Uncle Arlo and Isabelle

Carlos was fourteen or fifteen when Isabelle was born. He wasn't too comfortable holding a baby and avoided holding Isabelle. Maiko was living next door to us and finances were tough on him. Carlos moved in with him and we helped with the rent. Isabelle spent the first three years spending time with Carlos every time she was with Maiko. When she started to talk, her first word was "Arlo". That was her name for her uncle Carlos. She loved wrestling with her uncle. She also loved arguing with him and they would compete over Elfida's attention. When Carlos left for boot camp she really missed him. When we told Isabelle that we were going to go see Carlos become a Marine, she found a small US flag that had been in Carlos' room and said she was taking it to wave at Carlos so he could see her.
She grew up in a house full of Marine Corps paraphernalia. Her dad had graduated from boot camp in 1997 and served four years in the Marines. It was a long drive from Waco, Tx. to San Diego, Ca. Isabelle had a great trip. Not only was she going to see her uncle Arlo but her great grandma was also going.
We had bought her a portable DVD player for the long trip and I beleived she saw the "Emperor's Groove" four or five times during the trip.
Isabelle enjoyed bugging her uncle every chance she got. Carlos spent his time paying her back for it. She knew he had broken his foot during the Crusible and would ask us how he was doing and when he could come home. She had to wait to hug her Uncle when we first saw him at the Marine Depot. Grandma got to hug Carlos first. Isabelle wanted to follow her uncle everywhere. These series of pictures were taken as Carlos walked around and Isabelle followed.
Now that her Uncle is in Iraq, she writes his notes everytime we send him a package. It is just letters strung together, but it her way of telling him how much she loves him and misses him. He has been out of country for over a year now. Isabelle was telling my wife the other day that when Carlos came home she was not going to fight with him any more.When Carlos was in Florida going through his training, he sent her a full set of Marine cammies. She wears them to the Central Texas Marine Family support group meetings. Gunny Sunday, one of the Marine recruiters in Waco when Carlos signed up, gave her some chevrons which she wears with her cammies.
I mentioned that Carlos broke his leg while at boot camp, it happened in December of 04. We were in Eagle Pass when we got a call at night from Carlos. He was telling us that he had broken his foot and wouldn't graduate with his platoon. He was very upset. He had grown attached to his group and had been doing great. He was hoping to graduate as the top recruit and now it had all changed. He was depressed and we were worried. Gunny Sunday was our granite pillar. He checked on Carlos on a weekly basis and made sure we were kept informed of his morale and his healing. As young as Isabelle was, she was aware of this and Gunny Sunday and his wife became her favorite friends. Isabelle now five years old, found out that Carlos was in Iraq and told Elfida that she didn't like him being there because that was were they killed Marines... I don't know where she heard this but I know that this war is now even on the minds of babies.

My wife, my only love

I saw my wife for the first time out of the second story window of Miners Hall at UTEP. She had just arrived in El Paso from Pecos. That was almost 30 years ago, she was wearing a white blouse, blue jeans, no makeup. I didn't meet her for another four or five months although I would see her at the dorms. She was beautiful. The first time I had a real conversation with her was in January of 1978. She was sick with a cold, I went with her to the grocery store and bought her some oranges. We dated while at UTEP and when the summer came I left for Eagle Pass and she for Barstow. She called a few time and we wrote to each other. I left for L.A. looking for summer work so I could continue paying my way through college. A few months later on my way back home I took a detour to Barstow, Texas, and picked up Elfida. We were married later that year. She is the only girl I ever told I loved. She is still the only woman I love.
When I was away from her, I could close my eyes at night and see her beautiful brown eyes. What use to puzzle me before I knew her was that she almost never smiled. When I was going out with her that was one of the questions I had to ask her. She said she had never noticed that she didn't smile. She has a beautiful smile and a soft sweat voice. She always looked younger that she was. Even after she had our two sons, people still mistook her for a teenager. She has aged very slowly.
My favorite time is spent sitting at home with her. She reads and I surf the Internet on my computer. Ever so often I reach over and hold her hand. I love knowing that she is there next to me. When our boys were little we use to all sit on one recliner and watch TV. After they grew up they would still come into our room in the morning and clime into bed with us. Sometimes we sit in bed and look at the pictures of our kids and us through the years. I have most of our pictures loaded on my laptop. Its been many many years that we have been together. She smiles a lot. I think having our sons gave her a big reason to smile more often. Late at night, when she sleeps and I sit watching TV or typing on my computer, I stop and listen to her breathing, look at her and notice how little she has changed in so many years. I reach over and touch her hand; she squeezes my hand without waking up.
During the day, while I sleep she is at work. I can roll over to her pillow and smell her essence on that pillow. I awake and miss not having her next to me. I close my eyes and see her beautiful brown eyes, her smile....
I don't know what being hurt is. I have never know a broken heart. I married the only girl I ever loved.... about 30 years ago.

