Fun N Sun, San Benito, Texas, May 3, 2015

Nelson’s Notes #100

            In this special edition of Nelson’s Notes, you will meet a few of the many Fun N Suners who represent the spirit and ingenuity of the park’s founders, Hank and Joan Stanley, and of the Winter Texans who have been coming here since 1972. Some, like Bruce and I, have made it their full-time home. Here, we are surrounded by positive people who enjoy every day despite any difficulties aging may bring.

            Fun N Sun is the best place to be!

 

Al Wolter: Man With a Hook

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al and buzz 

          Al and his wife Buzz put three skeins of Red Heart brand light brown yarn and four skeins of variegated yarn on the Walmart checkout counter. The cashier looked at Buzz and said, “Boy, you’ve got your work cut out for you!” “No, it’s his,” Buzz replied, motioning with her thumb to Al.
            Fifteen years ago, Al thought knitting would be a good pastime in his retirement so Buzz’s brother taught him to cro-knit during a phone call from Florida. Since then, he has made 165 afghans for his family. Many were made to celebrate milestones in the lives of his 7 children, 18 grandchildren, and 9 great grandchildren.

            Al cro-knits with a 36-inch-long needle which he calls “the stick.” He made it from a ¼” wooden dowel and carved a crochet hook at each end. The stick in the photo has been used to make 15 afghans so far and is now slick and smooth from wear. It takes Al one month (50-55 hours) to make each afghan.

            One side of the afghan is made with yarn from a single-color skein and the other side with variegated yarn, both in colors Buzz picks out. The resulting afghan is warm and thick. To keep the edges straight, Al skips a loop at one end of each row to make up for the loop he picked up at the other end. He frequently has to count loops to make sure he has the right number – 180 -- on the stick. “When Buzz sees me counting the loops she knows not to talk to me,” Al said.

            Eighty-three years old but spry and energetic, Al says, “I watch TV at the same time I cro-knit. I look down, then up. I make a mistake once in a while, even fall asleep (never used to fall asleep). Then I have to rip out a section and do it over. But it doesn’t bother me -- I’m in no hurry. It’s just a pastime and it’s better than cracking walnuts -- Buzz used to get them and I had to open them. Some guys at the shuffleboard court say to me, “I’m not old enough to do that yet.” I say to them, “You can’t embarrass me. My kids, grandkids, and friends all have something to remember me by.”

            Now Al has another croknitting project, making caps for babies in Haiti. You wouldn’t expect wool caps to be needed there but it is cold, especially for little babies in the mountains high above Port O’ Prince. Al’s granddaughter, Paige, an art therapist, has volunteered during the last three to four summers at the Mission with her husband, Scott. Paige suggested that her father make hats and she would distribute them to help keep the babies warm. So far he has made 150 hats and is as proud of them as he is of his afghans.

 

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Quen Carpenter: The Story Behind the Mural at Fun N Sun

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Quen carpenter is a mural artist who spends winters at Fun N Sun. In 2010 when she was 72 she had a bleeding stroke which affected her dominant right side. “It turned me into a different person,” she said. She was unable to do the math an artist uses when working with various scales and she lost full use of her right side. She still continues to experience problems with her right hand, even after receiving therapy.

Drawing upon deep reserves of grit and determination, in 2013 Quen regained enough confidence to begin sketching again. On Saturday mornings she would sketch people who came to Fun N Sun Craft shows, charging $5.00 for charcoal and $10 for each colored sketch. She continues to do this and donates the money to various charities.

The next year she talked to Tony Ortiz, FNS manager, and asked if he had a place in mind for a mural in the park. “If you’re interested in painting a mural,” he said, “I know a wall -- the back side of the pool bathhouse.” It was an ugly metal wall facing Ginger Street.

            Tony and Quen made arrangements:  he would pay for the paint and she would donate her time to do the mural. Martha Wing helped Quen find eight people from Martha’s aquacise class to pose for the cartoon. “A mural always starts with a cartoon,” Quen explained. “I do a small cartoon at a reduced scale to create a grid pattern. Then I transfer the grid to the wall I’m going to paint. Each person posed separately at the dining table in my motorhome and each one returned a second time for me to sketch their faces. There was never any photography involved,” she said.

