Sunday and Beef Enchiladas

It's a rainy Sunday and I haven't done much all day. It's one of those days where you just want to nap and so that's what I have been doing. 

I feel so blessed because hubby took up the slack for me today and he has been working on supper. He made beans and enchiladas and I know they will be good. He and I make enchiladas a little different. He buys enchilada sauce for his and uses Velveeta cheese. I make my own sauce and most of the time, I use Velveeta, but growing up when we made my families' enchiladas we used longhorn cheese or what my Dad used to call "rat cheese". 

Here is my recipe:

ENCHILADAS

(my family recipe)

1 ½ pound ground beef

10-12 ounce velveeta cheese

one large onion, chopped (1 cup)

2 Tbs chili powder

1 tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

1 tsp garlic

1 tsp comino

2 cans tomato sauce

1 can tomato sauce can water

2 tsp cornstarch mixed with 1/8 cup cold water

15 corn tortillas

oil for tortillas about 1/2 cup

Grate cheese and set aside, chop onion and set aside. Dip corn tortillas in skillet of ¼ cup hot oil to soften and set aside (drain on paper towels). Brown ground beef, drain and set aside. In skillet mix chili powder, salt, pepper, garlic powder, comino, tomato sauce and water. Stir  and add cornstarch mixture and meat. Stir. To each tortilla place some cheese, onion and chili mixture. Roll, then put in pan seam side down. Sprinkle top with cheese. Heat through in 375*F oven.

____________

My shoulder problem was a lot worse last night after chopping up two hams for canning.  I'm going to have to see the doctor next week and hope it is not too soon for another shot for the pain. 

Mountain Men is on TV right now and it is a favorite show of mine. The oldest guy, the trapper, Tom Orr, is in his seventies and is a big inspiration as far as reminding us that age doesn't have to be a deterrent to things you want to. 

Wild Parrots and a Pet Parrot Named Killer

While perusing an article about things to see and do in Texas, I saw mention of the wild parrots that could be seen in and around Oliveira Park in Brownsville, TX.
The article reminded me of the time when we lived in Harlingen, TX which is not far from Brownsville.
The neighborhood we lived in was full of wild parrots and as it so happened we had a parrot in our home, a left over from a pet shop we had owned. I hesitate to call him a pet because he had a nasty temper. He was a beautiful double yellow head parrot though and we thought we would always have "Killer" as we called him because he made every attempt he could to bite us.
Well anyway, Killer got real excited every evening when he heard those wild parrots outside and he would screech and carry on until the noise was unbearable.
We decided he needed a new home but weren't sure about just letting him loose after being in a cage for so long.
We finally landed on the idea to donate our parrot to the zoo in Brownsville, which we did and they were happy to have him. It gave him a chance to be with other parrots and still have a certain amount of protection compared to the wild parrots that he liked to talk to so much.
As I thought about him today I realized that, assuming he is getting the good care I am sure he is, he is likely still there; his life expectancy is around 60-80 years.
If you get the opportunity to make a trip to the Rio Grande Valley, take time to look for the wild parrots. They are a feast for the eyes!
And if you are interested in the article with the list of things to see and do in Texas, well here is that link for you as well.
Awesome Things to See and Do in Texas

Shopping for the Tree and Meeting "El Arabe"

I know I wasn’t very old, maybe five years old, when our family drove down to a tree lot in Crystal City one December to pick out a Christmas tree. This was before my youngest brother Robert was even born.

The tree lot was near the intersection of 7^th Ave. and Lake Street and it was my first memory of not only picking out a Christmas tree, it was also my first memory of seeing our town’s homeless man.  This man known as Assi Alli, or “El Arabe” was of Lebanese heritage and went around town picking up trash. There was a lot of mystery about Assi Alli. It is believed he took to the streets after a personal tragedy. One of the stories is that his wife left him for another man, but there were many stories and no one knows which, if any of them, were true.

