Finally!

NELSON'S NOTES #82

Fun N Sun, San Benito, Texas, April 12, 2010

 

It's been six months since I sent out the last Notes. Reasons for the delay? -- getting used to a new camera, having so much to do, and putting it off.

 

KEN &TERI

 

In spite of colder, wetter weather than normal, we had a great time when Ken and Teri visited from Dec. 29 - Jan. 5. "Cold" down here means temperatures in the 40s to 60s with an occasional dip into the 30s at night. After they left, there was a long-lasting freeze that killed many plants and crops throughout the Valley.

The Valley is usually quite dry and crops grow here because of our irrigation canals. On Dec. 30 we drove to the Hidalgo Pump House to see how water was originally pumped from the Rio Grande River into canals (today modern pumps are at a different location). Development in the Valley occurred after the irrigation system was constructed and after a railroad was built to transport the crops that subsequently flourished in the fertile, moist soil. In the Pump House basement is the Rio Grande Valley Model Railroad, a replica of the early railroad in the Valley .

 

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Another highlight was learning to play shuffleboard. The idea came from Teri who is interested in learning how to curl and thought shuffleboarding would be similar. Fun N Sun has air conditioned courts and a large, active shuffleboard group including Joann and Bob Michael who offered to help us learn. They spent over two hours teaching the four of us how to select a cue stick, wax the pucks, keep score, develop a strategy, and much, much more. We soon discovered that when your opponent plays after you do, your puck won't stay where you sent it. In fact, it could get knocked into "the kitchen" where points are deducted from your score.

 

Our shuffleboard teachers, Joann and Bob Michael

A LABOR OF LOVE

 

Our friends Virginia & Sid Hendershott with their granddaughter Rochelle Vance & her one-of-a-kind quilt

The quilt highlights Rochelle's 17-year basketball career and is one of many quilts Virginia has designed and made for her grandchildren. For the main part of the quilt she cut Rochelle's T-shirts into blocks and for the border she copied pictures from Rochelle's basketball career onto color-fast fabric sheets.

Rochelle's achievements have included being named to Who's Who Among Junior College Athletes, Most Valuable Player at both Henderson State and Frank Philips colleges, being an ESPN Academic Athlete All American, and earning a 4.0 grade average. After passing a special certification test, Rochelle now teaches geometry at John Horn High School in Mesquite, Texas, and coaches the girls' basketball team. She inspires her players to excel and continues to dedicate herself to basketball.

 

 

THE STORY BEHIND BRUCE'S STORY

 

Bruce with his car and copy of Reminisce magazine

 

Each week, members of the Writers Group at Fun N Sun choose a topic from our "grab bag" and write a story about it during the week. Last July, the topic "A Nasty Bruise" was pulled from the bag. Later I told Bruce and he said, "I could write about that!" And that's what he did. The next Tuesday I read his story to the group. "He should send that to Reminisce Magazine," piped up Dee Beringer, who has written stories for Reminisce. The magazine publishes personal reminisces of years gone by submitted by readers.

Six months after Bruce submitted his story (along with a color photo of us taken in 1953), two complimentary copies of Reminisce arrived in the mail. His article was on page 38 under the category "How I Met My Spouse." The editor had changed the title from "The King of Black Eyes" to "Purple Badge of Courage" and also cut paragraphs from the middle. (Both versions are below.)

Bruce received a classic red 1957 Chevrolet car, the magazine's way of saying, "Thanks for joining our staff."

 

Bruce's original story: "The King of Black Eyes"

It was truly the king of black eyes. On a scale of one to ten it had to have been a twelve. From my eyebrow to half way down my cheek it was a shiny, puffy, deep purple bruise.

Earlier that day, four fraternity brothers and I had acquired, by stealthy means, a three-man toboggan and were about to slide down the hill in back of the Aggie barn at the University of Connecticut. There were five of us but the toboggan was designed for three. We were all juniors in college but had not yet mastered the concept of taking turns and had only a nebulous grasp of the concepts of gravity and of inertia. We went down the hill standing up on the toboggan.

