New York City
21-27 August 07
Pleasant weather in 70’s and 80’s

Friends of Charlie and Barbara …

[CLICK ON PICTURES TO VIEW FULL SCREEN.]



Sometimes I (Humphrey) have to watch over Barbara, and Charlie has to fend for himself. This was the case recently when she went to New York City with Emma-Lou Spor, a long-time friend from Oklahoma, and Elizabeth to settle Elizabeth into Union Theological Seminary for her first semester in graduate school. Barbara and Emma-Lou stayed in New York for a week.

They really gave me a workout - all that walking and I have such short legs; I kept up though. Barbara and Emma-Lou went from one end of the city to the other, from Battery Park to the Harlem River (the northern boundary, it cuts across from the Hudson to the East River creating Manhattan as an island).

I did convince them to buy a subway pass and the two of them got quite good at using the subway while I could rest. We took the subway up and back from Elizabeth’s school at 122nd from Leo House, on 23rd, where we stayed. It took us about 20 minutes one way.









Here is Barbara with Elizabeth at LaGuardia waiting for their luggage. The trio had a few delays flying east from Oklahoma City, but not too bad. (Elizabeth drove from Los Angeles to Norman, Oklahoma (where she was born) in her trusty Toyota Corolla which had 240,000 miles on it when she sold it in Norman.) Elizabeth spent a week in Norman visiting with friends before the trio flew east to NYC.




From Leo House we took a taxi, crammed with eight suitcases, to Elizabeth’s new studio apartment at the Seminary. The first picture shows Elizabeth’s view of horror at her two hundred and eighty square foot apartment into which she had to fit the suit cases and twenty boxes previously shipped and more to arrive. But we all pitched in and in just a few hours Elizabeth was settled in and things looked brighter. I supervised.

The Quadrangle of Union is a quiet and beautiful space which is surprising given the loud ‘hustle and bustle” of the City. I enjoyed laying down and resting my tired paws, here taking a break with Emma-Lou midway in setting up Elizabeth’s hot, stuffy but cozy apartment. Elizabeth only learned later that she air conditioning!





This is an oblique Google Earth view of the Seminary block. On the west side is the famed Riverside Church which we toured. On the north is the Manhattan School of Music and the Jewish Theological Seminary. On the east is Corpus Christi Church that the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton of the 1960’s attended, and the parish from which a priest was killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center. It’s a beautiful little church where Elizabeth is taking Catholic confirmation classes. South and east is Columbia University. East of Columbia is St John the Divine, a soaring, high Episcopal church.


On Sunday, we went to Mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral (a beautiful and grand Gothic church) and then walked about 30 blocks (long blocks!) through Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I tried to get them to take a carriage.









On the left is the Winter Garden building; it was gutted on 9/11 but it has been rebuilt. On the far side is a huge expanse of window where you can view Ground Zero (right picture) where there is a lot of construction going on. The 52 story glass-enclosed skyscraper on the left was gutted and has been rebuilt. The cavernous hole where the World Trade Center buildings was is almost filled with the foundations of the buildings and memorial to come.

St. Paul's Chapel is the closes church to Ground Zero. Apparently is was saved by a tree with an enormous root system; the stump has been saved (dogs not welcomed!). The Chapel served as a primary refuge for 7/11 rescue personnel for weeks. It was festuned with signs of encouragement from all over the nation; a principal one from Oklahoma still remains.

One of the most fascinating tours Barbara and Emma-Lou took was of The Tenement Museum in the lower Eastside. They toured one of the tenement buildings which had been renovated to the extent it was safe for folks to enter. The apartments, if you can call them that, were three small rooms which, hot and with very little light. They only had cold running water; privies were in a yard behind the tenement. The tenement area was also a heart of a garment industry; families lived and worked in the same space with garment making a family endeavor. It was depressing to see the conditions the immigrants and their dogs lived in; reforms started to take hold around 1890.