Assi Alli always wore a little United States flag in his hat and was often seen praying towards Mecca. 

Townspeople often gave him food and more were kind to him than not.

That first time I saw him though, I was only a little girl, and to me, this old man in disheveled clothes and gray hair and beard, muttering something in what sounded like another language, frightened me.  He did wave, but I inched closer to my mother.

My parents, my sister, brother and I continued to look around at all the trees but I kept a watchful eye for that man that waved at me.

We had started at the front of the lot and worked our way back, looking at an endless number of tall, short, skinny and fat trees. Some were too smushed on one side or had some other deformity. It seemed to take forever.

Mom and Dad didn’t seem to like any of the trees. Finally though we walked back to the front of the lot and Yep, you guessed it, they chose the first tree they had laid their eyes on, paid for the tree, and then the lot attendant helped Dad tie the tree to the luggage rack on top of the station wagon and we drove home.

Ribbon Candy

As a kid, my absolute least favorite thing to get in my Christmas stocking each year was the old fashioned ribbon candy. I hated that stuff and yet that was one of the things, along with an apple, an orange, some nuts and a few other things, that we got every year.

 

Years later, mom and I were talking about Christmas and I mentioned not liking the ribbon candy and she said well she always got it because it was cheap! I told her I should return the favor and buy her a huge box of the stuff as a Christmas gift! I seriously planned to do it as a joke, until I saw that the cheap candy was now no longer cheap and cost a little too much to buy as a joke and then just throw away.
Even so, ribbon candy kind of became a traditional thing of the non edible kind, when I found ribbon candy ornaments to hang on my tree. 

 

What was once something I dreaded, is now a fond and funny memory.

Some people love ribbon candy and you can still buy it. It has been so long since I have had any I don't know if I would still dislike it or not. In any case, here is a link for a place to order it: 

 

Ribbon Candy - Vermont Country Store

Real Barbecue

Today we stopped at a local barbecue place to eat. It was pretty good I guess, but I have often noticed that the barbecue you get at restaurants never tastes as good as the smell of the smoke that comes from the pits where they cook the meat. I mentioned this to hubby and he said that is because they don't smoke the meat long enough.

My Mama used to make better barbecue than these clowns in the restaurants make and she had only a makeshift barbecue pit that consisted of metal barrel - cut in half - for the stand, a huge black cast iron kettle for the barbecue pit sitting on top the half barrel, and an old oven rack resting on top of the kettle for the grate.

From that set up she cooked many an outstanding steak and chicken that were much better than anything I have tasted in the restaurants.

It would be Saturdays like this usually that Mom would barbecue and she would sit out in the back yard in a lawn chair, next to that pit, with barbecue tongs in one hand and book in the other and reading, while she waited for the steak or chicken to finish.

When it was done Mom would make this barbecue sauce. It was the best! I always liked this recipe so much more than store bought sauce!

Palo Pinto Barbecue Sauce

3 TBS margarine
1/2 cup chopped onions
1 cup catsup
1 cup water
1/3 cup lemon juice
4 TBS molasses
2 tsp salt
2 tsp mustard
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 TBS Worcestershire

Saute onions in margarine until limp, add remaining ingredients and heat and stir until well blended. Simmer 10 minutes. Add sugar if too tart or lemon juice if too sweet. If she was going to barbecue chicken, she would make this ahead of time so she could brush the chicken with it towards the end of the cooking time.

Summertime Memories

Summer time always makes me feel nostalgic about days gone by, growing up in Crystal City.


I started making a list of things it reminded me of and here is the list in no particular order and in different stages of childhood. They are simple memories and they are of course my own memories, but maybe they will remind you of some sweet memories of your own and if so, then this post will have served it's purpose.


