I fled from Corpus Christi (and the impending onslaught of sunshine that came in to Nueces County while Beaumont was being devastated) Wednesday, but I would like to mention that I did enjoy the Tuesday registration for the Annual. I've been to 16 or 17 Annual Update registration tables, but this year's was right up there with the best of them. The association folks had my stuff right there in the M section where it was supposed to be, and I got a good binder of materials. Everything went very smoothly. I'm sure the rest of the program would have been real fine, too.

By the way, I prefer to be called a refugee, not an evacuee. And along those lines, as I was refugee-ing back to Conroe seeking shelter from the good weather Wednesday, I considered for a while that perhaps those demanding to be called evacuees and not refugees might be doing so in order to fit under the traveling defense that has many people named Wayne under some duress at the moment. And I wonder that maybe evacuees will be able to claim that status in order to keep guns in their vehicles for indefinite periods, or if there can be a cut-off date where an evacuee becomes a homesteader.

On a lighter note, I purposefully avoided commenting on the traveler thread, because I know that banjo players are sure to be included in the list of profile-able drivers (and pedestrians for that matter).

[This message was edited by A.P. Merillat on 09-26-05 at .]

AP, I wish you had stayed Wednesday night. I was going to buy you a drink, or two, but you bugged out with the rest of my office.

Well Mark, now you know where all the loyalty is -- your staff followed me out of town, I guess, and left you without backup under the blue skies, gentle gulf breeze and amongst all the free food. And this was the year I was hoping to see if Greg and Scott were real people and not just names on a website.

I am not a real person. I cannot speak for Greg, since doing so would involve ventriloquism, and I do not have a license to engage in that type of activity. Nor do I have a banjo license or gas money. I returned home on a wing and a prayer. The wing was delayed at Houston Hobby for several hours.

What you need gas money for...ain't no gas to buy with it around here anyway.

Speaking of ventriloquists and their wooden and plastic partners, I thought I had finally made the big time and my literary agent actually made me famous, just like the ad said he would do: during my flight from the bay, I thought I saw an A.P. bobblehead! I immediately got on the phone and called my mom back in Magnolia and told her that son #3 bobblehead dolls were available, that I must have become as famous as our own John Bradley and that CSI star son of Cappy's. But after I hung up, I looked back over and noticed that I was looking at my own reflection in the front passenger window of an '87 Buick passing me on the rough gravel of the left shoulder, with a flat on the right front. It wasn't an A.P. bobblehead after all, just a bouncing reflection in somebody's dirty window. I'm going to call Mom in a couple of weeks and let her down easy.

For those of you who left early, have no fear ... I and other hardier souls tried our best to ensure that no drink ticket went un-used. Darn near succeeded, too!

I am not a real person either. Likewise, I can't speak for Scott, as I don't have a license for that either. A.P., I hope you at least listened to some Jimmy Buffett as you missed the buffet and made your exodus. I bet I can name the song Scott was humming in his head as he headed home on the plane. HINT: TTRWHS

However, as a native Texan and former lifelong Houstonian, who has ridden out storms such as Carla, Celia, Alicia et al, I felt there was a more than fair chance that Rita could've at the last minute turned toward Corpus, a/k/a "The City by the Shining Sea" (a'la Hurricane Allen in the 70's) and thus figured I would save myself the trip down and back over the course of two days. At the very least, I wrongly figured that Rita would've stormed and rained all over the tdcaa parade, but yet, for all the wrong reasons, I made the right call.

Besides, I was afraid my banjo might rust in the sea air.

Glad Shannon got to use my drink tickets.

[This message was edited by Greg Gilleland on 09-27-05 at .]

I�m glad A.P. got out when he did. I hear that because the storm tore through East Texas we are going to be short on banjo players for a while. A.P. was not only looking out for himself but for all of those who love the sweet sounds of the banjo.

Greg, if you really are Greg, I don't know if Scott hummed that song with no vowels that you mentioned, but during my drive, I did think of a parrot-head number that goes something like "...the weather is here, wish you were beautiful."

Thanks, Jeff for realizing the contributions of the 5-string to the arts. And, might I mention that the Mastertone in its case made a good prop while the wind was trying to blow the front door shut last Saturday.

Maybe we need to hold TDCAA conferances some place far away from the coast. Like Amarillo. I understand its been at least 10,000 years since the Amarillo area was threatened by a Cat 5 hurricane.

