with the Swimming Pool  company we started in 1989. Despite counseling and cautioning pool owners about the importance of landscaping around their pool, they ignore our advice and make the wrong decisions, they will often  add the wrong trees.

And sadly, I guess that's why I've missed seeing the Bur Oak.  From a swimming pool perspective, you really don't want these relatively huge projectiles falling into your pool, let alone hitting you in the noggin.

Bur Oak trees are extremely drought tolerate due to their long taproot which is why they are the dominant tree of north central Texas. Bur Oak trees produce the largest acorn of any oak species that are 1 1/2 inches long and are almost completely covered with a furry cap.

And it is that furry little cap that I tell you looks like a little animated character waiting to have eyes painted on him, a little dot nose and a smile that will cause anyone who takes a moment to appreciate all that we have in the world that God has surrounded us with even if it is simply a nut on the ground.

Okay, maybe it's just a nut some animal will digest or maybe just be swept away. But for me, it's my little friend that I found while spending the day at Dallas's beautiful Arboretum. I'm gonna put a face on him and keep him in my truck. I think I'll call him, Skeeter.

Money and good Scotch make for a great election campaign....

As I close out this chapter of the Mid-Term Elections of 2018, I’m reminded of my first encounter into the “real” world of politics.. This was back almost fifty years ago when I was a student at the University of Oklahoma.

I had a part-time job in 1970 working as a chauffeur for a well respected young businessman in Norman, Oklahoma. Bobby owned a successful restaurant, the Boomerang, which in addition to great hamburgers and onion rings,  was a popular hangout for college kids just wanting to decompress and drink beer. Bobby was paralyzed from the waist down from a diving accident but that never stopped him from being both popular and successful. My job was simply to help him ingress and egress from his high-end Ford station wagon and then drive him to whatever destination he decided upon.

We developed a trust for each other, his of me being that he was physically dependent upon me to ensure his safety and privacy when as some of you know, often times people paralyzed can begin to suddenly experience extreme uncontrolled shaking and spasms and loss of bodily controls. I trusted Bobby because he simply allowed me to do all I could to remove him for what he thought was just embarrassing situations. Bobby had nothing to be embarrassed about. He was more of a man than most people I knew back then.

In addition to the many other enterprises he was involved in, one included being the Campaign Treasurer for an up and coming young political figure who was on a mission to unseat a 30 year member of the U.S. Congress. The candidate,  was the son of a well known, both locally and nationally, retired college football coach. Nuff said, okay?

Jay, the candidate, had through his father, many connections throughout the country including a young political adviser out of Washington, D.C.. Jim Brady, the adviser, would fly down to Oklahoma City each week to see how the campaign was going. I would pick him up at the airport, we would head to the liquor store, get a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, then I would take him to his hotel and leave, after of course helping him empty that bottle. Jim later went on to become the Press Secretary for President Reagan and took one of the bullets that was intended for President Reagan. We remained friends until his death in 2014.

Anyway, to continue, one day Bobby,  Jim and I headed over to the local bank and Bobby had me wheel him into the safe deposit area. Jim decided to wait in the car and after signing in, Bobby had me open a deposit box, the kind of box that is a about a foot deep, and inside was I’m guessing thousands of hundred dollar bills. I stared and Bobby looked at me and smiled and said, “Campaigns are expensive”. He had me take out a fistful as he made some notations in his ledger and we closed up and left. We headed back to Bobby’s house, enjoyed a little more of the Johnnie Walker Black and I went on to my afternoon classes.

Yep, I loved politics back then.

Later that year I found myself in Basic Training in the U.S. Air Force and didn’t find out until a few days after the election that Jay had lost the election. I guess he didn't quite have enough of those hundred dollar bills.

Politics haven't changed much over the last 50 years. It's all about raising money, saying things people want to hear and drinking good Scotch at the end of the day.