By Loretta Humble
Sorry I’ve been skipping out on my column here lately. It’s just that I haven’t been doing a whole lot of interesting things, or getting out to where I would see other folks doing interesting things. I could use a little help in this for a while. I really appreciate Teri Caswell and Billy Bucher filling in for me. If you have something you’d like to tell the community, talk to me. We just might work something out.
It’s been a while since I’ve had anything new to write about my friend John Walker. He’s been visiting his son Nick in Chile for several weeks. I believe now he is in Washington State visiting his daughter, though maybe he is on his way back now. He’s not much better at letter writing than I am, though I did get one letter from him a couple of weeks ago. I’m going let him help write this column by reprinting part of that letter. Sounds to me like he is have a grand old time.
Hey Loretta! I’m OK! I’m online today, but usually I’m not. The connection is nonexistent in Laguna Verde, on the coast, where I’m spending most of my time. Here in Santiago it’s come-and-go, mainly because my room is some distance from the router. I’ve recently worked out a routine for spending a day at the “Prince of Wales Sports Club” here in Santiago, a supposedly English country club (although I’ve heard little English spoken there), founded in 1925. I ride Nick’s bicycle to the club, 7 or 8 miles on one of the very busy cycling paths, work in the reading room, have lunch in the canopied outside dining area, take a nap in one of the lounge chairs by the swimming pool, read or write some more, and cycle home before evening. But even there, I haven’t succeeded in getting on line. Maybe next week!
What I have succeeded in doing is finishing a final draft of the first Part of the book I’m working on now. That means I’ll be ready to package up a proposal when I get back to Dallas, and start sending it out to University presses!
Nick is trying to talk me into an interesting project at the Laguna Verde property–designing an extra cottage for guests (including me), incorporating my collection of gothic paneling, glass, etc. Maybe so!
That gift from that nice lady is exciting! (He’s talking about the wonderful gift Connie Clancey gave the Garden Club. John joined our Garden Club, by the way.)
Okay, back to work. Today I’ll take everybody out for a dinner to a country restaurant in the mountains nearby, to show my gratitude for the hospitality! I’ll check in with you when I can!
I know using John’s letter for a column is kind of cheating, but I promise it is more interesting than anything else I have to tell you—yet. Actually I will be telling you some more stuff about the Garden Club progress soon, and also some stuff that is going to be going on here at the farm.
And I really did have a nice Christmas. I expect you did too, or if you didn’t, you probably don’t particularly want to hear me brag about mine. But I will tell you about my favorite gift: My son Doug dug up a lot of family pictures taken when the kids were little, that I thought had been lost, and had them put on DVD’s. It was the best gift he could have given me, and the rest of the family too. You might want to consider doing this some time. It costs some money to get them on DVD, but once you have one copy, the rest of the copies don’t cost much at all. So if you have a big family and lots of pictures to share, it turns out to be a wonderful deal. No shopping, and something everybody will love at a reasonable cost.
One interesting thing that I did recently was make a very brief visit to Jefferson, Texas where I had a cornbread sandwich at Kit’s Cornbread Sandwich and Pie Bar. It was really good, and Kit has got the
cornbread down to where it doesn’t crumble much at all, and still tastes like good cornbread. I didn’t dare ask them to share their recipe, but if I can figure it out, I might surprise everybody and enter it next year at the Cornbread Festival. Or better yet, maybe I can talk somebody else into doing it.