We took the Circle Line Ferry out to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The Statue of Liberty speaks for itself; we spent most of our time on Ellis Island. We could have spent all day but we only had 4 hrs which included lunch. Only one Ellis Island building is open to tourists and it has been beautifully renovated. It was used to process immigrants from 1890 to about 1935. Only the poor had to go through the Ellis Island screening procedure; the wealthy were processed aboard ship. Emma Lou found a couple of relatives in a computer kiosk. Most of mine came over before 1890.

Being a dog, they wouldn’t let me aboard the ferry so I waited for them here where they docked. Here is Emma-Lou with the City in the background.









NYC is really a great doggie city; folks are out walking their dogs all the time. The people are also very friendly and helpful. I did meet a pit bull, Ted, and his owner. The dog was very friendly and everybody in Chelsea (where our hotel was) knew him. I did my angel stuff and we all got home safely.

… Humphrey, for Barbara

Norman, OK
20 July 2007
92 deg, 75% hum, partly cloudy

Friends of Charlie and Barbara ...

We are still in Norman, OK. B/C decided that after experiencing a record 21 straight days of rain (old record 14 days), they should stay to enjoy the good weather. I think that Norman has experienced their annual rainfall of 32” in the past six months.

The weather has produced a greener than green landscape, more vivid and just as picturesque as the Pennsylvania Dutch country B/C visited last fall. This panorama was shot and stitched together today. (Subsequently I find that it won't enlarged when you click)






One of the big past-times in the area is softball. In fact Oklahoma City has the Softball Hall of Fame and this weekend international men’s and women’s fast-pitch championships were held in OKC with the American Women the team to beat.





We attended was a Norman adult slow-pitch game with particular interest in Eric Spor, Emma-Lou and Leroy’s son, who played 1st base and was team captain.

They lost in extra innings 15 to 13.


The other news is that Leroy Spor just bought a new Vista HP computer system to replace his old system and to better complement his broad-band internet connection. Really nice; he even let me play with it a short while.




… Humphrey, for Charlie and Barbara

Norman, OK
27 June 2007
75 deg, 75% hum, overcast, threat of thunderstorms

Friends of Charlie and Barbara ..

We are still in Norman, OK, if you think they’ve gotten lost. However B/C have lost track of Charlie’s aspiration to float north and south with the seasons following the 70 degree temperature curve.

The significant news has been the weather. Since we arrived more than two weeks ago we’ve had rain everyday except one; there is no drought here! And the heat and humidity! For the first time since buying their Lazy Daze RV six years ago they have been running the air conditioning which they find works well and makes life quite tolerable.

The upside of the weather has been the spectacular thunderstorms and television report of tornados. This is weather at it’s most dramatic which B/C fondly remember from their 10 years living in Norman, 1975-1985.

This post is principally about a campout, weekend before last, with the Spor family at Lake Murray State Park in south central Oklahoma. The Park is off I-35 below Ardmore, 25 miles north of the Red River (of the south) and Lake Texoma, the Oklahoma-Texas border.

Google oblique Earth view of Lake Murray. We stayed at the Buzzard Cove Campground one of many bordering the lake. I-35 is on the left, Ardmore in the upper left. Lake Murray is man-made, one of literally 1000’s now in the state.

Lake Murray, a small part of it, with a marina in the middle ground. Doesn’t this give you the sense of the stereotyped Oklahoma’s barren landscape? Upon their return C/B have been amazed at the beauty and growth in Oklahoma over the last 20 years; the landscape has been gentrified with nicely-maintained substantial subdivision homes and Norman even has 2 Wal-marts!

The eastern half of Oklahoma is covered with Black Jack Oaks and Bermuda Grass growing luxuriously in the state’s trade-marked red clay soil. Bermuda Grass isn‘t like lawn turf that you cut, it has roots 4-6’ deep so it isn’t effected by drought and near impossible to kill.