Mom's visit

Mother came to visit. She called and told us she was coming for Spring Break. For my wife it meant having the house extra clean, for me it meant fresh homemade tortillas for breakfast every day! For my grand daughter, Isabelle, it meant spending more time with great grandma. She really loves her great grandma. Mom speaks only Spanish and Isabelle has a very limited Spanish vocabulary, but they do great at communicating. For my grand daughter, Lily, it meant one more person to give her food.
Mom likes to sit and talk about what our family life was like when we were growing up. She was a very good mother, had a great husband and some really good kids. My brothers and sisters gave her few headaches. I think Dora and I were the ones that gave her the bigger ones. Anyways, I would get up every day and go downstairs where she would be making tortillas. She would make me a couple of eggs and we would talk about people from our neighborhood, from school, or about our relatives. She specially like to hear about the good memories we have of our father. I few years ago I wrote a poem about him and printed it on some magnetic cards for the refrigerators. My brother Carlos translated the poem into Spanish for her. She had asked me to print the Spanish translation, I think she wanted to show it to her friends but none of them read English, but she kept insisting that it was a poem written by my brother. Anyways, I printed and framed it for her.
She likes doing work and we had to keep reminding her that she was visiting and didn't have to do work. We had a great time with her here. She doesn't like me taking close up pictures of her. She says she has too many wrinkles.
Mom married my father when she was seventeen years old. That was about the average age to get married for girls in the 40s in Mexico. My dad was twenty-two years old. They were real poor when they first got married. Eventually they did pretty good and they had a series of small store in three different town in Mexico. They had a real set back in 1954 when a flood wiped out their biggest store which they had in Piedras Negras. That forced them to move north into the USA looking for a better life. For years they worked in the fields, saving as much money as they could and buying up properties. My dad retired and they moved back to Eagle Pass in the late 80s. They bought a house with a big yard just outside Eagle Pass and had a swing set put in the front so that the grand kids could play there. The swing set is still there and now the great grand kids play on it. Dad passed away in the late 90s. Mom has always been a strong woman. She still cries every time she remembers my dad. They were married for more that 50 years. She likes listening to Mexican songs from the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. She brought me another list of songs she wants me to find on the Internet and copy for her. I gave her another Rocio Dulcar CD that I had that had songs from those decades. I tell her little about my work. She worries too much. She still hopes I get out of law enforcement and find a safer job.
Her week here went by too fast. She left with her suitcase and an H.E.B. grocery bag full of plants.

