"SWEN"...er.....NEWS.

Got the window fixed yesterday. They did a great job...it's in there tight and the glass is thicker than before and the guys were very nice and professional. They even asked for my vacuum cleaner to clean up their mess and polished the glass up real pretty. Glad our insurance paid 100% of it since the bill was $565.32
I think we'll not put the burglar bar back up...in fact I think I'd like to take them all down....they're getting rusty and ugly. We've never had them at any of our other houses and it was o.k.
What do you think?

Gene got up at 5 a.m. yesterday and took off for his TYC workshop in Kerrville. We put together 5 gift bags for door prizes. They each had: an old polished up horsehoe, tiny bag of cantaloupe flavored jelly bellies, a 2007 Pecos Rodeo sticker, Pecos Museum sticker, Pecos Museum postcard, museum sheriff badge, Pecos magnet shaped like a mug of beer.... etc. Wish we could have afforded some Balmorrhea Laird's beef jerky.

Gene had another war with the mesquite trees and lost again. His forearms were all scratched and bloody....(he wears gloves at least.) The trees are all trimmed up nice.
He put another dose of "weed and feed" on our backyard...we are slowly but surely getting grass.
I try to dig a bag of weeds everyday...it's a never ending battle.

I am getting good at dodging big tumbleweeds while driving.

We got half an inch of rain on Sunday and a quarter inch yesterday morning.
But GEE WHIZ, little did I know that Odessa was getting pounded yesterday morning....they had 3" and lots of big hail.
I went to Midland yesterday afternoon to an estate sale and the Midland/Odessa area had water over the access road along IH 20 in at least a dozen places...a few of them were closed.
It was sunny when I went and then on the way home where it's real open and flat I could see HUGE, scary storms to the north and south....seems Pecos was between these big storms in the morning and evening.

I had never been to Midland...pop. 100,328....as opposed to Odessa pop. 96,600.
Midland is an hour and 15 min. drive from here.
It's about 15 miles from Odessa...thus the midlnad-odessa refernce all the time. (kinda like dallas-ft. worth.)
Neither are anything to write home about.
Odessa is growing like CRAZY and there's a big housing shortage.

Speaking of weather:
May 22nd is the 20th anniversary of the Saragosa tornado. My boss Peggy lives there and was home during the storm....her husband was in the barn. They couldn't live in their house for a whole year. This was a multiple vortex tornado that killed 30 of the 183 residents that live there....with 121 injured. Alot of them were children who were killed or trapped by collapsed walls at a school gathering.
85% of the town was wiped out.

Folks talk about the weather all the time out here.
Here's one of the reasons why:
FARMING!
They had devastating drought last year.
This year the Easter weekend freeze damaged 75% of this year's grape crop. (there's a big winery about 60 miles to the south near ft. stockton.)
The freeze also ruined alot of pecan, peach watermelon, cantaloupe and pumpkins.
In Pecos county due to 2 days of below freezing weather agricultural losses totaled 13 million dollars!

Folks talk about people dying alot here.
Here's one of the reasons why:
The children and of the area pioneers who settled this land are passing away every day.
So, folks remember those times and realize the history and stories are slipping away.
And people here are VERY attached to their history and land.

RADIO HOTLINE:
For Sale:
bales of wheat-$6.
38 joints of tubing.
To Give Away:
easter chicken, pot bellied pig, rabbit.

A pair of finches have been building a nest in the awning over the front door of the shop where I work.
On Tuesday the male flew into the store (we keep the door open on nice days)...and hopped around the display window. I pursuaded him it'd be in his best interest to fly back outside.

That's all.

Love, Mary