Frog Gone

"And the frogs shall depart from thee, and from thy houses, and from thy servants, and from thy people." (Exodus 8:11)

Photo ftom Pinterest.

Second only to the courthouse, it is the most photographed structure in Kermit, Texas. It is mentioned in at least two travel books, this one and this one. And it's about to be painted over. And only a few of us, it seems, are sad about it.
From CBS7:
Posted: Friday, July 18, 2014 7:13 pm | Updated: 1:27 pm, Mon Jul 21, 2014.
by DeAnn Lopez

(Watch the video here.)

KERMIT - It seems that Kermit the Frog has over stayed his visit in one West Texas city.

The Muppets star's face was painted on the city's water tower nine years ago when Kermit came down to celebrate his 50th anniversary of being in the entertainment industry.

City officials have been planning Kermit’s departure for a little over a year now.

Even though it won't be cheap to paint over the Muppets star, it's a price they’re willing to pay to show their community pride.

Back in 2005, Kermit Texas was the first stop that Kermit the Frog made while on his 50th Anniversary World Tour.

As part of his visit, Disney was given permission to paint Kermit’s face on the city's main water tower.

But, in just a few weeks the high school’s mascot will be buzzing its way back on to the tower.

"It's been the desire of many citizens that we make this change," Mayor Jerry Phillips said.

The water tower isn't the only thing that Kermit the Frog left his mark on.

Kermit the Frog Boulevard, which runs directly in front of City Hall, will once again be named South Tornillo Street.

CBS7 photo.

During Thursday night’s city council meeting, council voted to re-paint not only the Kermit the Frog tower, but their other water tower, which is going to cost them $123,500.

But not all residents agree with council’s decision.

 "I kind of don't see the point of them wanting to recover the Kermit the Frog, we got a lot of attention even with the Kermit the Frog festivities that still go on, I mean the Kermit Celebration Days, which they call now,” Kermit resident Letecia Garcia said. “It brings in a lot of publicity for Kermit."

Long-time resident Jaime Morales says he can't wait until those paint brushes hit Kermit the Frogs face.

"I know Yellow Jackets has been up for the longest time, I came to school here (Kermit High), I was proud to be from this school, it doesn’t make sense why we would still have a Frog,” Morales said. “It’s time to let go and let our bee come back."

If all goes according to plan, both towers will be painted sometime in mid-August.

(I just found this: About a month after Kermit's visit in 2005, a UFO was reported near Kermit. Muppets from Space? - DK)

Confessions of a Christmas Deceiver

Robert is 10 and hasn't figured out the secret of Santa yet. This will probably be the last year we get to leave the Santa key out (for homes without a chimney), cookies and milk for Santa, and reindeer food (oats mixed with glitter) in the yard. I will miss being Santa.
Do you have any Christmas traditions you would like to share?

A Milton's Eye View of the World

My dad had a unique homespun expression for slow and steady work. "Do it like a cat eating a grindstone," he would say.
"How does a cat eat a grindstone?" I (or someone) would ask.
"Real slow," he would reply.
This came up during a visit today with Randy in the hospital. He said the doctor had requested him to do something very slowly.
"Like a cat eatin' a grindstone?" Randy asked.
"Huh?" said the doctor.

My dad also contended, seriously or facetiously, that Hitler would have won World War II if he'd had the Phillips screwdriver. I looked this one up on Snopes and they had apparently never heard of it. I did, however, find this site which says the Phillips screwdriver, which was invented in 1936, helped workers turn out vehicles faster during the '40's than they had done previously, but by that time I gather that the Phillips idea had been copied by everyone else in the world.

You can create your own homespun analogies by clicking here.

My Brother's Humor

I think my brother invented the totally gross joke in the 60's, except he called them morbid jokes because "gross" was not yet a word back then.





NORMAN'S MORBID JOKE #1:

"Johnny, for the last time, if you don't stop playing with Shirley, I'm going to close the coffin."

