The one about a long trip down memory lane...come and join me....

Well, my last trip home this past weekend I came up with the idea to share with you a lot of the memories of my home town and where I grew up......the greatest town in West Texas....Floydada (Whirlwinds, Whirlwinds Fight Fight, Fight!) Yeah...every one has their fondest memories of home and I decided to take you all back to my years @ "home" and share with you a little bit....so grab my hand and let's walk down memory lane...................................................OK, here is the hospital that I was born in...I can't remember too much of my birth...but I think I did a lot of crying ands screaming in this building...sadly it is no longer a hospital any more..and an empty building...but the school system is thinking about turning it into another school building..but I am not sure about that rumor...I would be fine with that...because it would mean that it might stay around long enough for me to take my kids to it some day and show them where I was born.....

Well, after I was born (any my mom stopped breast feeding me...I t might have been a little later than that even, heh) I got to stay with Charlene Brown....now here is one of the greatest women in the world...she taught me several useful things for me in my life...like... how to pee in a toilet, and ask to be excused from the table...and that mac and cheese can be eaten with hotdogs and ketchup and taste VERY good together...and drink out of cups with both hands, and I remember her letting us build Legos as high as we could and then she would take a picture of us with our creations, heh.....I also remember dancing to the Oakridge Boy's "Elvira" song (uuuuum bop-a, uuuum bpo-a, uuum bop-a mouh mouh) and I swung a girl named Jamie right into Charlene's brick stairs and cracked her head open and she had to get stiches....Oh man I felt bad about that one...oh and I also remember that I loved going into Jason's room (Charlene's oldest son) and I think that the first video game I played might have been in this very house (pong, and Frogger, etc.... on the Arari) Aaahhh good times good times..... (oh and how could I ever forget Bear their dog, and the swings in their back yard...oh and all the field trips to get library books one day and ice cream and pizza the next!!!! Oh man those were good days!!!!!

After I was old enough to go to pre-school I went to the pre-school that was in the up stairs part of my church...right here in the one and only church I attended (on a weekly basis that is) Floydada United Methodist Church. I went to preschool here under the direction of Lou Ann Smith (sp?) and man, did I have fun here! I got to be with a lot of my friends Tyson, etc...... for the first year...but they decided to keep me their a second year because I was not old enough to go into kindergarten...so then I got to make friends with all kinds of other friends then too...like Shea, Shalya, Kayla, Amber, etc.......notice I can only remember the girls, heh) And of course I was confirmed here and Baptized in this church...I have run around searching for Easter eggs in this church and many a game of football and soccer have been played in this front ground...and every Christmas the Nativity was put up by me and friends...just an amazing and foundation in my life..and of course the people were the greatest people on the planet...funny how the church you grew up in was a church that was free of all politics and mean people....heh...I am sure it was there at that time too...but the kids rarely ever have to see it....oh well ignorance is bliss, heh....

Here is A.B. Duncan Elementary school. This is where I attended kindergarten through 3rd grade. I loved this school, and even though I have tons of memories of playing outside of this building too....I remember the cafeteria second only to the back play ground the most because we would either play outside before school started or we would meet in the cafeteria before school started....and I loved meeting in the cafeteria because that would mean that there would be snow or rain, or even tornadoes outside...and man I kind of stuff excited me!!!! heh..... I spent many a day outside in the play ground out back behind the school. We would get into big tractor tires and roll each other around in them, heh..and I also remember the first time I met Peter Luna out there...he was a huge kid for his age...and we always played football everyday and the girls would cheerlead for us too...we would pick sides of course...but the first day Peter Luna showed up the entire team ran over to him playing in the tires buried in the dirt...and we asked him to play football with us....and that was the day that we all learned why it was a good idea to have big people play football...he dominated...heh...and I was sure glad he was on my team....I also remember Shayla dumping me as she swing on the swing telling Pepper to tell me that she did not like the sweater and glass slipper necklace I gave her....heh heh heh...Oh and one of my favorite stories is how the farm land beyond the play ground area was my families (it actually was..and actually I would tell everybody that the school was my school because my great grandfather gave the land for the school and so they named the school after him (and of course my first name was Duncan..and so it was my school)) any way the teachers would not let any of the kids play in the farm land behind the school, and would tell us to get off of the private land if we ever went on it...but it was my land...and so the friends I really liked I would invite them on it and when the teacher told us to get off the dirt of the private plan....I would remind them that it was my land..and they were not allowed to be on it.....heh heh...Oh man...I bet I was a little snot every now and then...heh...oh well, the teacher seemed to always remind me that I would get off the land if I wanted to have any kind of snack time...and that she was in possession of a paddle that she was proficient in the use of if I did not get back over into the school's land...that seemed to work, heh......