The first bump was exhilarating. The second was disaster. In the resulting melee, I got kicked in the face by someone wearing a combat boot, a really big, hard leather combat boot.

By the time we picked up our blind dates for the basketball game that evening, my eye was completely swollen shut and by the end of the game the weeping had crusted over. I had had a blind date with the same girl several weeks earlier. Neither of us mentioned that fact.

After the game we all went back to the Delta Sigma fraternity house. Every Saturday night there was an informal dance in our dining hall. Another of my fraternity brothers, a big beefy fellow named Jimmy, was dancing with his date for the evening, a really cute girl, tall and slender with dark bobbed hair with a DA in the back, full lips, and a pert nose. She looked like a movie star. I remembered her from my history class. The class was in a big lecture hall with amphitheater seating. She and a blond girl used to come in together. I thought they were both pretty cute and fun to watch as they climbed up the aisle to their seats. I never did pay much attention to the lecturer.

Having the black eye was like some sort of a badge. It made me stand out. I was somehow different from everybody else, but in an exciting way. Perhaps I would wear an eye patch like the man in the Van Heusen shirt ads.

Emboldened by the black eye, I walked over to Jimmy and tapped him on the shoulder and asked if I could cut in. As the girl and I danced off together I introduced myself and told her that we were in the same history class. She told me her name was Marianna. In my mind I heard bells ringing and I knew I had hit the jackpot. I knew that I would marry this girl whom I had just met.

She took me to meet her parents that summer. The swelling had gone down and the purple had faded to yellow. There was still a knot of scar tissue under my eyebrow.

The ridge of scar tissue was still there long after our fourth child, Teri, was born. I could feel it move around a little if I pressed on it with my fingers. It is only now as I write this (55 years after I got hit with that boot) I noticed the lump has finally gone away. The last trace of the black eye has gone but I still have the girl and the children and the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren.

If I had not ridden that toboggan standing up and if I had not been kicked in the face and gotten that enormous black eye, would any of this have happened the way it did?

 

 

Bruce's article, as published in Reminisce

 

 

CARIBBEAN CRUISE, MARCH 21-28

 

Our friend, Ken Roberts, is always searching for good values and spreading the word to others. This spring he found a cruise on Royal Caribbean which he publicized at Fun N Sun. Fourteen of us signed up. We called Ken our "cruise director" because he kept everyone informed about the lowest gas prices on the way to Galveston, the best motel near the Galveston pier, parking in Galveston, and many other things including what not to miss during the cruise itself.

Royal Caribbean's Voyager of the Seas is a floating resort with 15 decks and enough staterooms for 3,100 guests plus rooms for over 1,000 crew members. The ship's international staff was very friendly and gave top-notch service. The Voyager was the world's largest cruise ship when it was launched from Finland in 1999. In addition to dining areas, shops, bars, swimming pools and hot tubs, the facilities include two theaters, a gambling casino, a miniature golf course, a climbing wall, a small water park for kids, a fitness center and spa, a jogging track, an inline track, a sport court, an ice skating rink, a helicopter pad, and a peek-a-boo window where we could look down into the bridge at an operator manning the controls.

The three ports of call were Costa Maya and Cozumel, both in Mexico, and Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras.

 

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Some things we especially enjoyed are listed below. The starred items are in Bruce's 19-minute video of life on the ship

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  • *walking the deck

  • *seeing two performances of the ice skating show "Ice Odyssey"

  • *listening to impromptu, a cappella singing by a high school choir from Willard, Missouri

  • *line dancing in "The Vault"

  •  watching videos about how the Voyager was designed and built

  •  listening to a slide presentation portraying 30,000 years of art history

  •  taking a backstage tour about how the ship's shows are produced

  •  finding a new towel sculpture -- a rabbit, a dog wearing Bruce's sunglasses, and two monkeys -- in our room each day, courtesy of our room steward Fred

  • watching a former stone carver from the Philippines make watermelons into detailed faces and flowers.

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A  watermelon carving

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Marianna Nelson