A Green Stamp Christmas

My parents use to do all their grocery shopping at Johnson & Johnson Grocery in Greeley, Colo. during the months we were working in the fields. One of the benefits we got from this was the S & H Green Stamps they gave there. The number of stamps you got depended on the amount of groceries purchased. In our family there were 7 kids plus our parents, that was a lot of groceries bought every week. With every purchase we got stamps that we collected and pasted on booklets. These booklets were redeemed for all kinds of stuff at the S & H Store. My mom would get the catalogs from the S & H Store with pictures of the items and the amount of books each was worth. As kids we spent many hours thumbing through these catalogs looking at all the toys. Every couple of days we would change our mind as to which toy we wanted. Yes, that was our window into Santa’s shop. We could pick one toy that we wanted for Christmas.
After we got home with the groceries, our parents would put them away and we would paste the stamps on the books and count the books, again and again. The books were kept in a plain cardboard box in the kitchen, such a valuable treasure and it was just in a box. Yeah, we’d licked the stamps, and then with a loud slap we would place the stamps on the pages of the books. Out came the catalog again, page-by-page, we would thumb through it again picking a different toy this time.
I don’t know when mom and dad made it to the S & H store or if I ever got the toy I picked on the last thumbing through the catalog. I probably picked every toy in that catalog at least once, no I didn’t get every toy, I just picked it as the one I wanted. I never did find the secret place where the toys were hid once they were brought home. Some how the toys made it to Eagle Pass, TX. Where we usually spend Christmas, the part of the year when there are no crops to pick, when money was scarce, and we had the best family times.

One toy doesn’t sound like much but it was more than many of the kids I grew up with ever got. Our parents worked very hard in the fields to provide us with food, clothing and housing. There was never much money for new toys. So we felt very lucky that S & H stamps made it possible for us to receive a Christmas present. So, for us during the hardest part of the year Santa was an S & H catalog.

Merry Christmas!

Grandparents Day at Home

Well, Maiko was delighted to find out that we had the NFL channel a few weeks ago. Elfida only watches the Cowboys and I don't follow any football team. When they announced that the Cowboy's game would only be shown on that channel Elfida asked if we had the channel. I told her I thought we did and looking through the channels, I found it. Maiko was planning to go to a friends house when we told him that we had it. By the time he started calling his friends to let them know we had the channel, which was a couple of days before the game, most of them had already made plans to go somewhere else. Some went all the way to Tylor, Texas, to see the game.
I set up the LCD projector and hooked up the cable to it. When Maiko came over wearing his Romo jersey he was really exited to be seeing the game on the wall 6 ft. by 4 ft. He even got to have fun with the announcers. Anyways, the cowboys won and both Elfid and Maiko were very happy.
With the weather getting colder, Fifi likes to go sit outside when the sun is out. If she can't go outside, she likes to sit on the window sill. If it is cold she hides under her blanket. Elfida bought her a doll bed which she took to with no problem.

This past Sunday we had both grand daughters spend the night. Lily found her scooter safety equipment. She won't ride the scooter but she did wear the equipment through out the day.
Big sister helped put on the pads. Yeah You can see the Cowboy game on the TV. Grandma won't miss it. For most of the day they got along great. A couple of time we heard Lily's, "No, ma'm!" Which usually meant that she had taken something from Isabelle and Isabelle was asking for it.
Ok, how do I look?
We had a ball seeing them play during the day. I made them hot chocolate and Lily then treated me to her imitation of a frog's call. She also ate all my Pistachios, M&Ms and Elfida's sugar coated pecans. Isabelle found my card stock paper and made snow flakes out of it. Those were some expensive snow flakes. She made a mask for Lily and Lily spent about half an hour walking up to me with the mask and making growling noises. I had to act scared for a half hour.
Sunday was a great day to be a grandparent, even if it was cold and wet outside. Both grand daughters look so much like their dad and act so much like their uncle Carlos.