*Playing in the sprinkler
*Washing the car and my siblings and I spraying each other
*Raspas! (sno-cones) and Icees from Dairy Kreme
*Walking over to the high school to play on the fire escape
*The city pool
*Window washing at the house which included spraying each other through the screens when we were cleaning the screens
*Trips to the city library and being in the summer reading program there
*Vacation Bible School
*Alto Frio Baptist Encampment (summer camp)
*The Poteet Strawberry Festival and putting up strawberries
*Trying to dig a hole to China and being afraid once we got the hole in the dirt really deep that a China man would pop out of that hole!
*Trying to make bricks out of mud and dried grass like the Hebrews in Moses' time
*Making mud pies and using china berries for decorations on top of our "pies"
*Hop Scotch!
*Sky Watching with my Dad even when I was so little I had to stand on a stool to see into the telescope
*Trying to ride those old wooden skate boards with the shark emblem on it.
*Playing with pill bugs
*Homemade ice cream
*Drawing on the sidewalk with chalk
*Catching grasshoppers
*Climbing trees
*Exploring the vacant lots in the neighborhood

PawPaw Bunyan

About a year ago, my husband, aka "Pawpaw" to our grandson, and my son's brother in law and father in law put together a swing set for grandson for his birthday.

Even though there were lots of hands helping to put the swingset together, grandson gave Pawpaw all the credit. "Pawpaw built my swingset" he said and I think what must motivate my grandson's thinking is the shear size of my husband. Grandson must look up at his 6ft 7in Pawpaw and see an impressive giant of a man and so that is all he remembers.

This past Sunday grandson was at our house and I showed him a room we are remodeling that will be a guest room when they stay with us.

I showed him the wall that Pawpaw is refinishing and I told him that Pawpaw was making the room for him to sleep in when he visits. Grandson was impressed. His reply was "Pawpaw make the room for me?" as he pointed to himself.

Later that day our son and his family left, taking the pickup truck they were borrowing until their suburban could finish repairs in the shop. While they were still traveling, son called to tell me that Grandson had made the remark that Pawpaw built that truck for them!

We had to laugh that grandson seemed to think that Pawpaw builds EVERYTHING and it made me wonder if, when I start reading the Paul Bunyan books I have waiting for him when he is a little older, maybe I can substitute the word "Pawpaw" for "Paul" and get away with it!

December Remembrances

The month of December always takes me back to my hometown of Crystal City.


I remember walking up and down the sidewalks downtown and shopping and peering in the windows of the storefronts.


I remember Christmas plays where I played an angel in the nativity scene only because I had blonde hair and they thought at the time I guess that angels needed to have blonde hair!


I remember the Christmas lights decorating contests in neighborhoods.


I remember our hometown's homeless gentleman, Assi Alli, walking around near the Christmas tree lot where my Dad took us to buy a tree one year. I was afraid of that man in the ragged clothes and the American Flag bedecked hat, but as I got older I learned more and more what a kind soul that man was, and was saddened to learn years later that he died on Dec 26th, the day after Christmas.


I remember counting on getting new Nancy Drew books every year to read and add to my collection and the year my parents decided I was old enough to have a transistor radio and the year they decided I could wear makeup and gifted those items as well.


I remember a few years when Dad decided to help Mom with the Christmas shopping. When we were little, he gave me a little robot and a steam engine plant powered by sterno fuel and a remote controlled airplane. When I got to be a teenager I remember one year him buying me perfume...this was not long before he passed away.


I remember helping to cut branches from our juniper bushes and tying them to the fence in front of the house just before stringing Christmas lights over them.


I recall the year my mom, feeling festive, put a blue light bulb in the porch light, to go along with the other decorating and then wondering why the police car drove slowly by our house...


I remember some cold and rainy winters and some winters where I was still wearing shorts.


Christmas school holidays!


And then as the month draws to a close as it has now, I recall that my mom always said that all the world would be celebrating her birthday on the the 31st. Happy Birthday Mom, Happy New Year!

Keeping Cool in South Texas

Every Summer I complain about the heat but I don't know if it really gets any hotter or if I just get less tolerant.

