Rhonda

Palmer Family

Clancy

Clancy Ferguson Band

Gary Waldrep Band

North Louisiana Spring Bluegrass Festival. March 2015.

What a great festival. I attended Friday and Saturday. The hall was 100 miles from my trailer in Oak Grove. I drove home at 8 pm on Friday and 10 pm on Saturday. 10 pm was better. Much less traffic.

There was an annual antique tractor pull on the way in. I went over to watch during music breaks. I have seen pulls with lawn mowers in Pennsylvania and with huge horses in Washington.

I met these three charming Ruston ladies. They were in an RV but did not have a car. I was pleased to give them several rides to town. From the left they are Bobby Ferris, Sidney Outwell, and Anita Outwell. We had a nice visit. Anita is a friend from Senior Lunch.

Friday's headliner was Clancy Ferguson from Mountain View, Arkansas. She is 16. Has been playing the fiddle and singing for years. Boy is she good.

Featured both days was the Gary Waldrep Band.

It was good to see the Palmer Family again. I have seen them in Arcadia. They get better every time I see them!

There were other bands, all good. But on Saturday Rhonda and The Rage came on. I had seen them before in Kentucky, but this time they really blew me away! I am always falling for a Rhonda! I may have been carried away taking pictures of Rhonda?

Several members in the audience had to dance.

Many of the musicians had a jam on the stage at the end of the evening,

I am posting several 30 second videos from the festival. They will be after this post.

Squirrel Mulligan at N & J Oilfield Parts and Service in Arcadia

20 squirrels were shot and furnished by John Corley. N & J cooked a great mulligan. It was delicious. John Adams and I were lucky enough to be invited to lunch. TJ and Noy Anderson are the owners of N & J. John Adams and the Andersons are old friends.

They are such a good looking family! TJ, Noy, and Cash. And such nice hosts.

N & J can do most any chore. They are experienced local contractors. Oilfield and most anything else.

Noy makes sure that people coming for lunch have clean boots.

There was quite a collection of items on the wall. Huge snake skins, antlers, and deer heads.

Boy was that Squirrel Mulligan good!

Blog number 2500!

This is the 2500th blog since I started the prune picker blog in April, 2010. It has been interesting and fun. I must say that the bloom is off. I can get bored. In five years I have posted 2500 blogs. That is about 500 a year. I plan to cut back.

Many of the blogs are autographical memories. I will use them in a memoir. I have more. As I get closer to death I can tell more. If you can not let it all hang out the day before you die, when can you? Stay tuned. There may be some juicy memories.

Many are medical updates about a senior citizen in the last days of his life. These are interesting to me. I now know much more about the human body. Sure wish I could be around to blog about my death. Have to do it now.

There has been a lot of blogs about the genealogy of the Monson family and the Ireton family. I want to put this genealogical data into a form that will make sense to people after my death.

In the meantime I am enjoying socializing with all my good friends and family in Louisiana. They are such a blessing. And going to sport events. And going to bluegrass affairs. And reading a book now and then. In about a dozen weeks, the good lord willing, I will spend my 90th birthday on Orcas Island with some of my west coast family. I hope that I make it. 90 sounds so much more distinguished than 89. I tell people that I am living my 90th year right now.

Shoeshine Boy in 1930s Pomona, California.

I was a shoeshine boy in downtown Pomona in the late 1930s. I was 13 or 14. I built a box to hold shoe shine stuff. The box was much like the box in this picture. Years later the box showed up in the household of a cousin. It was returned to me. I used it at home for some time as an adult.

Although I did not have a fancy thing for the client to put his shoes on. I believe that I charged a dime for a regular shine. A two tone was twenty five cents. Two tones were in style at that time.

I recall being in the bus station most of the time. It was on the corner of Third Street one block west of Gary. When I came home from the war it had been moved over to Gary and Fourth Street.

This is what downtown Pomona looked like in those days.

I have always been vain and concerned about my appearance. I must have been a sight wondering around downtown Pomona with my shoeshine box. But a dime was a lot of money. I do not recall making a lot of, or very much, money.

Cape Disappointment Lighthouse.

Jackie and I spent a lot of time in RV parks in Long Beach, Washington area. Near to the mouth of the Columbia River.

Lots of things to do and see. The Cape Disappointment Lighthouse is on the Washington side of the Colombia River.

Also nearby was a Lewis and Clark Interpretation Center. Interesting and educational.

Also nearby was the Coast Guard Rough Water Lifeboat Training Center.

We really enjoyed the times we spent in the area. Probably a half dozen weeks altogether. I have lately found out that a cousin of mine was a Lighthouse Keeper at the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse.

I am proud of cousin Joel Munson. He not only could play the fiddle but he could save lives also!