Everyday after school I would either walk to my Momma's classroom @ the Jr. High School...that picture is coming up...or I would walk here....to my Nanaw and Grandad's house.... I loved coming here because I would get to spent time hugging my Nanaw and enjoying Tomato, Bacon, Onion sandwiches, ridding the motorcycle (with my very own two feet powering it (and going down that little green rap in this picture was better than any roller coaster ride at the time) and I would pick flowers for my Nanaw, crack and eat pecans and eat them with her..and most days we would just sit on the porch swing and listen to "just-a-swing'an" I bet my Nanaw enjoyed it just as much as I did....and I also remember Grandad (he had already had 1 or 2 strokes before I was even old enough to know what one was....but I would jump up on the back of this wheel chair and rub his burr haircut head and he would hand me fruit flavored Tums....like they were candy...probably explains why my stomach is so based out, heh...tons of memories here too....their back yard is the only basement we had growing up and if the tornado sirens went off then we would most of the time drive to Nanaw's house and run into the basement....now for a guy would loves tornadoes...you can imagine how much I loved this place, heh....Man I love this house!!!!!

Now here is the Dixie Dog...as you can see.....every now and then we would walk to the Dixie Dog from A.B. Duncan Elementary and also from my Nanaw's house....now I am not sure...but I think they have some of the best ice cream you can order..and their corndogs are out of this world....I just loved it all and will never forget holding hands with Angela from the school to the Dixie Dog and back...I remember I would be so nervous that my hand would be sweating al over the place and yet if Angela tried to take her hand away...I would grab it even tighter and make sure she was not letting go of my hand....granted this was kindergarten.....everyone else was holding hands with a friend of the same sex...because boy and girls just did not do that at this time....but yep you guessed it....I did, heh..... If you ever stop in to Floydada then you have got to go have a corn dog and an ice cream cone at the Dixie Dog...a cheese burger @ Lenard's Cafe, and al of the other places have changed so much I don't know if they are still around......

Ok, here is Andrew's Ward. I went to this school grades 4th through 6th...and even thought it looks a lot different now, I probably spent more of my life growing up on this playing field than any other in Floydada....you see this is not only the place I went to school for three years...this is the view off of the front porch of my house!!!! Yep....I stared at this school everyday....I would wake up in the morning and look out the bathroom window to see this place....but I have decided to add a few things to the picture for you to see it the way I saw it when I was a kid.....

Ok now we are talking....You see there was all kinds of playground equipment in this playground area...and it was VERY old...but who cares I had a front yard larger than any of my friends and my playground was industrial equipment, heh....OK you can see the slide and the long swing set..and the two posts in front of the swings were basketball goals...with a dirt court of course...there are some smaller chin-up bars past the slide..and if I could create them I would have added a few see-saws, a merry-go-round, tether ball pole, more swings on that side behind the big slide....and I got over my rear of heights with that slide...and I remember my brother and I running out there when it was really foggy and firing arrows straight into the air and hiding under the slide for protection just in case they came falling back down...and I remember standing out in the middle of the field when I Blue northern came through with our arms outstreached and pretending like we were causing it al to happen and then running inside when the lightening and rain got to bad...Hew....you can also see the football tee that I drew in at the bottom of the picture on our front yard...I would drop kick and place kick that football across the street over and over and over again..and then I would shoot hoops at the metal basketball goal in our neighbor's yard...I would practice so much back then that it actually surprises me how much dedication I had back then for that sport, heh. Good times good times....

