Memories

LOMETA, TEXAS (Pop. 518) At least that's what the city limit sign always said, as far back as I can remember. This is the only photo I have of the little town of Lometa, where both sets of my grandparents lived and where I spent most of my summers as a kid. This photo was taken in January 1973, but things hadn't changed much then. I can't say that about it now. This shot was originally taken with color slide film, but I just liked the feel of it in black-and-white, like something out of The Last Picture Show.

LOMETA TRAIN DEPOT This is a photo from the 70s I'm glad I grabbed when I did, as the depot is no longer sitting beside the tracks, but has been moved to a vacant lot about a block north and west, awaiting restoration for some other use.

GRANDPA I took this B&W picture with my Minox spy camera Uncle Harry gave me. The graininess is caused by the high film speed and the incredibly small negative size, even smaller than a 110 Instamatic Camera's -- if you still remember those.This is a classic Grandpa shot, with that devilish glint in his eye and that great corncob pipe hanging from his mouth. Does he look like a character, or what? He was.

GRANDPA ON THE BACK PORCH One of Grandpa's favorite things to do was to sit out on the screened-in back porch and smoke his pipe, especially when there was an Astros game on the radio. I spent a lot of summer nights out there helping him.

THE DUNCAN GANG An undated photo of my dad and his three brothers. L to R: Gayle, Linuel, unknown child (probably Linuel's daughter, Carol), Dad, and Loyd. Look at those suits, would you?

BUELAH AND THE BOYS Here is another shot of the Duncan Gang with Ma Duncan (Buelah Dean, actually). My, how the styles have changed from that last shot. Notice the guys are still in the same order.

THE TWINS Dad and his twin brother, linuel. A handsome couple of guys in matching ties.

THE DUNCAN FAMILY A shot of Mom and Dad and my older sister, Lyn, taken in Lometa in 1945, I'm guessing. Dad was still in the service, Lyn was born in April 1944 and looks to be about a year old here, and it looks like springtime in Lometa to me. Brilliant! (Elementary, dear Watson.)

DAD AND ME I just love this shot of Dad and me on the front steps of our house on Ash Street in Grand Prairie. I'm six months old here and Dad's having a blast. I just love that shirt he has on and the way he rolled up the sleeves. Snappy dresser, he was!

OLAN MILLS PORTRAIT Mom must've bought some stock in the Olan Mills Photography Studio, because she always insisted we go there every year and have our pictures taken. This is probably around 1955 or 1956, and is one of my favorites. I just love that snazzy sport jacket. (And I still have that tie, too.)

THE PANTHER AND ME Here I am in front of a Grumman F9F Panther on display in the square in Beeville, TX, in 1958. This is the earliest photo I have of me and an airplane, and you can see I'm loving it. This is still one of my favorite planes, with such clean and efficient lines.

DOUG THE NATURALIST Here I am standing on the front walk of Nano and Grandpa's, holding one of the kittens their resident kitty factory, Bo Diddley, was kind enough to produce for us. That old calico must've lived to be 100, but she still kept pumping them out. The only brood she had that was ever a problem was the one where us kids weren't around to drag them out and play with them every day, so they grew up wild. I probably still have some of the scars on my hands from the first attempts to extricate them from under the back porch. They were all claws, let me tell you.

THE BIG CATCH -- JULY 1958 Would you look at the size of that thing! I was fishing with a small 7-year-old-sized cane pole and this big bastard hit my minnow and snapped my pole in half. That I didn't drop pole, fish, and all in fright is a major miracle in itself. As it was, I ran barefoot back up the shore to my folks, trailing my fish along behind me in the dirt, and screaming, "He broke my pole! He broke my pole!" through huge rivers of tears. Of course he broke your pole, Doug. Good God, look at this thing! It's HUGE!!!

MARY AND ME Lampasas Pool, Lampasas, Texas - 1958 Well, as we're at a family reunion, there are other family members around us, also, such as her brother, David, right behind her and several other cousins and aunts in the background. Isn't she cute -- and doesn't she look cold? She ought to, as the Lampasas Pool is spring-fed with frigid spring water, somewhere in the neighborhood of 60º, I imagine. BRRR!!! It makes me cold just thinking about it.

IN THE KITCHEN This is where life was held in the Moore household, right here around the wood stove and the kitchen table. L to R: Grandpa, Dad, me, Uncle Sonny, and Nano. This photo was taken in 1959.

GRANDPA AND DAD Here are Grandpa and Dad proudly displaying a stringer of bass we just brought in. (That's my arm on the far right edge.) Wait till you see the one I brought in.

CHRISTMAS 1960 Hey, we've moved into the color age now, like Dorothy landing in Oz. It was always one of the big things to head out into the countrysided and chop down a proper cedar tree to use as a Christmas tree, and decorate the crap out of it. People just don't do that kind of thing anymore -- unless maybe you're the Griswold Family. The smell of the tree was pure heaven and it always brings back fond memories of great piles of booty whenever I smell another one. That's Uncle Sonny's Army service picture on the table to the right.