Growing up in Crystal City I know it was pretty darn hot there but it seems like we were at least more creative about finding ways to keep cool.

At home we had a swamp cooler for our air conditioning. It felt like heaven compared to going to a school that had NO air conditioning!

I remember at our Junior High we all wanted to sit close to the windows for obvious reasons.

At school we spent a lot of time making fans out of notebook paper and I remember that since the dress code required the girls to wear dresses all the time we would sometimes put a sheet of notebook paper on our desk seats to keep our legs from sticking to the seat with sweat.

Churches and tent revivals used to supply fans to help you keep your cool. They had pictures of the church and the addresses printed on them or some other printing. I especially remember sitting at those tent revivals as a kid and watching all the grownups fanning themselves.

The other way of course to keep cool was to spend as much time in the water as possible and to do that properly you would take a watermelon with you to the river and have it cooling down in the water so that when everyone was through swimming there was cool watermelon to eat.

Water balloon fights were a good option too.

When you lived in a place like Crystal City though, it stayed hot probably 3/4s of the year so sometimes you just had to deal with it. Or you could always drive down to Dairy Kreme and get an Icee :-)

Tweety Bird

Tweety was the typical powder-blue parakeet with little bits of yellow, white and black. He was a family pet back when we were kids. I don't remember the details of getting him but I am pretty sure we just went down to the Keith and Roberts store in Crystal City and there bought bird, bird cage, paper, seed and the whole works.

We had Tweety for some time and he became pretty tame and sociable. We could let him out of his cage and he would fly around the house and sit on top of the curtain rods or at times he would light on the table where my mom had fabric spread out and she would be pinning a pattern down to it. As she did this he would walk along the pattern and fabric and pull the pins back OUT as she put them in!

He would also let us put him in the back of my brother's Tonka dump truck and then push the truck down the hallway and he would stay in it and just flap his wings and enjoy the ride.

He was a little particular about how you went about taking him out of his cage though. Since my Dad worked for Southwestern Motor Transport (SMT) there were a lot of SMT pencils around the house and it happened that the first few times we tried to get Tweety out of his cage we would stick an SMT pencil in there for him to hop on and then he would ride that as we took him out of the cage. After getting used to the SMT pencils, you could not convince him to get out any other way!

I don't recall how long we had Tweety but it was quite a while and as you can see, even now, he is fondly missed.

Bad Day for a Salesman

At one time in the town of Crystal City, where I grew up, most of my Dad's family all lived in houses on the same street and one day a door to door salesman came knocking on my grandmother's door.

When the salesman attempted to make his sales pitch she replied "No we don't want any", and sent him on his way.

Suddenly, sensing some fun to be had, grandma raced out the back door of their house and into the back door of the neighbor's house (which was another relative) just in time for the salesman to knock on the door and for her to answer it.

The salesman was a little confused seeing the woman he had just seen at the previous house and once again grandma sent him on his way.

Not finished with the salesman yet, my grandmother ran out the back door and answered the door of three more houses before the salesman gave up calling on houses on that street and walked away muttering and shaking his head.

Happy Pie Day!

Pies are what I remember most about Thanksgiving when I was growing up. My mom would cook the chicken or turkey almost as an afterthought. She was all about those pies though and would sometimes cook as many as a dozen. She claimed she had to do it because we all liked a different flavor pie and I guess that was probably part of it but I also happen to know how she loved sweets!

She used to make a mince meat or raisin pie for my Dad, either that or pecan. At the time I considered all three of those to be just gross. Now I like pecan pie but the other two I won't even try. One brother liked cherry pie and sister liked chocolate and I liked lemon. My youngest brother, I don't recall him ever having a particular preference.

My sister and I spent lots of time in the kitchen and pie making at Thanksgiving was no exception; even when I was so small I had to stand on a chair to stir the ingredients to make my lemon pie.

