New Beginnings

 When thinking back on this trip to Arizona which was the first of two dad and son solo trips we took together, the stop at the Grand Canyon will always be a major highlight. Though this story starts a long way from this location, I wanted this photo to be the cover picture of this episode. This is one of the many favorite photo memories of the trip, when Brad took it of me at the edge of this unbelievable canyon. I wanted to take this trip with Brad immediately after he graduated high school in May of 2008, but he already taken a full time job for the summer that ended just before he started fall classes at North Central Texas College in August. The following February my position at Redi~Mix was eliminated as a result of a corporate downsizing event due to a national recession. Since I now had the time, we took this trip during his college spring break of 2009. I chose to make this trip by car instead of flying for a few reasons. Primarily I wanted to spend time with Brad knowing ...

Texas Motor Speedway may be known to be in Ft Worth, but actually it is a 24 mile drive from downtown and much closer to Denton. TMS is a mile and a half oval NASCAR and Indy car race venue with a seating capacity of 155,000 in the grandstand alone. TMS opened in August 1996 at a construction cost of $110,000,000 and was the 2nd largest sports facility in the USA and 3rd largest in the world. It sits just 5 miles north of Alliance Airport and has definitely helped to change the landscape of far north Ft Worth. For many years NASCAR racing was a big deal, a very big deal all over the country with people that would literally follow the race around the country from one venue to the next, many of them pulling a camper or RV through out the country. TMS has a capacity for 9000 RVs and it was usually packed to capacity leaving many searching for RV parks in the areas to park for the weekend. After TMS opened and it was race weekend, traffic would be so bad our dispatch office would have to r...

 During the first ten years of our marriage to say we moved a lot would be an understatement, in retrospect it seems we moved every time the season would change. But when you don't own much and still in your late teens and early 20s it was pretty easy. As a matter of fact, I think one time we moved one afternoon after we got off work. But when you have a house full of furniture and age 35-40 years, it becomes a lot less fun and a lot more work. When we got married in 1975 we rented a furnished four room duplex on Haight Street in Gainesville with a monthly rent of $75. It consisted of a living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. It had squeaky wooden floors and ancient appliances and the only thing we owned was a TV and our clothes. The old lady on other half of the duplex lived there during World War II while her husband was in the Army. After the war ended and he returned, she moved away with him. He died some years later and she moved back into this place and it had the same fu...