Kids growing up

Last year we went to a friend's wedding in San Antonio, Texas. She use to babysit our boys. Mary use to spend weekends at our house. She was the daughter my wife always wanted. When I started coaching soccer, she played on the first team I coached. We did pretty bad the first year, but she was a very good player. She went on to play high school soccer in a mixed coed team which played against all boys teams.
Her wedding (to Patricio) was in a very big church. Very beautiful church where we weren't allowed to take pictures from the sanctuary. I was allowed to climb up to the balcony and take pictures from there. This is my favorite photo from the church ceremony. I like the way the whole wedding party is included, the red carpet and the happy expressions on the bride and groom.
They had hired a photographer to take pictures, so I worked around him. I like taking photos from the angles most people won't normally see. That means putting the camera on the ground or holding it over my head or shooting through an opening in the flower arrangements. I also prefer not using a flash. That was a problem in this church since there was very little natural light coming in. Most churches have stained glass that allows enough sunlight to shine onto the alter but this one had blue stained glass which allowed very little light through. She was a beautiful bride.
When we still lived in San Antonio Mary was willing to help me with my photographic experimentation. This picture I took using my old Pentex 35 mm camera. I used two flashes to get the transparent hand effect. My wife loved having her over. My wife always wanted a daughter but we ended up with two boys. I was extremely happy to have boys, so Mary was very special to my wife.
Mary had two brothers and two sisters. Her mom could tell a story about her kids and make it hilarious. There were stories about when Marie's hair caught on fire, when the truck hit Gloria with the side view mirror, when David rode his big wheel off the family car's roof, about the time John cut his tongue, and about the hundreds of jokes they played on Christina. Their father was an EMS technician so he did most of the stitching of cuts, bandaging of scrapes, and assorted first aid. We would go visit and my wife would laugh so much at the stories they would tell that she would get an asthma attack every time we went there. Ok, some of it was from Wilma's smoking. Wilma was like a sister to my wife. They worked at the same place for about five years. When Mary got married, I think my wife was as excited as Wilma was. At the wedding I did what I have always like doing, take pictures. It was a beautiful wedding and a great reception. The rehearsal dinner, which we were also invited to, since we are family (almost) was most excellent. One of this days I will put all the pictures of Mary on a disc and send it to her. I will include the 100+ I took at her wedding. She was a beautiful little girl, she is a beautiful woman and my wife and Wilma are lucky to have her as a daughter. The years went by so fast....

Oh yeah, she use to dress up our youngest son in her Cabbage Patch Doll's clothing. Apparently it had no lasting impact on him since he is in the Marine Corps now.

Visible age

Some times I worry about age, most of the time I don't. I drove down Ritchie Road a few days ago and found an old bridge. I climbed underneath to see what most people don't see. It was smelly and slippery underneath. I did get a few pictures of the bridge and the rail road tracks that ran underneath. I saw old age as I climbed back up. An old dried piece of wood heavy with age. It had dried up and the nails were now sticking out. A piece of wood with wrinkles. It looked great.
I got back in my truck and drove about a mile and found an open field. I am not a farmer but I think this is wheat. More old age. Skinny dried but standing tall. It was hard and unbending. It will be there for a few more weeks and then the wind will break it. The winds of change.
Drove another two miles and found this.... A gate with no fence. It was locked too. Yeah, had a chain and a lock. I didn't go past it. It was locked. I have met lots of people like that field with a locked gate and no fence.
It was a good day for picture taking. It is good to age slowly.... to see what is under the bridge, to smell the grass, and to avoid gates that serve no purpose. Life has been good to me.....

My Father, me and my son

My son, Maiko, and I spent the whole afternoon building another kennel for the dogs. My shoulders, arms, legs and back hurt. Even my fingers ache. It was a wonderful afternoon. I know that after a few hours of working, my son was hoping I would say it was time to quit and that we would finish it tomorrow. We worked until the sun was just below the horizon. We picked up the tools in the dark. I think we found all of them. It was one of the best afternoons I have enjoyed in a long time. Time spent with my son, working.
I stayed behind to finish picking up some boards, and fence posts. My son carried the tools to the garage. I could tell he had worked more that he had expected. We should have stopped working an hour or so earlier, but I couldn't leave the work for tomorrow. I smiled as I remember working with my dad and wondering when he would stop working. I remember wishing he would stop and tell me that we would finish the work the next day. It just didn't happen. I remember pouring concrete with the light from a lamp on an electric cord because we had to finish work that day. We use to live next door to my parents when we both worked for Vickrey and Assoc., I remember we would get home after 06:30 PM. This was after having gone to work at 06:30 AM, I would walk into my house, get a beer and go sit outside to rest. My dad would eat dinner and then come outside and begin working on the house, the yard, the truck, or something else. I would have to go over and ask if he needed help. We would work until the sun went down.

I am now like my dad. I just can't quit once I start a project. But.... my son is starting to sound like me, like my dad too. We were outside watching his two daughters playing on their swing set. He was talking to his oldest daughter, telling her to be careful with her sister. He used the same words I had used on him more that twenty years ago, when I would tell him to be careful with his brother. I couldn't help telling him, "You sound just like your Dad!" My wife cracked up laughing.