Or Ruidosa. (Yeah, I know: Ruidosa isn't "technically" in Texas. But that really is a technicality. As anyone who has ever been there knows, Ruidosa is in every other way still a part of The Great State.)

Just a thought.

Though I am a fictional cyber character, I can say that there was much Buffett coursing through my mind, post-buffet. Among them were snippets from "Schoolboy Heart" ("I suspect I died in some cosmic shipwreck with all hands spread all over the deck. What the heck"), "Volcano" (meteorologically inappropos, but expressing the overridingly applicable sentiment) and "Last Mango in Paris." Since the beverage establishment at the airport was closed all day on Thursday, "Boat Drinks" also came to mind.

While my previously-mentioned licensing issues preclude me from involvement with the banjo, I can add that I did not travel with my guitar. More accurately, my guitar refuses to travel with me. It claims that, after a couple of drink tickets get used, nothing but embarrassment follows. Stringed instruments are smart that way.

Finally, Ruidoso is a charming locale, but it is populated by a number of otherwise good people who view Texans only as a life-support system for a wallet. A cadre of Texas prosecutors could cause them significant mental anguish, such that yodeling might break out. If that happened at the Inn of the Mountain Gods casino, federal troops might be called in.

[This message was edited by Scott Brumley on 09-28-05 at .]

I believe AP wins the prize for "Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season".

Besides, like many leaving from Corpus last week, I think I was actually humming an old Charley Pride tune: "Is Anybody Going to San Antone?"

Are you sure it wasn't "Amarillo by Morning" ?

don't have it in Amarillo - just left there a few months ago. The winds on Saturday almost made me feel like I was back there, if they had gusted harder that is.

But would drive through on way to Ruidoso to visit. (properly pronounced "ru-ee-doso" as I have been told by some of the few actual local folks there)

[This message was edited by raythomas on 09-28-05 at .]

At the rate I was travelling, it would have been more like "Amarillo by Three to Four Days from Now."

Unfortunately, I believe our grant conditions prohibit the expenditure of state funds for out-of-state seminars, so New Mexico is out.

Long before I was on board here at TDCAA, it seems we used to have Annuals at non-coast locations until folks started counting heads and realized that there was a direct correlation between attendance and proximity to the Gulf -- the closer you got to the water, the higher the attendance.

Personally, I think the excitement of hurricane-dodging is what brings people down there ...

Then let's have it in Pasadena and dodge the funky breezes born from the bellies of the chemical plants over off of Hwy 225 at the Lynchburg Ferry. We could have the reception at the Red Bluff theater, and a bus trip to the Texas City dike. C'mon, Shannon, what do you say, huh? Please?

From the 9-28-05 edition of the Mexia Daily News:


Bluegrass Music scheduled for Jack's Creek Festival

EDITOR's NOTE: Sandi Rhodes submits this advance about the Jack's Creek Bluegrass Festival at the Confederate Reunion Grounds. She does so with a different twist, after watching late-night host David Letterman talk about "Men who have Banjos and know how to use them."

---

By SANDI RHODES

Special to The News

NEW YORK - Wednesday, September 1 saw Steve Martin and Earl Scruggs pounding out Foggy Mountain Breakdown on the David Letterman Show. Three other banjo pickers accompanied these two-Pet.er Wernick, Tony Ellis and Charles Woods kept up the pace along with Paul Schaefer and the CBS Orchestra. I was impressed with Schaefer. I would think it would be hard to make a piano operate as fast as a banjo, but he made it work.

In a recent issue of International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA), a bi-monthly publication reporting on Bluegrass Music through out the world, it states that "Hall of Honor member Earl Scruggs (of the early 1940's Bluegrass group Flatt and Scruggs) Peter Wernick, Steve Martin, Tony Ellis, and Charles Woods will perform at a special banjo presentation hosted by Steve Martin at the Director's Guild Theater on West 57th Street in New York City September 24, near Carnegie Hall. The event is a highlight if the annual New Yorker Festival September 23-25, presented by the New Yorker Magazine at various venues in the city".

Bluegrass Music-if its good enough for New York and David Letterman, its good enough for Limestone County. Join us the Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site for the Fifth Annual Jack's Creek Bluegrass Festival October 7 & 8. For more information go to our website at www.confederatereuniongrounds.org or call Sandi Rhodes at 254-375-2353.

(A.P., if you want to attend, contact me and I'll snag you a couple of tickets. Roy)

Doesn't have quite the same ring to it that "Amarillo ..." does.

The only Pasadena I want to go to is in California in January to see some college football. (again -- I was there this past January as well!)