Monday, February 12, 2007

The kinfolk are here! ! !

My "baby" brother Patrick and his wife LaRae arrived in San Antonio yesterday. Yippee! Finally I have blood kin living in this city!

They took an unusual route to get here from Pocatello, Idaho. Or at least so I tho't. (Patrick tells me that they used Mapquest to set up their itinerary.) They dropped down south thru Utah, then spent their first nite in Farmington, New Mexico. Then they proceeded south thru NM to El Paso, Texas, and hit IH Ten east to Fort Stockton, where they spent their second nite, Saturday. By the time I got home from church mid-afternoon on Sunday and called LaRae's cell phone number, the couple was ALREADY in San Antonio! Now, I was under the impression that Ft. Stockton was close to El Paso and thus about 500 miles from here.

So I asked, "What did y'all do, fly?" But then, when I consulted my Texas road map I discovered that Ft. Stockton is not much more than 300 miles west of S.A. and really little more than half way to El Paso.

So much for my intuitive knowledge of the vastness of the Lone Star State!

Anyway, after I gave Patrick and LaRae a couple hours to deal with arrival tasks and settle into their motel room, we got together and went to have supper at Jim's Restaurant #1. This is the Jim's that was my final Jim's at which to wait tables. It happens to be near the motel where the couple is staying.

When Patrick and LaRae showed up at my efficiency to pick me up, I was rather surprised that Patrick wasn't THAT much taller than me. I had remembered him being close to six feet tall, but he's 5' 9", or not more than 3 inches taller than me. As for LaRae, the sister-in-law I had never met, she turned out to be a pleasant lady with dark, curly, fairly short hair. Both of them wore letterman's jackets, with US Army on the back. Patrick also sported a well-kept brown cowboy hat. (I say "well-kept" because he told me that he'd had it over a year and yet it was in great shape.)

Patrick had two items for me from Dad, back in Boise -- boxes of Idaho Spud Bar candies. Yum, yum! It was fun to chat with the two new arrivals. Patrick had resided in San Antonio before, upon entering the US Army the first time, to be a medic. LaRae, on the other hand was experiencing the Alamo City for the first time, and from her remarks I could tell that she was suffering a sort of "culture shock" very similar to my first entry into Texas (mine being in Fort Worth in 1976). LaRae was raised in tiny Preston, Idaho, and I'm sure Pocatello is the largest city she's lived in 'til now.

When Patrick was here before, it was from August to December, and he remembers seeing the Christmas decorations on el Paseo del Río, the Riverwalk, which he visited more than once during those months. But as I told him, he missed out on the BEST of S.A.'s annual shindigs. The Rodeo (running its final week right now), the Texas Folklife Festival, and of course Fiesta.

Boy, am I gonna have FUN showin' them about town! In fact, when they dropped me off back at my room, I assured them that I'd be delighted -- indeed honored -- to serve as their tour guide to San Antonio -- any time!

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