Annual Report for 1996
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Hargrove Annual Report for the Year: 1996 [1]

Still at:    
6100 Bend of River
Austin, TX 78746-7201
(512) 327-5611

 

April, 1996: Siberut Island, west of Sumatra

Getting to Siberut is not easy. You take a ferry from Penang, 13 hours in less than ideal conditions, the kind of ferry where you start by looking for life preservers. The ferry voyage ends just as dawn is breaking, providing a dramatic backdrop for the small boats that take you to the river. Next comes a leisurely two-hour ride up the river to the home of a friend of the guide. This is where you stay for several days, in a house on stilts; with pigs rummaging around below; where mud is part of the environment, clinging to everything; where the local populace wears loin clothes made from tree bark subsisting on food from Sago palms, with an occasional pig for a feast. Ah! An anthropologist’s dream. It sounds better when you see the light in Claire’s face while she tells of the adventures. “At first, I tried to stay on the logs. The natives have very wide feet with almost prehensile toes, so they have no problems. I fell off several times. Finally, I gave up and decided that I was just going to get muddy. We were fortunate to be allowed to attend a ceremony in the local ‘village’ that few outsiders have ever witnessed. I worried that tourism would destroy their society, though.” Jim told her not to worry.

June 10, 1996: Ayote, Nicaragua

Ayote is located literally at the end of the road, a bruising four-hour truck ride from Managua, when the vehicle doesn’t break down. It usually does. Linda and Claire spent a week there working in a makeshift medical clinic. Christian Medical Missions, an Austin group specializing in third world health, organized the trip. Ayote is “by far the worst poverty I have ever seen,” according to Linda. Claire, having seen a bit more of the world, concurs. In the clinic, they did what they could, everything from extracting teeth to passing out anti-fungal medication. Linda wanted to pass out birth control pills and information, but the nuns running the local mission would hardly approve. After a week, they were out of time and medicine, and came home. Re-entry into our society was difficult: several tearful sessions describing the conditions to Jim helped.

July 4, 1996: Jackson, WY, nightfall

The day began auspiciously, clear and bright. Together with our aunt and uncle, Mary and Jim Larue, we ate breakfast outside the national park, with the mountains in full view, looming over the valley thousands of feet below. We spent the morning in the park, reveling in its wonders: checking out wildflowers; pointing out the moose with the radio collar for everyone; hiking to a small pond to find the nesting Trumpeter Swans. Now, as night finally darkens the skies, we wait with the residents of Wilson, a trendy new age enclave near Jackson, for fireworks to start. Meanwhile, the atmosphere displays its own variety of fireworks, with as many as three bolts of lightning visible simultaneously. Jim displayed his skill as a weather prognosticator by accurately predicting, “It will storm, but not here.” He relied on his mother’s oft-repeated dictum: “We’ll never see these people again.” The man-made fireworks and the natural combined for a long, boisterous end to a great day.

November 2, 1966: Rice University Stadium, late afternoon

The first quarter was ominous: Rice fumbled on the third play of the game, giving Utah the ball on the 25-yard line. "Oh no!” Jim thought. “Not again!"  After that shaky beginning though, we were treated to one of the best Homecoming games on record, a 55-10 drubbing of Utah. After the game, Jim sought out Charles in the Bud Light tent outside the stadium.[2] It was Charles’ fifth reunion, our 30th. "It’s been years since I saw Rice dominate someone like that!” he managed to shout over the din, his voice hoarse from all the cheering. Then he remarked, “What am I thinking of? I’ve never since Rice clobber someone this way!" Maybe we shouldn’t eliminate the football program just yet.

December 28, 1996: Palmetto State Park, Ottine, Texas, late afternoon

The day began one hour too early, thanks to Jim’s miscalculating the driving time from Austin to Ottine. Charles, Jim, and Linda started the Christmas Bird Count at dawn, about 7:00 checking out a small pond containing lamentably few ducks. We spent the rest of the day driving back roads checking out flocks of sparrows, meadowlarks, and assorted “small brown birds.” Late in the afternoon, with little light left, we returned to the pond, incongruously named “Salt Lake,” to find eight of these beauties: uncommon, but always beautiful Hooded Mergansers. Magnifique!