Here is the front yard of my house....it too looks a lot different. That big tree on the right wasn't even there...or a very small tree when I was growing up. and the small bucket on the left there is on top of a stump what used to be a huge Willow tree that many a climb occurred on...and I think hat every time I climbed up it I scraped up my arms...but I did not care it was always worth it, heh...we even tried to build a tree house in it one year...but it did not last...and besides I am not sure if my Mom wanted a tree house in the front yard, heh.....I think my strongest memory for this yard is my mowing it over and over and overt again...but I also got money for that too so it was not all bad, heh. It was also on this side walk that I would ride my skateboard up and down on the sidewalk...and one time my brother and I tried to hook up the skate board up to a broom stick and on e of my Dad's huge trench coats and see if we could get the wind to push us down the side walk....it was a great idea...but we could never get it off the ground...but believe me the wind blows strong in West Texas and it was strong enough....we just could not get the coat to catch enough wind.... funny how wind surfing is so popular today and we were doing it in the early 80's, heh.....

Here is a good example of how big and wide the streets are in my home town...they are huge...you can see my CRV parked in front of my house...and I think there is enough room for a four lane highway and a median...but this is the street in front of my house and the school....now you know that it was an achievement to kick the football across the street, heh. ||

here is my back yard...and yes that is a clothes line right there...but we never used it unless we were drying out a bed spread or something like that....in the back there are two cherry bushes...but when I was growing up just on the other side of them was a strawberry patch..and man oh man I would eat those strawberries....those bushes were always there...but behind them was my Dad's garden and I remember when he first bought a few railroad ties that they were used as a fort first and then to designate the garden from the rest of the back yard....It was amazing..and I loved it...Cucumbers, tomatoes, peas, etc...all good good stuff. and there were two peach trees where my mom has no put a small prayer garden over there on the right side....and two other peach trees on the far left side of the yard that is beyond the pasture's view....you can also see the walking path that I wore down from taking out the trash all the time and I of course mowed this yard many a times too...but Jay would sometimes mow it more often because the back yard was harder to mow and therefore you got more money for mowing it, heh....

here is the famous grill!!!! The best steaks in the world can be found cooking on this grill.....my dad taught me how to cook steaks and trout on this grill and if you are one of the privileged few to have one you would know that my Dad is a master steak cooker...what else can you expect from a Texan, heh..... good good food and that tree was fun to climb too...but it was a lot harder to get into..... I remember one time I watered the back flower bed the morning before we went to church and I forgot and left the water running...the entire back yard was a lake...and even though I got in trouble for it...I wanted to so badly to run out there and play in the newly formed lake...but my father (and all the stickers out there ) kept me from running barefoot in the yard lake.....

aaaahhhh the alley.... I mowed this place too...for a lot less money...but it was still a few more bucks to save up for stamp collecting, a water bed, vacation, or video game systems. heh....we also buried my first dog Spanky back here somewhere...but this was also a great place to play live D&D with sticks as wands and war with pine cone grenades.....

well, here is my living room currently...but back when I was growing up the TV was square (not wife screen) and the carpet was green, the couch a little bigger but much more used...and my toy box was on the far left over there instead of that other chair...but my Dad's chair was exactly where it is now...the very bottom of the picture...and there was a ceiling fan instead of just a light fixture....I remember laying down on the couch watching Friday night videos (this was a time before MTV or VH1) and every Sunday night watching nature shows with my entire family!!! I would also spin around in circles over and over again and then land on the couch and enjoy the "buzz" I got from the dizziness...which explains why I act the way I do today, heh....well maybe a little...and it was in this very room that I tell people about the story of Jay laying down on a bean bag watching TV...probably the A-Team or Night Rider..and I grabbed the bean bag I was using and stood on the couch and jumped off of it landing directly on my brother knocking the air out of him and then running away as he grasped for air and ran after me at the same time, heh..... ||

