Category: Uncategorized

“Reunions” I admit I have a bit of jealousy when I see a group of 50+ people parading through Estes Park, all wearing lime green tee shirts. Embossed on them in bold letters and cool cheesy graphics something like “Baker Family Reunion 2023”. My family used to have a yearly “Pumphrey Pigout”. The last one about 13 years ago, was the unintended “Grand Finale”. It was epic. My young cousin Clint out—did himself—yes with T—shirts. This yearly blowout just faded away. My sister Rita and I were reminiscing about Pigouts of days gone by. There was the one where a…

George Winston, a prolific pianist/composer died this past week. We were the same age. How our family became familiar with him is a story within a story. It was 1987 and by a set of circumstances, we welcomed a foreign exchange student from Japan for the summer. This took some quick maneuvering as one of the requirements was, they were to have their own bedroom. Mateo, who possessed the only private room in the house, willingly offered up his space, perhaps to bring in some male reinforcement against three sisters. Tatsonori Horiyama, from Japan, became a member of our household…

Blame it on Baskin Robbins I am sure that having way too many choices began in my favorite ice cream store as a teenager. I suspect you have all had the experience of waiting behind three teenagers who had to try 11 flavors with the little spoon, before they settled in on Triple Chocolate Banana Walnut Fudge Ripple. Sometimes over—choice is no choice at all. I yearn for the TV days of three networks. Now on my cable TV, I have 600–some choices and I use only about five. Probably once a week, a family member or friend will say,…

I think the “takeover” began about 30 years ago when a call would be made to some business and instead of talking to a person, you were given the option of pressing a certain button for a desired outcome. There were the automatic car washes and sci-fi stories about robots taking over. Blame it on the Jetsons. The appeal has been having machines save us work, and if you are building corporate profits, “why pay a person when a machine can do it cheaper”? I am not trying to claim some moral high ground, heck—I love the connivence of pushing…

I was once a ‘baby-sitter’. Yes, parents left 12-year-old Mark responsible for three young and impressionable children. When you are 12 and have to rely on all your resources to keep three kids entertained until they fall asleep, you have to have a bag of tricks. I am not sure how I came up with this grand culinary trick. I knew something about making pancakes. The kids were all in. I whipped up the batter and then added some green food coloring. Threw some cooking oil on a pan and probably had the burner a bit high. The thin almost…

When I was about four years old I was spending time with my four cousins. My dad and my uncle were business partners, Their eight kids (four from each family) were sort of raised as one family. Each family had three boys and one girl. Time with my cousins was precious and sometime raucous. I have many great memories of our times together, but here is one I would like to forget. We were playing “Cowboys” complete with holsters and cap pistols. I had a great idea from watching a Roy Rogers TV show. I was hiding behind the door…

Wednesday is one of my ‘swimming days’. My recreation center has added a number of hours to the lap swimming pool, which has made my ability to schedule swim time easy-peezy. I am finding that going there a bit after 1pm almost always assures me of my favorite ‘extra wide lane’, where I can finish with 12 laps of back stroke—these things are important in the land of geezers. This Wednesday started with me getting my special lane. Lap swimming with fins and a lap snorkel is sort of like running on a treadmill. Once you begin to trust swimming…

For the last three days I have pondered how I can write about this without sounding like a typical bragging grandpa. So let me just own this— “I am very, very proud of all my grandkids”. This week something happened with one of them that completely surprised me. My daughter Amy’s daughter Zoe, decided to go out for the Granbury Middle School track team. If there is one thing I never did, it was attempt to be on the track team. I was blessed with some physical gifts, speed was not one of them. I won the softball throw in…

I saw a news clip the other night about the the return of “Twister-2”, the iconic wood—framed roller coaster that was brought over from the original Elitch Gardens. The use of “roller coaster” as a metaphor leaves a clear message. Sometimes you are going up, sometimes going through a dark tunnel only to find yourself plunging into a seemingly uncontrollable decent. “Twister-2” is quite the experience. It is classically old-school. Rickety and a bit shaky. Unlike the new metal frame rides it is very noisy. Supposedly they have built into the ride some even more ‘scare-the-bejeezus’ experiences. There is little…

The description of March— “In like a Lion, out like a Lamb” BLEW UP yesterday. I can take about any kind of weather… except for wind. When I moved to Arvada in 2017, I was warned about the brutal spring winds. Forewarned is forearmed. Yesterday tested my limits. I don’t like to use the word hate. It needs to be reserved for the likes of Putin, assault rifles, or the Dallas Cowboys. We had continuous 80 mph winds all day yesterday. There were some measurable sustained gusts over 100 mph. I said out loud as I was trying to get…