JERRY AND ME This is Grandpa's old beagle, Jerry, a true watchdog in the strictest sense of the word. He would bellow "ROWF, ROWF, ROWF!" at whoever's car would happen to drive up and usually wouldn't stop until someone came over and said Hello properly. What a great dog he was. This is 1961.

WITH REX ALLEN Here are Mom and Dad and me in 1965 with the popular western actor and entertainer, Rex Allen, backstage at the Market Place in Dallas. My sister, Lyn, got us in to meet him as she worked for a booking agency back then. Don't I look proud!

THE DUNCAN COUSINS God, what a scrawny bunch we were back then! Here we are, seen here with the two family cars of ours, the white 1959 Chevrolet Impala and Dad's "new" blue 1958 VW Beetle (note the Euro turn signals on the door post). I learned to drive in that car, just ask my sister, Lyn. What a wild ride I gave her that first time I got behind the wheel. She didn't know I'd never actually driven before. L to R: Bolivar (Uncle Linuel's border collie), Carl, Stacey, Carol, and me.

APPENDECTOMY -- 1966 I look happy now, but only because it doesn't hurt anymore. I woke up in the middle of the night to what I thought was an emergency trip to the bathroom, but collapsed in pain in Grandpa's backyard. Barely able to cry out for help, I finally woke up Grandpa and he and a neighbor, George Tom, piled me into George Tom's car and rushed me here to the Rollins-Brook Hospital in Lampasas -- 30 miles away! Dr Brooks himself operated on me and said had we been just a few minutes later, my appendix would've burst and I most likely wouldn't have made it. Whew!

WITH MY FAVORITE NURSE I fell in love with this little blonde nurse, and I just had to have my picture taken with her before I Ieft. Doesn't the nurse in the back look like Nurse Murch from the clinic scene in The Right Stuff? The resemblance is uncanny.

SANDSURFING AT WHITE SANDS, NM Here are my cousins Rick (the blonde guy) and Greg (hidden behind Rick) at the White Sands National Monument in NM doing something I've never done before -- surfing on sand. Totally tubular, dude!

PONTOON BOAT PILOT During the racially-charged 1960s, Mom and Dad decided we needed to drive through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to get to Florida to see Aunt Nell and Uncle Harry. (Being the culturally unaware kid I was then, it took me by surprise to see Dad stow Uncle Gayle's M-1 carbine under the front seat of the family car. Yikes!) Happily, Aunt Nell and Uncle Harry lived on Lake Tsala Apopka outside of Inverness, and had this awesome pontoon paddle boat I would take out on "missions" to hunt enemy submarines. None were found and I almost cracked my thick skull open diving under it, thinking that when I came out of the shadow I was past it. I failed to take into account the position of the sun. It was lucky I wasn't drowned!

MY FIRST CAR Here's a shot of my first car, a 1967 VW Beetle. I drove the crap out of this automobile, right up until that lady pulled out in front of me in an intersection. That was a truly sad day for me, as I felt I'd lost an old and dear friend. Actually, I had.

MY BUG AND ME One night while on my way back home from work at Six Flags, a drunk driver pulled out of a filling station the wrong way on a one-way on-ramp to Hwy 360 and plowed right into me with his Buick. His car didn't even get a scratch, of course. My bug got put back to rights physically, but the trunk never would lock after that.

ME AND MY METRO Harry Nilsson once penned a song called "Me and My Arrow" so I thought I'd borrow the idea. Well, anyway, while in the Navy in California, I decided that Karen and I needed another car, so I found this Nash Metropolitan for $125 and bought it. Talk about a classy car for driving up and down the Pacific Coast Highway with the top down! (I wish I'd put the top down for this picture, as you can see the rear window was rotted away. It came that way -- more of an umbrella than a top.) I wish I still had it.

BOOT CAMP -- 1971 Dear God, please don't even ask me to name any names here, as that was a couple of lifetimes ago in a galaxy far, far away. BUt that's me, third row up, fourth from the left with my head floating in space like the other poor schmucks.

PATROL SQUADRON VP-65, NAS POINT MUGU, CALIFORNIA - 1974 I was more than a bit disappointed (pretty pissed, actually) when the Navy told me I was not going to be stationed at NAS Dallas in Grand Prairie as the recruiter said, but shipped out to California, instead. But being stationed smack dab on the California coast and in a squadron of my favorite planes ever took the edge off completely. Due to my stupid color-blindness, I was never able to attain a maintenance rate or aircrew status, but I got to fly in these birds as an observer on a number of occasions -- even up to Anchorage, Alaska! Sitting in that glassed-in bow position while flying over the Canadian wilderness was a treat and a half. That's me, fifth from the right in the back row.

THREE ACES

Well, here's a gaggle of goofballs for you, my good friends Terry Finley (Capt Terrance Fartknocker) and Glenn Scott (Capt Gut Snot). (I was merely Capt Dung.) We flew U-control gas-powered model airplanes and always fancied ourselves as aces in WWI and even put together a book about our adventures called "Aces High", but that's been lost over the ages. We were quite the team back then, let me tell you! As fate would have it, this is the one and only photograph of us all together.