BTW, Oklahoma rainfall ranges from about 10” a year in the panhandle next to Colorado, to 180” a year in the southeast pine-timber region; Weyerhouser’s largest lumber mill is located there. Norman, in the middle of the state, has 35” of rain a year, the same as Seattle and Philadelphia but it seems to fall an inch at a time. Norman is also on the “ecotone” boundary between the eastern forests beginning on the Atlantic Coast, and the high plains grass lands of the western mid-west. The famous Chisholm cattle trail ran along the ecotone from Texas, through Norman and up to the rail-head at Dodge City, KS.

The Spor family at Lake Murray numbered 13 including younger grandkids, off somewhere in these pictures. You see that they are prepared for the weather including a very roomy fifth-wheel trailer.

From left to right in foreground: Leroy, a retired Norman Fire Marshall, their daughter Donna (2 sons including one in the Navy), Emma-Lou, then Barbara on the right. In the background are sons Eric, a Norman fireman (2 daughters) and Steven, with his wife Kristi, owner-operators of a large CAM machine shop.

Missing is Lisa, an interior designer with 3 daughters, and her husband, Mike a professional sports fisherman off in a fishing tournament on the Potomac.

B/C have known Emma-Lou and Leroy Spor since 1975 when their four children were children. Their family, to B/C, is the epitome of the traditional American family with strong extended-family ties, solid mid-western values and an exemplary Catholic faith. Emma-Lou and Leroy are Elizabeth’s god-parents.

The long weekend was spent swimming; here the Spor matriarchs: Donna, Lisa and Emma-Lou with Barbara in between.

Preparing for swimming; here Curtis, Donna’s husband and owner of a bail-bond company, repairing the family inter-tube. Barbara has been intrigued with Curtis' earlier occupation as a race horse trainer.

Boating on Curtis’ boat

Jet skiing on Steven‘s ski-doos; here being corralled by Steven and Curtis. Barbara enjoyed an exhilarating ride with Steve.

Eating; here Barbara with Scout patiently waiting for scraps.

Biding time with cross-word puzzles; that’s Leroy.

And just gabbing; Barbara's favorite.

What’s next: it is up in the air. Barbara has some doctor’s appointments this coming week for lower back pain left over from her rowing days. Depending upon that and their whim, we may be off for Wisconsin and some genealogy-ing.

… Humphrey, for Barbara and Charlie

Norman, OK
11 June 2007
90 deg, 55% hum, early afternoon cumulus, light breeze

Friends of Charlie and Barbara ..

While waiting for Barbara at the dentist (some months ago she lost a big chunk of a tooth in the back), Charlie is holed up in a Starbucks using their wifi. So he has encouraged me to write up a quick update for the where-we-be blog.

We have arrived at the end of your 95 trek, Norman, OK, 35 miles south of Oklahoma City. This is old stomping grounds for B/C; for 10 years, 1975-1985, they lived here while Charlie taught at the University of Oklahoma (OU) and Barbara was nursing, mostly at the community mental health center. Elizabeth was born here so she is the real Okie in the family.

The house we built in 1975 is still looking good; my how the trees have grown. In 1975 the house was quite a departure from conventional homes in the area. It was a great house. By the way, all of the landscape here is a very lush green as is all of western Oklahoma that we’ve come through.

The house is on five acres with a horse barn in which Barbara kept her Arabian horses. This shot through pear trees that we planted that haven’t been pruned since we left.

Here is a Google of the property. The house is in the lower center with the curved drive; the property ran down to the road on the left. The house was built on a hill with a view of Oklahoma City 25 miles to the north. The push pin in the upper left is were we’re staying at the moment at the old Spor homestead, close friends from our Oklahoma days and since. Lisa, their daughter, who we’ve know since she was 10, lives there now in a completely remodeled home with her young family.

This is the current extent of Norman with the University in the center, all focused on the football stadium.

Over the past 20 years Norman has seen considerable development and gentrification with an influx of shopping centers and chain department stores. The University has been booming also. The area is a popular place for university faculty to return to to retire.