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Martha Wing and Quen’s cartoon. Clockwise from Martha in the 12 o’clock position, the others are: Julia Krist, Terry Jacoby, Gene Nelson, Helen Jensenius, June Howden, Warren Roeske, and Vicki Middleton.

          

 Shortly after Quen created the cartoon, she tripped over a speed bump and broke her pelvis.  At the same time, she had also committed to illustrating a book. She tried to start the book project but was in too much pain from the fall to carry out the assignment. She would have felt well enough to do it later, but by then the book had to go to press. “It was the first time in my life I had failed to carry out a job,” she said sadly.

            “The fall set me back a year. I was mad at myself all that year.” Her husband Bob added, “You were mad at the speed bump, too.”

            At home in Illinois during the summer of 2014, Quen’s spirits lifted when she received good news about an historical mural she had created years ago for her hometown, Plano. A hotel wanted to rehang the mural which had been rolled up for years and was in several pieces. It was a big accomplishment to get that far because it had taken years to have a hotel owner willing to hire a crew to hang the heavy mural.

            That summer, even though she had not fully recovered from her stroke and from the fall, she climbed a ladder and worked to restore each of the mural’s seven panels. Not only was the mural restored but so was her confidence.

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Quen with Robert Hausler, President of “Plano’s Past,” the group that owns the mural.

 

 

During the next winter season at Fun N Sun, she had the courage to start painting the swimming pool mural but needed to get permission again because there was a new manager. When the time came to actually paint on the wall, Quen said, “I’ve never had Bob help me with any other mural but this time he stood behind me every minute I was on the ladder. He is an enabling person. It wasn’t the best surface to paint on because the metal wall had a seam and metal fasteners I had to paint around.” First she transferred the cartoon of the aquacise people she had sketched the year before. Including the original sketching, it took approximately 80 hours to complete the mural. She used her own acrylic paint to finish the project and paid for a ladder and for supplies such as brushes and rollers. The mural measures 12’ by 8’ feet and is by far the smallest one she has ever done. “But I was happy to do it,” she said.

Even so, Quen feared she might fail and that people wouldn’t like the mural. “I’d dream about trying to make the faces better but I knew working with exterior house paint would make that difficult. Finally I told myself, ‘enough is enough.’

In the future everything will be turned out by computer. Doing it the old-fashioned way shows the imperfections,” she said.

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Ken and Pam Roberts: Free Is Good!

            Ken and Pam Roberts officially became Winter Texans in 1998 and have come to Fun N Sun every October since. In April, when they return to their cottage in the north woods of Wisconsin, they wait for the lake ice to break, listen for the call of the loons, and try to devise clever ways to deter bears and deer from trespassing in their yard during the summer.

            The following October, back at Fun N Sun Pam begins preparing for the line dance classes she will teach in the winter and Ken starts teaching one of his two Ipad classes. “I like teaching because it forces me to learn,” he says. “The best way to learn something is to teach it.”  

            Ken is retired military and he and Pam get to fly on Air Force and Navy planes free, space available. “Usually we fly on a C5 which has two passenger compartments holding 72 people each,” Ken says. “The cargo department is big enough to hold six Greyhound buses. To board, you go up a ladder then sit down facing backwards in the big steel cylinder. The only window is a little one in the door.”

            In 2004 they flew home from England on a jet tanker that had been stationed in Iraq. “It had no regular seats just jump seats -- canvas with metal frames but with enough room to lie down,” Ken said. A tanker refuels another plane in midair like this: in the back of the plane, a guy lies down and looks out a window on the floor so he can steer the fuel hose into the other plane’s fuel pipe. Ken is not sure if that happened on their flight – “probably not,” he says, “because we were going too fast -- flew from England to Kansas in six hours.”