Pictures around Waco

Okay, here are some pictures taken around the Waco area. You may have seen these sights while driving, walking, biking, chasing a bad guy or running from the police!
The Waco Suspension Bridge is a beautiful structure that has been there for many years. Countless people have walked across it, some have taken their picture on it. But if you walk under the bridge at the north end you will see a clown face painted on the brick. It has been there at least for the past 15 years. The first time I saw it was when we were on bike patrol and we use to check the area for people smoking dope.
If you follow Pantherway north of Hewitt Dr. until it ends you will come upon this bridge. The railroad crosses over. It is an old brick structure. I don't know much about it. We found it about 16 years ago while bike riding. Carlos was about six or five years old. It was before they built Texas Central Pkway all the way to Bagby. I took this picture at about 8:00 in the morning using a small tripod and the timer on the camera.
This one was taken at about 8:30 am on Old Mars Drive just before you get to Texas Central Dr. I was biking through the area on a very hazy day. The sunlight was really defused and you could almost look straight at it. This made the power poles look like giants walking in formation. I pulled over and took a series of shots. This is the one I liked.

I photoshopped this one. I added the lighting. I took the picture at the cemetery on IH 34 just north of Sun Valley. It was on Memorial Day in 06. Maiko and Amy picked me up and we went to the ceremony they had there. When the burglar started to play Taps I walked around the crowd making my way out to where he was. About six months later I saw him at one of the Marine Corp events in Waco and asked him for his home address. I took him a framed copy of a picture which I also photoshopped by inserting his image along with the image of another veteran that was there at the ceremony.
When Maiko started working at the jail, he and some of his co-workers would meet after work and play football. This is about 09:00 am on a Wednesday in the field behind the day care center at N. 4Th and Washington. I played football with them for about 15 minutes, then figured I was a better photographer than a football player and went back to taking pictures. That is the St. Francis church in the background. You can see the chain link fence they put up around the sink hole.
One day I talked Elfida into going with me while I took pictures. It was about 5:00 pm in January of 06 and the wind was blowing about 20 miles an hour. It was cold! Well, she got out of the truck once and then decided it was took cold. I drove down to Cameron Park figuring that the wind wouldn't be blowing too hard there. I was wrong. The river funneled it very well. The city was repairing the low water dam and had lowered the river. That is the Waco Dr. bridge and Hilton visible in the background.

I have a library card for the Waco library and would go to check out DVDs and CDs at the one on N. 18th and Austin. I was walking out of the building when I saw this homeless woman dumpster diving. I snapped the picture and then watched her for a while. She was looking for aluminium cans.
Maiko, Carlos and I use to go to this place to get our haircut. Mondays and Tuesdays Janie's charged $5 for a haircut. I quit going this year after she got sick and couldn't cut hair for a couple of months. Maiko still goes there. I now go to a barber on Valley Mills. Its a shorter drive from Hewitt. Her place is located at about the 3100 or 3200 block of N. 19th.
This is St. Francis of Assisi in the courtyard of the St. Francis church at N. 3rd and Jefferson Ave. He stands in the shade of a huge old oak tree. Maiko and Amy got married in this church. We use to attend church her but it was always too crowded and too far away from our house. Some times I would just go straight from work to church and meet Elfida, Maiko and Carlos. It was easier for me to stay awake in the morning than to go home sleep for a couple of hours and then get up and go to church. Carlos liked going to the Spanish mass.
This fountain is located at the entrance to the courtyard. I shot the photo through the iron gate. It is a working fountain which is used by the birds as a bath.
A group of Waco Police recruits run for their morning physical training. St. Francis glows in the early morning sunlight. I photographed the inside of the church and the relief on the outside. It is beautiful work. I will post the photos some day.

The reason I posted this photos was because I read in the newspaper about the Ritchie Road bridge being torn down. At the beginning of this year I went out and photographed it. Tonight I was looking for those pictures and got sidetracked looking at this ones. Oh well, I will find them and post them later.