It was a great afternoon and hopefully many years from now it will bring a smile to my son when he remembers the day we worked until sundown building a kennel.

I still miss my Dad, especially on the days when my sons do something good. I know he would love to be there to tell them how proud he is of his grandkids.

America's Highways

I am one of those who does not like driving. I don't mind being the passanger. I can take picture while riding. Ok, I can take pictures while driving but it isn't very safe. We traveled west to the Pacific Ocean and within 200 miles of the Atlantic Ocean, then we traveled South to the Mexican boarder and then North to Colorado.
That trip took us through Texas and New Mexico. These are the pictures take from the front passanger seat of my Ford F-150. My bother, Roje, did the driving while I took picture.
I even took a picture of the road through the rear view mirror to show where we had been. It was a lot of fun. We listened to 70's music on my Creative Labs MP3 player.
WE drove through some cloudy roads, rainy roads, sunny roads and again through rainy days.

We saw many trailer trucks, small cars, big cars and in Texas we saw many pick-ups.

We also hit some construction sites with their bright orange signs. The slow traffic allowed for some better picture taking.

Along the way we drove through some small towns with the Co-op building being the biggest and tallest structure in the whole town. Most of the small town looked as desolate as this one.

On some of the construction sites we came to a complete stop. We were able to get out of the truck and eat lunch. I even walked away and took pictures of the insects, plants and animals in the area.

Some of the weather was pretty frightening. Like when we were almost out of Colorado and we out ran this front. It was carrying some very strong winds, hail and lots of rain.

It may have even been carrying some tornados too. We were lucky that it was traveling a few mile slower than we were.

I felt sorry for the truckers and others traveling in the opposite direction. The y drove right into the storm.In the distance you can see the sunshine. We made it there just as we drove into Texas. We out ran most of the rain and hail, but the wind caught up with us just south of Amarillo. The dust was so thick that visability decrease to about 15 feet. That dust storm was the scarries part of the trip. What a welcome home we got from Texas!!!

Photographs and Memories

I took my first pictures with a 110 camera back in the mid 70's. Not a great camera just good enough. The quality of those pictures was about as good as the first digital camera I bought. I did get some pretty good photographs and fell in love with photography. My next camera was a Pentex 35mm. I took hundreds of pictures of my first son, many of my wife and pictures of every relative I found. Eventually I found out that if I wanted a real good composed photo I had to ask people to sit, stand, walk, run or do something, three or four times while I changed setting on the camera. I also learned that taking candid photos of people captured some of the most emotional photographs I had ever taken. I also learned that taking photographs of landscapes and animals was easier. With animals you just have to follow them around till they do something worth photographing. With landscapes you have to wait for the right light or climb up or down to get the best angle.
These pictures I took at the Maverick County lake in Eagle Pass on a December morning in 2005. I got up real early and hurried to the lake before the sun made it over the horizon to look for areas to photograph. It was chilly. I walked around the lake looking for the best side to shoot from.
Once the sun made it over the horizon I was ready. The sky's colors were vivid and their reflection on the water made for some great pictures. There were ducks in the water and they were very cooperative in swimming into the right areas to be photographed.

I enjoy these moments by myself, when I can think and capture time in a single frame. The early morning light hid most of the trash making the lake look very clean.

I spent many day when I was young at this lake. We use to come fishing here. I don't remember catching any thing worth keeping but it was still a lot of fun. The lake seemed bigger and had more water. It was also a lot cleaner. At one time they even had paddle boats that one could rent and peddle around the lake in. I remember hearing every so often of someone drowning in the lake. It may still be the same now, you know how people use to show up the day before Easter Sunday and sleep on the picnic table all night just so they could have one the next day.
Anyways, on this day I walked around the lake and took about 90 photographs. Most of them I deleted after viewing them on the computer. I kept about 30 of them. I spent about 3 hours taking pictures. By the time I got ready to go home the sun was way up in the sky.


This was the last photo I took. When I got there I had a jacket and gloves on. By the time I took this picture I was down to my T-shirt. It was going to be a warm December day. Yeah, a typical winter day in Eagle Pass. I don't know if I could ever move back and live here, but I sure enjoy visiting.