NORMAN'S MORBID JOKE #2:

Kid: "Ma'am, may Johnny come out and play?"
Johnny's Mother: "Now you know very well that Johnny has no arms or legs."
Kid: "Well, that's all right, ma'am. We just wanted to use him for first base." NORMAN'S HALLOWEEN PRANK:


My brother actually built "Shirley" one year for Halloween. I think it was 1970 or 1971. He and his family were living in a house that had a big picture window, and he got a cardboard windshield box, which was roughly coffin-sized, and put it in the window. Then he took a wig holder and painted it up and put a wig on it. He covered the rest of the box with a sheet and fixed a little spotlight over its prone form. It looked very realistic. "That is Shirley," he said to the astonished trick-or-treaters.

Church When I Was a Kid

This began as sort of a response to this post on Trey Morgan's blog, which is a nice way of saying I stole his idea.

• I remember the first congregation we went to was Southside in Odessa, now known as Texas and Clements. The building was sold to a black congregation in about 1964, and for awhile we had church in an elementary school building.My folks soon tired of this arrangement and moved to Sherwood. After my mother died, my dad remarried and we started going to Parkview in late 1968. Parkview is sort of famous now because Max Lucado was baptized there. The Lucado family went there until they moved to Andrews in 1966. So I missed knowing them by two years.
  
  
• I remember when gospel meetings lasted a whole week, usually preached by Abe Lincoln (not the president), Jim McGuiggan, or Ed Wharton. Ed was particularly memorable. He would write on a chalkboard as he preached, as if teaching a class. I remember he was the first preacher that explained grace in a way I could understand it.



• Gospel meetings usually included several responses back then, like baptisms and re-dedications. I remember one in 1970 where no one came forward all week, and the preacher looked all dejected by the end of the meeting. One of the elders even gave a statement about how the meeting wasn't a failure, that seeds were planted and would someday bear fruit, etc. It was markedly unusual.
  
  
• I remember our song leader and unofficial youth minister, Frank Harrell. He never, to my knowledge, held a title such as elder or deacon, but he worked harder for the Lord than anyone I ever knew. He did jail ministry before it was commonly done. On at least one occasion I remember a prisoner being baptized on Sunday morning, escorted by sheriff's deputies. Frank Harrell died in a car accident in April 1997, and his funeral was attended by more people than had ever attended a funeral in Odessa.
  
  
• My perspective on the church is different from many of my readers. I gave up on churches of Christ for several years, believing that no good thing could come out of them. Then I encountered the words of Max Lucado, Mike Cope, Rubel Shelly and others, and my mind and heart were changed. Hey, no wonder some call them change agents!

Leona Ruth Kirk

I've never written about her, except for one diary entry long ago, which was unfinished. I've never written down her story until now. This is what I know:

Sunrise at Pandale.

She was a strikingly beautiful woman, but in an unusual way. Supposedly she was part Native American, from the Blackfoot tribe, though I've never been able to verify this. She never spoke of her mother.

She was careful in her speech to avoid all appearance of evil. In her vicinity, you could not refer to the male bovine as a "bull". You always had to say "gentleman cow". The police were always police, never "cops". And she was serious about this, too!

She loved to sing. She had a melodious voice, so that even when she was talking it sounded like she was singing. She would sing while she worked, whether she was at her sewing machine or whether she was cooking or sweeping the floor or whatever she did. She mostly sang hymns, although she liked the records I listened to, especially the Beatles.

I don't know if she grew up singing the songs of faith, but in any case she learned them and made them her own.

When my mother needed to have a word with you about something, she had a gift for getting to the heart of the subject and cutting through the, um, the gentleman cow.

"Do what you know is right," she would say.

She loved the outdoors. She loved camping and fishing. Baker's Crossing and Pandale, both in Texas, were her favorite fishing spots. She was agile. She could sit for hours on her ankles, in a most uncomfortable-looking position, while she fished. She could scamper over the large boulders at Pandale like few humans could do.

She could kill a chicken with one hand. (I'll spare you the details.)

She could swing a mesquite limb switch really effectively at a disobedient son.

Leona met Milton, my dad, while they were in their late teens in Waco. They married, and had their first son, Norman, when she was just 20.

When she was 42, after Norman left and joined the air force, she and my dad had some trouble and separated for a short time. She went to see her sister in Dallas. After a week or two, my father went and got her. They worked things out, got back together and had sort of a second honeymoon. Soon she discovered she was pregnant a second time. She broke the news to my dad on a fishing trip to Baker's Crossing.
This pregnancy would be much more difficult, considering her age and all. Her blood pressure nearly went through the roof. But in December 1958, she gave birth to me.