Mom would roll out the crust for each pie and she would let us help flute the edges and we also got to take the leftover pie crust which my sister and I would cut into strips and then smear a little butter on each piece and then sprinkle with mixed cinnamon and sugar. We would bake our cinnamon and sugar sticks along side the pies and of course eat them as soon as they came out.

Thanksgiving may be considered "turkey day" for most but for my family it was "pie day".

Marker Wars

Daughter mentioned a favorite family memory this morning that she refers to as "marker wars".
It all happened by accident. This was back when they were in high school and I was sitting on the couch, yellow marker in hand, and doing a seek-a-word puzzle. One of the kids came in, asked what I was doing, then the other so I gave my son and daughter each a different colored highlighter than mine and said "okay, I will put this puzzle on the coffee table and we will make a game out of it and whoever sees the word first marks it with their color".
That worked for about 2 minutes before one of us accidentally marked the other on the leg with the marker. Before you knew it we had totally forgotten the puzzle and were chasing each other around writing on each other with our highlighters!
By the next day when the kids went to school they still had a few of the highlighter streaks on them and had to explain to their classmates what we had done. :-)

My Father - On Father's Day

Some pictures of my Dad

Starting out...the year was 1912

The oldest of his many siblings, and blonde haired and freckled

Then came the depression

Then World War II

Dad now in his late 30s marries and starts a family

My family in the seventies. This was taken the year my Dad passed away

Window Cleaning

The windows on our cinderblock,flat roofed home were casement windows that had heavy metal frames and several panes of glass that were held into place by putty. There were two panels of these panes to each window that opened and shut by a crank handle. The screens were the old metal screens that lasted forever.

What I remember most about these windows was cleaning them. On window cleaning day, Mom, Dad and we kids would spend the day out in the yard hosing down the screens which had been removed from the windows and laid out on the grass. The next step was to use a scrub brush and scrub down both sides of each screen.

While the screens were out of the windows we would also clean the windows themselves, which usually involved one person in the house turning the handles to crank open all the window panels and someone outside cleaning them.

The windows in the back of the house were higher off the ground and required sitting on a small step ladder to clean them.

Some of the window handles were broken or missing, which made it harder to open some of the windows. It seems like I remember mom having one loose window handle that she would carry around to the broken ones and stick that handle in each one to open it. I don’t know why the handles weren’t just fixed unless it were a situation where they couldn’t find anymore replacement handles.

I never thought of window cleaning day as a chore. I remember playing in the water and spraying my sister with the water hose while we sorta kinda scrubbed the screens and leaned them up against the house to dry. Maybe the reason Mom never complained about our spraying each other was that she was just glad it kept us out of her hair.

While we were cleaning windows Dad would busy himself with repairing any broken panes and reputtying them so they were good till the next window day.

I guess the best thing about window cleaning was that we did it as a family. In fact in those days, we did just about everything as a family so something that would be considered a chore, became a treasured memory.

Crystal City Memories

I thought I would share these Crystal City Memories gleaned from an email that was going around. This is wonderful stuff from an earlier, simpler time in Crystal. Nancy

Classmate 1 - I also remember distinctly the dry cleaning being delivered to our house for my mom and the dry cleaning guy that delivered it of course back then only took cash, and he gave out change from a little change purse thingy that he wore on his belt. I always thought that was very odd when I saw him get change out of a "man purse'! haha.

Also, I remember Dr. Poindexter coming by the house once to check on one of us kids, something only the very rich enjoy today and even then is rare!.

Oh, and one other one, remember (for those of us that had the tv cable during the early 70's-all 4 channels) you tuned in to a special channel to see the wind-temp-barometric pressure gauges on TV and they had the elevator music playing while the camera would pan from one gauge to the next! SWEET!

Classmate 2 - Remember picking up coke bottles, for the deposit,5 cents for the small ones and a dime for the 12 ounce ones, then going to the 5 & 10 store for stuff.

