A TERROR ATTACK IN MY BARBECUE – TEXAS 2002

For this next piece, I will just free my mind and ramble around a bit in the cavern of my memory. The setting will be the Woodlands, Texas, after our transfer there in 2002. Our time in Texas was one of our best times ever. After, swimming upstream for many years, and never quite seeming to get ahead, things were now changing. We now started to put money into a savings account. My words of 20 years previous, now became real. I had always told Deysi, that we would save for our retirement, at the time when they paid me more than her and the girls could spend. Life was good. My job was still stressful. However, now there were fewer people who could crap down, on me, from above. This post will just be some random snippets of our early life in Houston.

One of the strangest things happened, that had ever happened, in my strange life. It occurred one hot summer afternoon, shortly after our settling into our new house. I was out in the backyard, minding my own business and puttering around by the pool. It was silent, no wind, no clouds and no one was telling me what to do. I was bent over checking the filter basket on the pool pump suction. All of a sudden, BLAAAMMM! A LOUD EXPLOSION! Remember, I had been in Kuwait after the war, so I did recognize an artillery shell explosion. This one, apparently right beside me! My heart stopped! My bowels didn’t! I heard someone let out a high pitched scream. Geezus, was that me?

I was frozen, possibly curled up into a fetal position, whimpering slightly. That is, until Deysi came out and said, something like, “what did you do now?” And, “get up from there, why are you all curled up like that?” She then added, “why is your face so white, what’s that smell?” I get up and look around, but can not, immediately see where the shell had hit. There was no crater, no smoke, no smell of cordite. Nothing! I see no damage. Then out of the corner of my eye, I spot our barbecue, tilted on an angle leaning against the garage. I know, I did not leave it like that. On further inspection, I could see it was full of, what looked like, tiny shards of glass. Not one sliver bigger than a 1/4 of an inch long. Millions of them.

There was about three inches of this glass covering the inside of the BBQ. Deysi is peering at it, trying to figure out what I had done, this time. I’m thinking, who in hell would want too go Al-Qaeda on my BBQ? Just when she puffs up a bit, I preempt her by saying, “I did not touch it, nor look at it, or do anything to that BBQ!” “Well”, she says, “it certainly didn’t do it by itself.” “Now you fix this mess, and clean it up!” “You’re not getting another one, you hear?” I look around for a shell hole, but don’t see any other damage. So, contrary to what Deysi thinks, this BBQ did explode into pieces, ALL BY ITSELF! To this day, I do not know why, or how, but I do know, that this BBQ, sitting all by itself, basically self destructed.

None of the millions or billions of shards of glass exploded outward. They were all still inside the BBQ. It’s just that the BBQ no longer had a big glass panel covering the front. I guess you might say it imploded. In any event it was finished, dead, or toast. I was a little afraid to touch it, after all, who knew what other evil spirits might have been dwelling inside my barbecue, waiting to unleash their fury. I can only think that maybe the glass was weakened by the salt water, it was soaked in, when coming from the UK. (read my story about the tsunami in our driveway). Maybe in a weakened state, maybe when the salt dried, it formed an airtight seal around the edges of the cover. And maybe combined with the heat, of the sun, it created a vacuum and imploded.

Whatever, it scared the hell outta me! I always stepped a little more carefully around that part of the garage from then on. To this day, I still puzzle over the time when terrorists attacked my barbecue in Texas.

Another very memorable time for me in Texas, was when when I took on a new hobby. I decided to become an astronomer or stargazer. After studying, a bit, about it, and with Deysi and Ange along, we headed for the telescope store. At that time, I might have known, marginally, more about astronomy than Deysi, Ange, or their cat. Although, Deysi would never admit that. What we finally settled on was a 6 inch, Meade, computer driven, self tracking, all singing and dancing scope. It was by no means the Hubble space scope. However, the sales guy did say, I could, probably, see as many aliens with it as anyone else, had seen. This work of high technology cost about $2000, once the price of the fine lenses were added. We are off, I can’t wait to get home and, look back to the beginning of our universe.

On arriving home, the first order of business was to sit down and read the instructions. I was an avid reader, at this point, so did not mind reading thru a manual of about 100 pages. I came very quickly to another revelation. Within a few pages, I realized, that, I did not understand much of what they had written. After the thousands of books I had read. And, add to that, the hundreds of technical documents I had read at work. I now found out, just how many words there were, in the English language, that, I did not understand. I may as well have been reading Mongol! Luckily though, there were pictures on almost every page, illustrating what it was they were talking about.