Once everyone has had a chance to catch their breath and to acclimate to the humidity, we’ll write again soon. Later this week we will be off to southern Oklahoma to a lake-side state park with our friends the Spors for a family gathering.


… Humphrey for Charlie and Barbara

Amarillo, TX
5 June 2007
90 deg, 34% hum, cirrus clouds, light breeze

Friends of Charlie and Barbara ..

We arrived an hour ago, or was it a minute ago -- we have moved from the mountain time zone to central and it depends how you look at the clock.

We’re on the western fringe of Amarillo, arial photo and map to follow. We’re in the Ft. Amarillo RV Resort which means they have a swimming pool. Nice park: full hookups, cable TV, wifi, and a storm cellar -- what all you could want?

Charlie suggested that to recover from my post of yesterday which he called a real downer, that I should share some sights from the past few days.

Here is Barbara driving Route 66 through an I-40 underpass. They warn you not to attempt it in high water.








This is a bull resting along side the road who is thinking out side the box, at least outside his wire fence.






About 15 miles of old 66 today was in its pristine “improved condition,” that is, gravel. Fortunately the bridges were strong enough to support us and we didn’t have to turn around again.




A vintage motel on the gravel road that could be had cheap, a fixer-upper.







Here in Adrian, TX, about 40 miles west of Amarillo, we have made it half way. I’m a little discouraged but Charlie said I should look at the tourist map as half crossed, not half to go.




BTW, the Texas panhandle is really flat. Even I, a Bassett Hound, can see for miles.

One last sight. When was the last time you saw this on a restaurant counter?







Next? We’ll be here in Amarillo for three nights.

… Humphrey for Charlie and Barbara

One aside, Charlie and Barbara have really been busy lately with her family genealogy with the help and prodding of Ann Lamb by email. Charlie has also been busy learning the Legacy genealogy software package to store all Barbara’s information, and with his photography and blogging. Suddenly they don’t have much time to relax.

Tucumcari, NM
4 June 2007
80 and mostly clear

Friends of Charlie and Barbara ..

Tucumcari proves to be different and unexpected. And we’ve experienced our first southwest afternoon thunderstorms, pretty good ones; there’s one due this afternoon.

In this Google Earth oblique, I-40 skirts the town (5 town exits!) to the south. Our KOA RV Park can be discerned just east of the eastern freeway exit. Historic Route 66 runs through the middle of town, west to east, on Tucumcari Boulevard. The old part of town related to the railroad primarily lies in the yellow bounded area north of the Boulevard. The large blemish in the upper right is Lake Stink (aka Tucumcari), a natural wetland. The area around the town is farming and ranching land.

The town has a distinct railroad era district, Route 66 era strip, and now an I-40 era strip (NM 104) with adjoining residential areas running north from the freeway to town.

Tucumcari has a population of about 6000 and was previously a stop on the Santa Fe Railroad and headquarter of major trucking firms. It is reported that the railroad station and local trucking firms were lost about 10 years back which sent the town into a funk from which it is just now beginning to recover.

Route 66 is now a principal tourist theme which hasn’t at yet created much noticeable revitalization for the community. The theme is actively promoted: Tucumcari Boulevard has been renamed Historic Route 66, many businesses are named for the Route, and Route 66 tourist brochures have been printed. This wall mural is in a town restaurant.

Unfortunately Route 66 passes by a lot of abandoned businesses. The Cactus RV Park interestingly is the parking lot of an old motel you can still see in the background.

One historic Route 66 business that has be refurbished is the Blue Swallow Motel with the help of Federal tourism money (the neon in the sign was replaced but subsequently lost in a recent storm; restoring neon signs is a popular use of the Federal money).

Next: We leave tomorrow for Amarillo, TX, our next to last stop before our destination of Oklahoma City, actually Norman, OK 35 miles south of OKC. You'll have to wait for another day for the origin of the name Tucumcari.

… Humphrey for Charlie and Barbara