August 14, 2023

            Well, the day is off to a good start. The Tres and I did go for a short walk and then I decided to go to the star coffee place and get my free cup of coffee. Why was it free you asked, because they like me and once a year, they give me a cup of free coffee.

            This morning I have been able to get the flowerpots watered front and back 40, and I did water the black berry beds. As I understand it, we have gone 58 days without any measurable rain fall. Now that having been said, there is a cold front coming our way, and we have a 20% chance of getting some rain this afternoon. 20% chance means, that 20% of the area has a chance for rain. Our ground is cracking open in the areas where the sprinklers do not cover.

            I have been able to cut up the second limb that has fallen from the tree out back and place it on the Ford’s ole trailer. Photo to follow.

             After loading the trailer with the fallen limbs, I went around the yard picking up the smaller debris, aka little pieces of limbs. As I was surveying the back 40, I came upon this small flower blooming. Now this is a bloom from a weed and in an area where there has been no water for 58 days. How do they survive?

            As I was carrying the debris out to the trash can, which is at the curb as today is trash day, I happened to look at the pecans, and decided to provide a photo.

            Now these are good looking pecans, and they are big, but I wonder if there is anything inside of them. With the lack of water, will they have anything inside? We have noticed the few acorns we have seen this year are super small. I assume the heat and lack of rain are why they are so small.

            School starts tomorrow at Midway. Plan for the traffic it will be massive, and I will attempt to retrieve Gabi from school tomorrow afternoon, Alex will be at football practice, so I will not be getting him for a while. 

            Now I am here in the house trying to provide the reading public with a short posting and some photos. I think I will stop for now and see if I can kick back and rest after all this grueling morning work.

            We hope your day is filled with happiness and please be safe in all you do.

Free coffee is good!

Senior ole person who needs a break, Don the Ford

 

May today be better than your best day, but not as good as tomorrow!

August 13, 2023

            As you should be able to see, today is the 13^th, but it is not Friday the 13^th.

            I have nothing planned for the day, we thought we might be watching the Midway girls’ softball team playing today, but they lost to South Carolina yesterday, 4 to 3.

            The Tres and I went for a walk this morning and as we walk, I can’t help but see things. One neighbor must be out of town as there is a carton laying on her porch.

One neighbor hasn’t mowed his yard in several weeks even though he does have a lawn sprinkler system. Now in truth, he was out of town for a couple of those weeks but he has been back for a while now. I am not trying to be critical; it is his lawn and he can do what he wants.

            Another neighbor’s lawn looks really bad, it is almost as if he has given up, maybe he is waiting for the rain to come, if it comes.

            Another neighbor has his pickup truck parked in his front yard, and it not only looks bad, there is an ordinance against it. Also, there is a blue rag laying in the street that appears to have come out of their vehicle. Now this blue rag has been there for more than a week, and I do know that he saw it laying there, because I saw him look at it one day when we were walking.

            I guess I could go on and on about yards, but I will stop. Maybe next time I will comment on the nice yards, there would be fewer comments but they would be more positive!

            I do need to get out and water the flowers in the pots before it gets too hot, so I guess I will stop for now, we wish you a happy and safe Sunday.

We have Nice neighbors!

Senior ole person who had better get going, Don the Ford.      

 

May today be better than your best day, but not as good as tomorrow!

August 12, 2023

            Hello from us to you, we have just returned from having lunch out with Dave, Claire, Alex, Gabi and Brice. Who is Brice, you asked, he is Gabi’s boyfriend. Lunch was good service was fair. Now that I am back at home, I thought I would try to put a few words together for a short posting, before I go to get a short nap. Then after napping, I will begin the daily Bible reading.

            Speaking of Bible, I learned that Alex’s football games will be on Tuesday’s, which means I should be able to attend all the bible studies this year, as they are on Monday nights.

            Tres and I went for a walk but we cut it short due to another dog and his owner coming down the block. Tres and I turned and headed for home in order to avoid confrontation between the dogs. I did get out and water the flower pots, that is, the ones that were not watered by the sprinkler system.

            I decided to trim the grass in the front yard this morning, but I allowed myself to also mow the front yard. I need to get out later today and mark the sprinkler heads, so I can cut the grass from around them. The grass is taller than a couple of the heads, and that keeps the sprinklers from watering everything. I will try to do this when the yard is in shade.

            Has anyone ever asked you to do two things at one time? I have thought about this and have decided, real people may be able to do two or more things at one time but ole retired people say, “I can’t do two things at one time, but I can do one thing two times!” 

Ole people, what can I say!

Ok, I guess that is it for now, we hope your day is safe, and we hope you are both comfortable and cool!

Nap time for Donnie!

Senior ole retired person who needs a nap, Don the Ford

May today be better than your best day, but not as good as tomorrow!

