C.S. Lewis once wrote that "a man loves his family, not because they are
great, but because they are his." I love my family also because I admire
them and enjoy their company.

Though I never lived in the former republic of Texas, I have family
all over the state: Lubbock, Dallas, Waco, San Antonio, El Paso, etc.
My immediate family lives near Houston. Well, quite a bit outside
Houston, about fifty miles to the north. There's a lake there, Lake
Conroe, and a lot of people who work in Texas live out there in the
extended suburbs nearby; places with names like Willis, Cut 'n' Shoot,
Grangerland, Cleveland, The Woodlands, etc. And of course, President
W's home in Crawford is pretty close too.

My mom and sister live in a house in the town of Willis and my dad lives
in a single-wide trailer about ten miles to the north. My
parents divorced a couple of years ago. It's unknown where each might
move to once my sister leaves home-- she's 17 years old now and itchin'
to leave home, perhaps for California.

This past weekend, I went to Lubbock, actually the small nearby farm town
of Slaton. I went to my great-Aunt Sue's house for the first ever Ross
family reunion-- that being my dad's side of the family. I had about 40
relatives there, all told. It was quite overwhelming for my grandfather
Ross and my dad. They both kept repeating how they'd never seen so many
kinfolk at once.

I met people I hadn't seen since they were in elementary school. Some
cousins I didn't even know existed. There was one cousin named Jeremy,
who's my age. Last time I saw him he was in high school. Now he's
married with two kids and drives truck for a living. He loves driving
truck and seems to have turned it into an art form. He was good to talk
to. Meeting him reminded me of something a friend named Colin once said,
"Truckers are the closest thing we have to cowboys now, they're the
cowboys of the American road." And as you all well know, the Wild
West provides some of the only legends young America has. And so
truckers are the inheritors of the legendary mystique.

Speaking of the Wild West, let me mention my Uncle Mo. Uncle Mo's what we
call him, the Mo being short for Moses, as he was dubbed the "new
Moses" during his wilder younger days in the charismatic Christian
movement known as the Jesus people. You will notice as you talk with Mo
that he has a passion for end-times prophecy. Perhaps it leaks out when
he casually refers to America as "Babylon," or when he discusses the
military build-up occuring in China and Russia, as they prepare to march
on Jerusalem and possibly America-- excuse me-- Babylon. He's an
eccentric fellow and I like talking to him. I think he should write a
book.

Speaking of eccentric, I also have a great uncle Jerry Don. He's quite a
ladies man for a good ol' boy in his late 60s. He's also got a great
pad/workshop. His latest interest has been model trains. So he turned
his workshop into a huge model train depot. Splayed out on a series of
tables the size of several billiard tables, he's got hundreds of feet of
track and at least a dozen trains. Some of them smoke and make sounds
like the powerful locomotives of yore. And the model is so intricate that
he's almost recreated his own town (Wilson, Texas) in model form. In his
backyard, as I reckon it oughtta be called, he's got a bunch of old cars
and trucks, with grass all growin' wild in and about it.

One thing I've noticed about the Ross family is their use of nicknames and
colorful lingo. I know many relatives only by their nickname, having not
ever learned their "given name", iffen they ever had-a one. There's my
uncles Mo and Zip and my cousins Colonel, Little, and Bert. It goes on
too... I've been known to give people nicknames myself, and to take on
aliases as the occasion arises.

Of the colorful lingo, there are phrases like "sakes alive" or "everlovin'
tar", as in "Well sakes alive! If you ever go snoopin' round that house
yonder, you'd best be ready to get the everlovin' tar beaten outta ya."

That's all for now, gentle reader.
I may have a comment thingy up and runnin' soon.

I'll leave you with a little nonsense poem by my grandfather Ross:

I saw Esau.
Sittin' on a seesaw.
I saw Esau.
He saw me.
-- Billy James Ross (b. 1920)