“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”

– Robert Frost

Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.   - Herman Melville

Humans change when the Pain of the present is greater than the Fear of the future.

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.
- G. K. Chesterton

No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather.
- Michael Pritchard

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.
- Sir Richard Francis Burton

Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.
- A. J. Liebling

We are passing it on too!

I’d love to keep the shy bird, but don’t think they’ll let me!

I’ll catch up with a few snaps in a minute, but first I want to say goodbye to Intervale.
Dad asked me years ago if I’d ever live there and I said no. Boy was I wrong!
I had 10 years there that saved me a ton of moola as I tried to be a businessman.
Now living at our new place I find that Intervale has returned to being a place, not my home.
Still, I love that piece of ground. My earliest memories are from there and I’ll always have them.
This is a favorite snap from the back yard with the birdbath from grandma & grandpa Jackson’s place.

Charlene loves plants like Mom did. Here’s one of her fav’s on our back porch at Arcadia.

Lastly, here’s how a Jackson wraps a present. In this case my gift for my best man Jay
He liked it! Wire and all!

I’m twenty minutes away so I haul-ass over to find… two pitbulls are there, my dogs obviously frightened, bloodied, hiding until they hear me.
As I race through the house to get to the back yard, the big mama of the two dogs takes advantage of my dogs having emerged and attacks my sweet lab-mix that I call Doodles. She was screaming in agony. Snickers, my other dog is trying to nip the heals of the big pit.

I carry a .38 5-shot hammerless and pulled it as I also grabbed a metal fence stake. I shouted as I pointed, noticing my neighbor across the fence and behind where I’d be shooting. I also worried the shot may carry through and hit one of my dogs. The pit puppy is simply watching it all.

The shouting causes the pit to let go, and as I advance, she retreats. I’m talking a BIG f-in’ dog. I’m really pissed as I see all the blood on the pit’s mouth. I call my dogs, securing one in the toy hauler, the other in my house.
Back outside, having called the cops, the “puppy” probably 45lbs, would love nothing more than to play, and even the mama is wary but willing to somewhat follow.

A police officer pulls up and urges me NOT to coax the dogs out of the back yard, as “they’ve had other reports today about these dogs, and they may just hurt someone else.”
Also he can NOT guarantee that animal control can even be dispatched this late as the rule of law here is:
You must be bitten.
Not threatened, actual blood has to flow from a human before they will come.
He quietly told me that my mistake, (I’d told him I was licensed and was armed,)… was in that I had not shot both animals the second I arrived.

Had I shot in the air, I could have been cited for discharge of a firearm in the city… but had I killed the two dogs, I’d have been fine.
Ain’t that some sh!t!

A good fellow, he finally got an animal control guy on his way home to stop and pick up the dogs. The mother will most likely be put down, the pup however, may well be adopted out if it passes an aggression test.

So while shaking mad, and wanting revenge I did not fire. I was afraid for the neighbor behind the shot and my dogs… and it was deemed a mistake.
Texas law, especially Htown’s? Welcome to the wild west.

Snickers & Doodles are wounded, but should be ok.

I had it refinished in the early 80′s and it has held up fairly well.

The showbiz pics in our hallway look great and the giant pic of Maggie & Me is on the wall just to the right of the radio.
We really are settling in well!

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
- Thomas Jefferson

He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all.
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)