This is the sad excuse for my room....since I moved out my mother decided that she needed a painting room...so se decided to convert my room into this room!!! Oh man this is nothing like the room I had....where the couch is was my water bed's headboard, and of course the desk was not in there...and I had much cooler poster up than my mom's paintings...(not that they are horrible Momma) but one of the posters was of the earth at night from space..very cool. and I had my Smurf collection on this wall... I had posters of all kinds of cool stuff, like cars, or artic sea lions, (I had to have something up that the girls would like, heh heh) Oh and in my freshman year I painted glow in the dark paint of the night sky on my ceiling that was a perfect replica of the winter sky...and I did it al during 2-a-days... ouch that was painful looking up all the time and painting the holes that were in the paper to make the sky. I even took a tooth brush with diluted glow in the dark paint and flung up the milky way. (this was also a wonderful thing to show off to the girls... you know because it required that it be in the dark...to see the stars of course, heh heh heh..... Oh man, this was the room of all rooms. My mom was kind enough to leave some of it up for you to get an idea of it....

Here is my dresser and mirror, with all of my homecoming ribbons from elementary school and my signed footballs, my TV that I would play all of my video games on, my DragonLance poster behind it....and my Angelo State Relay numbers from track and field when I was in High school, and it is funny that I then went to go to that school and throw hammer for them, heh....oh look there are a few "rowdy rags" at the top of the mirror for the Texas Tech football games that I would usher as a boy scout....... ||

here is on wall that is almost the same....I created a collage of all my friends and of many a girl from my summers @ camps and Spirit Wind, and a family tree is up there...and all my ribbons from track when I was a little kid playing tee-ball and then running off to go run track...and the intercom system that I can remember working maybe three times my whole life, heh.....

AAAAhhh the front door to my room...it has changed over the years...but this does a good job of showing who I thought I was at the time....I loved the video game "The Journey Man Project" one for the first photorealistic games of any computer...and it was amazing!!!! and there is a poster that is weird and cool...and very 80's heh....and a poster of a cartoon of a guy skiing...and lastly a memento from Reno when I went there with my Dad and Mom for my Dad's judge's school..it is one row of a slot machine...kind of cool I guess.....

Well, here is the Jr. High! two years of my life here..7th and 8th...and My mom worked in the very bottom left 2 windows..... I spend many a time in that lab room,and the storage room beside it....I would even walk from the elementary school to this school. and I would catch flies buzzing on the window and throw them alive into spider webs and watching how the spiders would sting them and wrap the up in their web and save them for later, heh....good memories here...but most of the best one were on the football practice field behind this building!

Here is the basket ball gym. I played basket ball in Jr. high...but that was the last time I did. the tennis courts are to the right of it and I watched Jay play many a game of tennis there...and I did film a few basketball games for the coach in High school and I loved doing the announcing for the games.. I remember I would ask our players what they wanted their names to be and I would announce them very cool for example, "Pete Cooper was, number ?? Peeeete Cooooooppppeeerrrr"..and then when it came to the other team I would say in a very dull and sad tune...number ?? John Adams. heh.... I loved it and a lot of other people loved it...but just like anything else in life there were a few people that did not and so they found someone else and the games were not as fun...but more "nice" to the visiting teams. heh......

Well, here was a side entrance to the High School, and where I parked my car every morning.... I remember it hailing one time right after I got my 1st car (Eagle Talon) and I was almost crying thinking about the baseball size hail hitting it outside...heh..... most of the time I was speeding because I was late to my first class or speeding because I was late to my class after lunch driving from my home, heh.... lots of good memories here...but also lots of caring about what other people thought of me too, heh...oh well....such is life....