August 11, 2023

            What does the Don get to do today, he gets to go to the vet with the Tres. Visiting the vet is very expensive and as an example, a one month’s supply of pills that Tres takes, cost more than the pills the Don takes for a year.

            I have water the flowers, but the Tres and I have not gone for a walk.

My favorite wife and I went out to supper last evening, the food was good and the service was also good. Yes, it cost too much to eat out, but for ole people who don’t get to have fun doing things like real people do, going out to supper is a treat. Also, we get to talk about the people who are looking at their phones and not talking to each other.

Arriving back at home after supper, we did not sit outside for a while, our bellies were full so we went inside the homestead. It was only 106 degrees yesterday. 

No ole work memories for this posting, I may add other memories in later post.

I need to start getting ready to take the Tres to the vet, we hope you have a good day, stay cool and stay safe.

Pray for rain!

Senior ole person heading for the vet, Don the Ford

 

May today be better than your best day, but not as good as tomorrow!

August 10, 2023

            This morning’s events: so far nothing to unusual, but when the Tres and I went out to get the paper, no we don’t get a paper anymore but we still go out each morning, there was a dove calling. Now I see you are thinking why is the Don commenting on a dove calling out. Well, I will explain; it was an unusually quiet morning, it was a clear call from the dove, the same call each time, and there were no other birds making any sounds. Yep, it got my attention.

            Tres and I did go for a walk before sunrise, and the flower pots have been watered, I am now here at the key board enlightening you, the reading public!

            Yesterday events: not a lot happened, but I did get my hair cut. I had the lady to cut the hair around the sides and back of my hair with a #2 clipper. That short haircut does what I was hoping for. When I get hot and sweaty now, there is no sweat drops hanging on the hair off the back of my head like there use to be.

            As we sat outside yesterday afternoon, our friends from across the street came over to enjoy the excessive heat with us. We had some good conversations; it is always nice when friends drop by.

            Old work memory:

We moved to Hewitt June 1979, and they had just started on the Distribution Center building. There was some foundation that had been poured and they had started placing a couple of the wall panels. We worked out of a trailer, that is me and the fellow who was in charge of the construction. It took a while to get the walls up and the roof on, heck they were building rack (aka shelving) as they were finishing the roof. Contractors built the rack but we had to label everything, which meant we had to hire some staff. 

The first office area that was build was the receiving office. We started out with about 20 staff. These staff were placing the location tags on the rack and shelving for each item we stocked. The racks are for the big items and pallet quantities, the shelving was for the smaller items. The team (hourly staff and management) back in those days were like a family. There were times such as Thanksgiving holiday, when my wife would fix an entire meal for the team and we would all have lunch at work.

Before the building was complete and secured, we were receiving and stocking merchandise. We had hired a security company who had a guard at the building during the hours that we were not there.

The offices and main building were being completed, the racks were being stocked we hired a shipping manager whose name was Don, and drivers. Yep, back in the olden days the drivers were HWI employees, now days the driving staff are no longer HWI / DIB employees, they lease the trucks and driving staff.

One of the shipping staff we hired had a nick name of “Knuckles”. Now Knuckles said his grandmother gave him that name. Knuckles was a shipper and he was our spotter. The spotter is the person who backs the trailers up to the doors for loading. Knuckles still works for the truck leasing company.

 

Well, I guess that is it for now, we hope your day is cool and we are praying for rain. Everyone, please stay safe. 

Memories, we all have them!

Senior ole person who hopes his favorite wife will take him out to supper this evening;

Don the Ford

May today be better than your best day, but not as good as tomorrow!

August 9, 2023

            Black Cat story: It was a warm early Wednesday morning here in Hewitt Texas, as the Don and the Tres were walking down the street. The sun was not yet up in the sky, there was a light breeze, and there was no traffic on the street. These conditions were perfect for the Tres and the Don to be out and about. During this walk there were not many discussions between the two of them, although they did stop at several mail boxes for a short break.

Now the story gets interesting. As we were walking, the Don could see something lying next to a driveway, which was a couple hundred feet away. Whatever this object was, it was black and it did not seem to be something that should be in the grass next to the driveway. As we got closer, I could see it was a black cat. The thought came to mind, could this be another dead cat, like we had seen last week?

Suddenly the Tres saw the cat, he was giving his full attention to the black cat. We were about 10 feet away when the black cat jumped up, turned, and ran to the other side of the driveway, where it quickly went up the tree. Now the Tres was pulling on the lead as he wanted to play with the cat. I am glad the Tres cannot climb a tree, if he could, I believe he would have pulled me up into the tree with him. The rest of the walk was uninteresting.

                        The End

 

Old work memory: I was asked to be manager and Lonnie was asked to be a supervisor. There was another person who was asked to go, his name was Terry, he came from the home office and would be a supervisor. 