At the age of 49, she learned to drive for the first time. I remember when she got her license.

She was active in the PTA. She and another lady were sort of the class moms at Midland Christian School, where I went. My classmates loved her.

One year, she got to be the witch in the spook house at the Fall Festival. In the darkened room, she had a big cauldron with dry ice, and a plate for the kids to touch, with grapes and noodles representing eyeballs and brains.I remember she did such a good job that she had to console at least one frightened little girl.

She was always learning new things. She bought an electronic organ and took lessons. She played very well.

On Thursday, May 2, 1968, Leona was alone at home, talking on the phone with Norman. She collapsed, and he called an ambulance. The doctors said she had had a cerebral hemorrhage. A weak spot in a blood vessel had given way. She had been born with it, they said, and had never known about it. It was a miracle in retrospect that she hadn't died when she gave birth to me, when her blood pressure shot up so high.

The doctors said she would recover. It would be difficult for us all, most of all for her. She would have to have much rest for a year. Plans were made to care for her at home. No one believed she would die except for herself. She knew she wasn't coming back to her earthly home again.

Leona passed away on Mother's Day 1968.

In the years since then, many family members have joined her. My dad. My brother's wife. My grandmother. My stepmom. My brother and his wife's parents.

If there are rivers in heaven, as many people have said, there must be fish. And if so, I can imagine the family, those who fished anyway, gathering by the river. I can see my mother sitting on her ankles in a most uncomfortable-looking way on the heavenly banks and dropping a hook in the water, all the while singing a song earth cannot know, and making the song her own.

People and Things I Miss

Ecclesiastes 7:10 "Do not say, 'Why were the old days better than these?' For it is not wise to ask such questions."

Okay...what is this? Type a Scripture and then proceed to violate it? How rude!

As I may have mentioned before, I'm sort of an old guy. Here are ten examples of people and things I miss from days gone by:

1. My parents. My brother. Other family members who have passed on.




2. Captain Kangaroo. Mr. Green Jeans. Bunny Rabbit. Mr. Moose. The Magic Drawing Board. Dancing Bear. Ping pong balls falling from the ceiling. Spongebob can't hold a jellyfish to this show.




3. Odessa, TX Permian High School Panthers football team in their glory days. (My apologies to OHS alumni.) See Friday Night Lights.
   
   
   
   
   
   



4. Horned toads.West Texas once had them everywhere. We could catch and release a dozen in an hour. They were easily caught and had no natural defense except to spit. My dog never killed them deliberately; she just viewed them as toys, flinging them around until they quit moving. She probably contributed to their near extinction. Or maybe they were driven off by loud music. Which reminds me of a question we've all asked ourselves many times.



5. The fragrance of roses, before genetic engineering.



6. Dr. Gene Scott (1929-2005) . Rated PG.



7. Life before some people had cell phones.



8. A coherent train of thought. (My own.)



9. The butterfly formation at Caverns of Sonora, Texas. The only one like it in the world, damaged by unknown persons.



10. 
    

Kermit Comes to Texas! by Robert Kirk

In the beginning, the city of Kermit was just dirt & ranches.








Then one day, the Disney company, the new owner of the Muppets, discovered that there was a little town in West Texas that shared the name of a famous frog.



What a coincidence! And what a place to launch the 50th birthday party and world tour of Kermit the Frog!

The first change we Kermit residents noticed was a new face on the water tower - painted by real Disney artists!

And wherever we went...

Kermit was watching us!

When Kermit arrived in town, Mayor Ted Westmoreland gave him the key to the city.Then things started happening. One of the streets was renamed "Kermit the Frog Boulevard''. IT WAS FUNNY! Then we started the parade...



It was great. And we were there to help. The Kirks, all three of us. We are in the picture below, right in the middle.

Kermit was the Grand Marshal of the parade.

Our finest cheerleaders.

At the pep rally afterwards, The Kermit band spelled out a big "50".

This balloon was flown in from Ontario, Canada, and it's the same one you see at the Macy's parade on New Year's.

This is the ''homecoming king'' and ''queen.'' m-m-w-a-h!

A moment they will never forget.

Text by Robert Kirk, NewsMan of KNN KPER-TV - DT KERMIT-ODESSA