            In 1999, Ken started sending the NewsNotes, an email newsletter with computer tips. He then added items of interest from FunNSun and his cottage up north. Later he started searching for the best money-saving deals on fatwallet.com, adding those to the NewsNotes. Ken and Pam took advantage of a deal through Barclays and received 40,000 points on a Barclaycard. That year they made $500 off their card. “Free is good,” is Ken's motto. Recent NewsNotes and instructions to sign up are at kenpamr.com/newsnotes

 

            Last February, Ken and Pam celebrated their 53rd wedding anniversary with a group of friends at Hime Sushi Bar and Grill in Harlingen. First, a Tempanyaki chef stir-fried shrimp, vegetables, and rice on a large Hibachi grill. For show, he converted a stack of onion slices into a flaming pyramid before chopping them and mixing them into the vegetables. Then, tossing up two eggs), he deftly caught each one on a flat spatula before cracking the shells, stirring the eggs on the grill and adding them to the rice.


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 After the meal, the restaurant owner took a picture of Ken and Pam in ceremonial kimonos.

 

 

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Don Becker: The Wheels On the Bus Go Round and Round

            A 10-year veteran of riding Greyhound buses from Milwaukee to Harlingen -- three round trips per year, 3,216 miles each -- Don Becker, age 78, says he still enjoys riding on Greyhounds. Bus trips to and from Harlingen take 36-39 hours (1 1/2 days). After his wife Sandy died in 2004, he knew he couldn’t drive to Fun N Sun himself – “I fall asleep too fast,” he said. “I can easily fall asleep with people talking around me and I can sleep standing up or sitting down.”

             “It’s much cheaper to go by Greyhound, less than a third of what it would cost to drive 1,608 miles for two and one-half days and spend two nights in motels,” Don says. “The gas alone is more than what a bus ticket would cost. Tickets were roughly $82-$84 one way (now they are $94-$99).” To get the best rates, Don takes advantage of being a senior citizen and also books his trips at least three weeks in advance.

            To Don, the words “bus” and “Greyhound” are interchangeable. “I have never planned my trips. From Milwaukee, I call the Harlingen Greyhound station where Jody, Luther, or Junior send me my round-trip tickets and labels to put on my baggage. When I call, Jody (it’s usually her) knows I want the least amount of transfers but also want a few hour-long layovers (Chicago for one). There is one good meal stop (30-45 minutes long) for the trip. That’s where the hour layover comes in handy,” he says, “and also to allow for an incident that might happen along the way (like a highway accident).

            “Greyhound allows one plastic tote in the underneath compartment (the cost is more if it weighs more than 50 pounds). I never touch my baggage until I take it off at the other end and I don’t transport things back and forth from Wisconsin to Harlingen. I leave everything in my park model at Fun N Sun and keep on the air conditioner and the refrigerator.

            “Greyhound is never on time -- it’s either a minute or two early or a minute or two late. It’s so accurate, nothing can compare to it. Only one trip in the 10 years I rode buses got in a day late. It wasn’t Greyhound’s fault but a big accident.” No matter what happens, Don goes with the flow.

            “I try to sit somewhere in the middle, never in back. I don’t sit on wheel-wells or where the handicapped door is because it doesn’t have an electric outlet. I’m a talker. I’ve talked to a lot of people on the bus. Many passengers are going home between the Valley and Milwaukee. They have very few belongings but are friendly and humble. When inmates are released from prison they are put on a bus. Many are DWIs but they served their time and are ready to start a new life. One fellow was a big cattle rancher (and a DWI).

                        One couple stands out. I’ll never forget them. I didn’t talk to them because they never talked to people. They were all dressed up and always sat in the front seat. They said they were FBI agents but they were pretending to be what they were not. When we got to one of the next stops, five squad cars were waiting. They handcuffed them and took them away.”

                        Buses have rules. One time, at not-a-normal stop, they made a lady get off the bus because she was smoking in the restrooms.”

            For a single individual traveling, the bus is the way to go. They’ve cleaned up the bus stations, moved them out of the ghettos. I talk-up riding Greyhound buses because I like them but buses aren’t for everyone. One time friends took a bus to Florida for a brother’s big birthday but wouldn’t come back on the bus,” he says.

            “I’ve probably taken my last bus trip because Dianne [Don’s new wife] will drive. Then we can do some sightseeing.”

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Don was King Rex for Fun N Sun’s 2015 Mardi Gras parade and celebration.

Photo by Tom O’Connell

 

Marianna Nelson, May 3, 2015