Part of preparation for opening a new DC (Distribution Center) was to locate each item that would be stocked in the new distribution center. Now the new center would be designed differently from the DC in Missouri, so we could not use the Missouri item locations.

We were allowed to give our thoughts about the layout of the racking and the traffic flow throughout the DC. The flow is very important as we unloaded trucks, checked and separated merchandise by location, moved the merchandise from receiving to the stocking areas, stocked the merchandise, filled and packed orders, moved the orders to shipping, loaded trucks, and all that would be done at the same time. Staying safe while we were doing all that was important!  

Myself and Lonnie were responsible for the item placement. To explain, we had drawings of how all the racks would be placed in the new DC, then we had to decide where each item would be placed in the racks, using the item computer number, the size of the item, approximately how many would be stocked, and then provide the items new location number. We basically used the item size and quantity from Missouri DC.

            Lonnie and I along with some other help from the Cape staff, worked on these drawings for several months. Then using these drawings, each of these items had to be entered into the computer. It has been too long since all this happened, I do not know how many items that we had to locate in the drawings, I would guess around fifty thousand items. 

           

            Well, I need to get a shower as I have been working outside this morning doing the usual watering of the flower pots, and I also cut up that tree limb that had fallen out of the tree. I want to go and get my hair cut today so I need to get moving.

            We hope you have a best day and as always, please stay safe.

Old dog walker!

Senior person who hopes to get a cup of coffee after the hair butchering, Don the Ford

 

May today be better than your best day, but not as good as tomorrow!

August 8, 2023

            Good morning to most of you all, I exclude that one person, and you know why you are being left out. You mess with the Don and you end up on the short end of the stick. Wow, do I sound like the past president?

            Today I need to go to the eye doctor, actually I don’t see the eye doctor just the technician who does all the tests. I will go to the real eye doctor I think it is next week. I do not like all these test that we do every 6 months.

            I have watered the flowers in pots, the lawn sprinkler has run, and the sprinkler watered most of the pots in the front yard, for me. The back 40 is different, I had to water them. I am not going on a walk with the Tres today.

            My favorite wife and I did sit outside in the heat yesterday afternoon and we discussed several topics. One topic that came up was about our getting ready to move to Texas.

            My favorite wife and I were discussing world events yesterday as we were sitting outside in the heat. It was noted that back in 1978 we were approached and asked if we would consider moving to Hewitt TX, for the opening of a new distribution center of Hardware Wholesalers Inc. As I assume most of you do not know, it had been very hot here that year.

            We were offered the job of distribution center manager of the soon to be new distribution center.     We accepted the offer and we decided to get the news paper from Waco, in an effort to learn about the area before we moved there. There was a point when we came to Waco during the winter months looking for a home to buy. Before a trip down here there had been an ice storm, and there was ice piled up along the runways of the airports.

We did eventually find a home to purchase. It was a new home, and it is the home we are still living in.

            We learned from the newspaper that the Waco area got hot in the summer. Now it was not as hot in 1978 / 1979 as it is this year, but it was hot.

            I may have more boring details about our move to Hewitt Tx in a later post. 

Swap the topic: a couple days ago we were sitting outside in the afternoon when I heard a sound that of a tree limb falling. I popped out of my chair and looked around but I saw nothing. I then assume the limb falling must have been in someone else yard. 

            Today as I was watering the black berry beds, I found the limb hiding behind the #3 berry bed, photo of limb after I had moved it, and where it was hiding.

            We hope you have a good cool day and as always stay safe.

Yankies Share the rain, please!

Senior ole person who needs the get ready to be tested, Don the Ford

 

May today be better than your best day, but not as good as tomorrow!

August 7, 2023

            Well, this morning I need to go to the dentist for a cleaning. Now will they clean my entire body or just my teeth?

            Tres and I have gone for a walk, I have watered the flowers in pots, and I just finished my breakfast sandwich. I need to get up from this ole desk and go get a shower. Maybe after the shower I might have a few minutes to add something to this posting.

            I am now back from the dentist and all went well, but they only cleaned my teeth. Now I did go get a cup of coffee after the visit at the dentists and I am back here at the desk. I need to get finished with this posting as I need to read from the bible and I have not had a nap since I got up at 5:00am. 

            I only have one comment and then I will close. I have been noticing the pieces of corn shucks not only laying in the street and yard, but also floating around in the sky. Now the shucks means that farmers are harvesting the corn crop, but what gets me is, the shucks seem to float around in the sky almost like they can fly. I would think that gravity would bring the shucks down, but I see them at times just floating around kind of like a buzzard flowting around in the sky. 

            I need to get started reading so for now, C U L (that means, see you later) and please be safe.

Clean teeth person!

Senior old person who also needs a nap, Don the Ford

 

May today be better than your best day, but not as good as tomorrow!