I worked at this hobby diligently for the next few weeks. That meant every spare minute and weekends. Was I obsessive/compulsive? You think? After a while, I got to a point where I could locate an object, like a planet, centre it, put the scope on auto-tracking and follow it for hours thru the night sky. Of course one of the first night sky targets was the moon. Once I had got it set up and inserted the correct lens, it became a thing of beauty. My god, I could actually see craters! I mean, lots of them. Of course, neither Deysi or Ange had any particular interest in my discoveries. So, I was kinda by myself, congratulating my own brilliance.

Just to sidetrack a bit. The difference between my amateur telescope and one of the big ones was significant. For instance, once I could clearly see the moon and it’s craters, I truly thought I was seeing everything there was. However, the smallest crater my scope would pick up, was between 3 and 5 kilometres across. Now, that’s one big hole in the ground. Obviously what I could see was a very small percent of the craters on the moon. The Hubble Space telescope, for instance, could see a “lit candle” on the moon’s surface. In between a lit candle and a three kilometre crater, were all the things I was missing. However, it was, still, more than Galileo had, when discovering the planets and star patterns hundreds of years before.

A few months into my hobby, I am becoming pretty competent at locating, planets and well known stars. I had even found a few nebulas, galaxies and some star clusters. Nobody cared. And then Ron came home for a visit. I could not wait to show her my hobby. I just knew she was going to be impressed. One bright, clear starlit evening, I take all of my equipment outside. After some major messing around, I had managed to get Saturn, right square in the middle of my lens. I change lens, to find the absolute perfect resolution. I got the auto-tracking to follow its path. It was amazing. You could clearly see Saturn, resplendent with rings, in full view, in the middle of my lens. My heart was racing! I call for Ron.

After a few calls, I see her, reluctantly appearing out the patio door. She is not looking happy. She says, “Dad what do you want”. I explain to her about my telescope and how it works, computer driven, night sky GPS, auto tracking and all the good stuff. I know she was impressed, but hid it well. Finally I explain to her that I have Saturn and it’s ring for her to look at. She leans over, gazes into the eye piece, hesitates for a second and then straightens up. She looks at me, like I am a dork, and says, “Dad, that is a movie you are running in there”. I start to protest, but I can only, now, see her back, as she flounces away. She crosses the patio, opens the door, and with a SLAM, disappears inside. I have just taken another kick, square in the huevos.

Deysi could always make me laugh. She had a way of saying things that went right to the heart of a matter. One of these times happened in Texas. We were on a road trip with two friends from Canada, R&D. We were west of Houston, somewhere between home and San Antonio. Mostly we drove thru Texas ranch lands. We stopped every once in a while to take photos. It was idyllic. It was now sometime in mid afternoon. We had been driving for a few hours, exchanging comments on the scenes. We passed herds of Texas Longhorn cows, Brahma bulls and miles of pasture land. Then Deysi sees something.

“Stop”, she says. I pull over in front of a “For Sale” sign on the edge of the road. It appears to be a small plot of pasture land, with a tiny, weather beaten, dilapidated shack standing on it. The roof was sagging, the walls were bare, exposed wood, and it lurched on a 40 degree angle to the side. There was nothing salvageable there. It might have been 400 square feet of trouble. Deysi looks at it, and very seriously, in her best “realtor” voice, pronounces, “Yup folks, another little fixer upper”. I howled! I could just picture, one of the “many” realtors we had dealt with in the past, saying these exact words, with straight faces. Trying to paint a positive picture, of the piece of crap, that, they were now pushing you to buy. It was hilarious.

Maybe it was the long drive, the hot sun, but in my mind it was one of her best “one liners” ever. R, a former realtor, himself, howled along with me. He could see himself in Deysi’s biting commentary. I am sure he had come up with the same description for pieces of crap that he had sold in the past. This one comment made our whole day. Every time I thought of her deathly serious face and deadpan delivery, I broke out again. It is funny how some, seemingly innocent events, can stay so long in your mind. These ones from Texas have done just that. Everyone probably thinks they are silly, however, that is all my fading memory, spit out, this time. Stay tuned for more adventures from Texas.