Linda continues to love working as a Nurse Practitioner for two family practice docs in South Austin. One of the doctors and his son were part of the Nicaragua expedition. She has devoted herself to planning trips, managing to take several. After the trip to Nicaragua, she left on a trip to Wyoming and Colorado with Jim and Claire. Landing in Denver, they took full advantage of Alamo’s “all the miles are free” deal to drive to Jackson and back. Along the way, we spent a long weekend with Rosalind and Bubba, our former foster children in Estes Park, and relived part of Linda’s youth visiting Casper, WY, a town that time has passed by. Somehow Linda still had the energy for a trip to Minneapolis with her mother, where they arrived in time for the first big storm of the season. In family tradition, they headed for the world famous Mall of the Americas. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the grand opening of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s latest movie, Jingle All the Way. The crowd was almost enough to convince them to leave.

Jim, after experimenting with semi-retirement for nine months, planned to drop out completely. Then he got a new job as VP of Development for BRC Health Care in Austin, “gray matter”[3] for seven programmers. In September, he said, “A piece of cake.” In October, he lamented, “This job is going to be hard. There isn’t enough time for birding.” This haiku-like fragment on the subject was composed for our 30th reunion. Then, on January 2, 1997, in a major surprise, the parent corporation reorganized and Jim retired yet again, one more furious charge older and wiser.

Jim has become a total addict to the Internet, using it for everything from buying plane tickets to finding out the birthday of Captain James T. Kirk.[4] His conversation is filled with acronyms, such as, “I think SWBT set up the SPIDs backwards on the ISDN line; MPP doesn’t work.”

Charles still lives with Amy in San Rafael, California, where he continues worming his way through the LucasArts organization. He accomplished the first step from contract to permanent employee in the Art department, keeping the artists happy. Now he is moving to the next logical step: keeping the artists’ machines happy. That is likely to prove a much more daunting task.

In his spare time, Charles hones his fencing skills, using experience and guile instead of youth and endurance. His maturity in the sport is showing. We heard him admit, “I was second. The guy who beat me was really good.”  For diversions, he and Amy have explored the vineyards and other quaint attractions of northern California with a series of long weekend trips. He has returned to skiing, since Lake Tahoe is “real close.”

Claire returned as planned from her excursion around the Pacific Rim in time to enter the class of ’00 at UT Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. This required several trips to Dallas by Linda and Jim to make sure that Claire was situated well. Several hours of riding around the area near the Med School with a cell phone finally paid off. Claire snatched up a nice, large one-bedroom apartment within walking distance of La Madeleine restaurant and other attractions. It is also the center of the alternative life style in Dallas, which makes for interesting neighbors. During October, Linda and Jim returned for Parents’ Weekend. After a day of lectures, they ambled down to the Halloween parade on Cedar Springs. Most of the men wore dresses; it was that kind of parade. Claire noted accurately, “I’ll bet I’m the only one here with her parents.”

Commensals included both the feline and procyonic[5] variety this year. Our three cats continue to do what cats do: sleep a lot except early in the morning when they demand to be fed. Anyone gullible enough to fall for this ploy is soon rewarded with a look of utter scorn as they take a few miniscule mouthfuls before moving on to more interesting pursuits, such as batting Christmas ornaments across the room. The raccoons, though, are not so easily pleased. One comes in the pet door whenever we forget to block it up and empties the shelves in search of chocolate and sugar, two of our main dietary staples. We don’t take kindly to such incursions. We have had to trap and transport one particularly obnoxious villain, only to have her quickly replaced by another.

Hope you have all had a happy holiday season. Thanks for waiting patiently for this annual letter. Come visit us in Austin!



[1] Please ignore all the footnotes, as usual.

[2] Some things at Rice have changed a lot!

[3] Gray matter: Older people hired by an entrepreneurial organization to lend an air of maturity and respectability.

[4] This will occur March 22, 2228, in a small town in Iowa. The site is marked with a plaque.
See http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/IARIV.html

[5] As in Procyon lotor.

 
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