Going to the Olivares Brothers Barber Shop, where you picked out your haircut style from the pencil drawings across from the chairs by number?. I'm thinking the cuts were either a dollar or two?.

Of course the best fast food was/is Dairy Kreme....

Classmate 1 - Yep, used to pickup coke bottles in the vacant lots and alongside the road and take’em down to Joe's Short Stop to buy all the candy and pop I needed! I used to get my haircuts downtown at Mr. Black's shop, and there was only one choice that I remember, BUZZ CUT! hahaha But I used to like going in there cause he always had the air conditioner going and lots of those puzzles hanging on the indoor puzzle tree he used to have in there. I think he even had this little electric shock machine set up on a table, where you would put your finger on 2 wires that were nailed down to a board and he'd crank a little generator by hand and it would give you a little jolt. Oh boy, the simple things in life we had back in the day. My grandson would be so bored, or would he?

Memories of The Happening

Here are some posts from the Crystal City Bulletin sharing random thoughts about a place called "The Happening" that used to be in Crystal City.

The Happening was located at the Country Club building at the Golf
Course east of Airport Elementary. The high school kids re-worked the
inside of the west wing of the building,painting it fluorescent with
black lights, Couches, etc, I remember the dart board and being there
and somebody threw a dart into a guys leg one night. They had music,
cold drinks, etc..... Scott Sramek would remember more...by Forrest Anderson
*****

If anyone has pictures of "The Happening" I would sure love to see
those. If you're not familiar with that, it was a dance club for
teenagers that was originally located at the "old" Crystal Country
Club before it burned down. There were dances and bands that played
there. I remember going there when my sister Diana would go with her
boyfriend. It was usally alot of fun. Black lights, strobe lights,
loud music... Some of the parents would host behind the bar and serve
soft drinks. I think after it burned, they moved it to Mr Gulicks old
grocery store right across the street from the High School. Possibly
Vivian remembers this place since that was about when she and my
sister Diana were in HS???... by Richard Armstrong
*****

-Opening the door at the "Happening" (old site of the IGA grocery
store) and hearing the jams of the ??? wanna bees plucking and
scratching out a tune that sounded so "KEEN" at the time...by John Mark Addison
*****

Ah si - La musica, La musica...

I told my kids about "The Happening" a couple of years ago, when I was
traveling down memory lane - how many remember that it used to be in
the old Country Club building by the airport, then it burned down?

We had so much fun painting the new place - especially the footprints
- those were our footprints on the walls, floor and ceiling, too, I
think. I know my sisters and I loved going there on Saturday nights.
And then, OMG Billy Joe Royal came to perform!!!

Oxford has a daily noon whistle, too, and they use it for tornado or
severe weather alerts, too. In sp8ite of the fact that Oxford has the
small town atmosphere I wanted to raise my children in, I still won't
let them do the stuff I used to do in Crystal. I think our growing up
days there were the end of an era! ....by Casey Stauber

Summer Memories of Crystal City

by Robert Mata

Waking up as a young boy to the sound of Cicadas on the mesquite and salt cedar trees.

Going to the Guild theater because it was cool in there. The balcony was for the teenagers and God only knows what mystery was going on up there. LOL.

Walking at night to the DairyKreme with my sisters and the Tamez's for an ice cream cone and having it melt over most of my hand before I got home.

Going to the Ben Franklin and C.G. Morrison to look at the toys for sale. What a
great life it was.

Windy Night Memory

Windy Night Memory by Jack Chubb, a former Crystal City Resident
I remember an eerie windy night in 1945 or 46 in Crystal City when the city fire alarm went off caused by wire shorting out and a volunteer fireman, Patrick Crawford, was killed answering the call.

This was a tragedy for quiet old Crystal City. At that time Billy Crawford, Pat's younger brother, was a star football player for the Javelins.

Miss Crystal City Pageant

Miss Crystal City Pageant about 1969. Left to Right = Mandell,Marsh,Maldonado,Speer,Dennis