Well, here is where I spend everyday after school during track season. The discus ring....back then it did not have a fence up (they did get one while I was in school though...so it was there a little bit while I was there) and they have built a new gym in the field we would throw in, and it was also one practice field for football and the practice field for marching band...but now it is mostly a gym..... heh ....

Here is the other place I spent a lot of time...the shot putt ring. here is a black and white photo of it...and a few others here......

view of it from the track....

And close up...you can see the amount of chips on the base from when Adam, Scott, and I would roll them back for reach other to putt, heh....Oh man I was eaten alive by mosquitoes when I was taking this picture, heh.....

Well if it was not track season...then it was off season or football, and this is the field house that I spend a ton of my time in during my high school years! This is where I got my nick name...actually it was while I was standing on the shot ring...but that building is where I dressed and lifted, and did mat workouts, and watching films of the games,etc.... it was wild com e to think of it...how much of my life was spend in High School doing that stuff...but to tell you the truth...I would not change it for the world.....:)

Here is the door to the field house...as you can see it has not changed as much, heh....and I loved seeing it, heh.....

turn around from the field house door and you see this stretch of land...this is where we would run sleds and ropes...and I bet those are the same ropes we ran right there in this picture. wow this brings back some memories....but these are not the best of memories, heh heh heh......

And here is the most hopping place in the entire town on Friday nights during football season. It is a culture unlike anywhere in the US or the world...I can not describe it..and unless you run out onto that field and hear the bands and fans, and the entire town yelling at the top of their lungs...remembering how you used t be yelling with them as a small child..and probably as a baby....you just can help but to confuse that moment with a holy moment.... nothing lit it at all....the grass, the sweat, the cracking, the pain, the heavy breathing.... I know it does not look like much...but you just have no idea unless you have experienced it..... West Texas Football on a Friday night.... (yeah I know Cody you lived close enough to Texas to know what I am talking about, heh.....

It is funny the last picture I am putting up for this post of remembrance...is of this water tower...you see it was in this field that Tyson and Robert and I were lighting firecrackers and fireworks off... on 4th of July. We bought a lot of Roman Candles and we were hitting the water tower (well, trying to at least...we never made contact)....but this is the year I found out why they tell you to not hold Roman Candle fireworks in your hand when they are going off....well I was aiming my roman candle at the water tower straight up and every now and then you will get a roman candle that will fire the wrong direction and instead of it flying out towards the water tower it fired down into my arm pit....burned a hole in my T-Shirt, and burn tons of underarm hair...and my was dealing with a burn...and Tyson and Robert were on the ground rolling around laughing...and laughing...and laughing...it was crazy...and very funny....oh well..... You know this was a good trip home and there is no way I could cover al the things I remember, lunches' at Lenard's Cafe (sp?) all the nights and days, at Tyson's house, the Gilliland's house, Pepper's house, Adam's house and Adam's mom's cooking... oh man that is amazing!!!! driving up and down the drag, parking at the Mr. Burger/Mighty Burger, shooting at the pit, collecting bugs beside the elementary school and all the rumors of what actually went on out there...plowing, and spraying the fields for James, swimming at the city pool, etc.... there are so many memories that I loved sharing with you all....I hope that every now and then you take time out of your life to stop and remember where you have come and allow God to remind you how He has been with you all along and and still with you today...and some times even if you can't see him that hind sight can be 20-20...and you realize that he was forming you through your good and bad choices. my home has changed...and I have changed...but I would never be who I am today without all of the memories....if you can take time to remember the memories...go back to the place you grew up and write them down...because I almost know for sure that your children and grand children and great children would love hearing them and know that they are a part of those stories as well......Please take care of your self today and this week, and please know that Tiffany and I are praying for you!!! Love yall and KUTPs!!!!!!!!