THE CLIMBING TREE This is one of the very few pictures I have of our beloved climbing tree at Grandpa's. Here I am giving instructions to the wee ones, some of whom I can't remember. I think that's my nephew Matt in the foreground.

MONKEY BOY This is just one of the many ways I used to use to climb up into the tree. Let me tell you, my advancing years are making themselves know right about now.

UNH!!! Right about now, I'm wondering what the hell I'm gonna do now, and why am I here? The old geometry -- and weight -- are a little different now, but pride is on the line. I like that shirt, but I don't remember having it. Huh.

HIPPIE DUDE Now here's a blast from the past, namely 1980. I'm in college and I'm letting my hair grow long, finally. This is the longest it's ever been, and the longest it'll ever be. Far out!

HAPPY HULADAYS One summer, while living in Dallas and too broke to go on a vacation, I decided to spice up my life a bit and take a vacation photo of myself beating the Texas heat. I had a Nikon Action Touch waterproof camera and set about to have myself a little summer fun. It took forever to get this shot -- things kept floating away -- but I did it. The rest of the roll is a hoot, especially the one that went off before I swam back to the chair. Yep, you can look right up those swim trunks. This was my Christmas card shot that year, hence the title.

PLEDGE DRIVE KERA Channel 13 Studio, Dallas, Texas - 1980s

AUNT VIRL AND ME Here is one of my favorite shots of one of the favorite people in our family -- Aunt Virl. This lady was blowing and going until into her 70s, and everybody loved her. One of the finest people I've ever known.

BIG BEND PHOTO WORKSHOP -- 1986 This is the flyer for the gallery opening of the Big Bend Photo Workshop I went on, my first ever experience of the park. I was floored and immediately won over and can't get back to it often or soon enough. I sold my first work ever at the opening for $125 (less the gallery's portion, of course).

BIG BEND PHOTO WORKSHOP 1986 GROUP SHOT Homer Wilson Ranch, Big Bend National Park, Texas

COLORADO PHOTO WORKSHOP Well, as you can see, this workshop was pretty small. Actually, it was pretty much just Leigh and me -- in the center -- as students and the two instructors, Rick and Susan, who were a couple. It turned out being more of a family jaunt, Jeeping up and over almost every mountain pass in the San Juan Mountains between Telluride and Durango. We were based in a hostel in the gorgeous little town of Silverton and had the greatest of times whooping it up with the locals. Here we're at 12,800' Engineer Pass.

NOVENE JO AND ME This is my cousin Mary's mom and Aunt Virl's daughter, Novene Jo Simon, yet another wonderful person I love dearly. She and her husband, Frank, came up to Grand Prairie from Waco for Mom and Dad's 50th wedding anniversary.

CANOE BOY -- PECOS RIVER 1994 Before leaving Dallas for the last time, I went on a week-long canoe trip down the Pecos River from Pandale to the Amistad Reservoir with some photography buddies. When we reached Rainbow Rapids -- a rather severe and intimidating chute -- we came across this canoe that some other folks decided to leave here. Boy, wouldn't you have loved to seen that? It made for a great photo op, I think.

PECOS RIVER GROUP SHOT And here I am with the rest of the group -- Rick Eilers, Susan Gentry, and Steve Crane. Boy, look at those sunburned knees!

KATRINA (1978-1994) Katrina and I were buddies for all of her 16 years. She always greeted me at the door and always made friends with anyone in the house, even soundly winning over my friend, William, who hated cats with a passion. One time, I was being tortured by a magazine salesman while just about to prepare dinner, when Katrina ran in from the back porch and gave out a long "Meo-o-ow" while staring right at me. "Okay, thanks," I replied to her. The salesman asked what that was all about and I said, "Oh, she's telling me the coals are ready on the grill." He picked up his stuff and left then with a chuckle and a shake of his head, and without a sale. I still miss her.

MOUNT ST HELENS GROUP SHOT - 1995 L to R: Kristin, Jack, Joyce, Tim, Heidi, me, Robin, and Dan

MOUNT ST HELENS SOLO SHOT - 1995 I've always loved this photo of me, especially since it's the very first one of me summiting any mountain. What a great backdrop!

TRAILER DAYS My girlfriend Lisa and me in front of our -- actually her -- trailer at the Manor RV Park in Estes Park, Colorado. We met when we worked for the concessionaire at Mt Rainier National Park and, as far as I'm concerned, it was love at first sight. Having had enough of the underhandedness of the company, we bought the Chevy Blazer, hooked up the trailer, and hit the road. We would travel all over the country for the next four years, working seasonally in various parks, campgrounds, and hotels, living out of this little aluminum box we called home. It was some of the best years of my life.

IN THE NORTH CASCADES Me, my girlfriend Lisa, and our dog, Clea, in the North Cascades near Mt Baker. We had just hiked up Easy Pass with friends and fellow RV-ers Roger and Maria, which was no easy feat. We decided to rename the trail "Easy-my-ass Pass," as that seemed much more appropriate. This would be our Christmas card shot this year, 1996.