Desert Rose

Desert Rose was the name of a Salsa that started in Tucson, Arizona about 1978.  The owner sold salsa in non descript glass containers out of the trunk of his car at the Tanque Verdi swap meet. The swap meet was held in area of northeast Tucson located in vacant land by the Tanque Verdi wash and Tucson river (both dry most of the time except after a down pour from a thunderstorm.  The swap is long gone, moved to a location in south central Tucson not far off the Interstate 10 highway.

I was not a salsa user until I tried Desert Rose salsa and I became a real fan.  I could not get enough of that stuff. 

We had long and old friends located in Tucson and still have them to this day.  They are the ones that introduced me to the product.

Later I would have them get me supplies of the salsa which in time had risen from be sold in the back of car to being marketed in high end department stores in Tucson.  We even went so far as to make telephone contact with the folks that made the salsa and had it shipped to us at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

From Dayton I was reassigned to Germany and it became prohibitive to ship it to Germany.  So we suffered through the tour without having it available to us.  There was Mexican restaurant in Bitburg, not far from us at Spangdahlem Air Base.  But we found the food had hybridized to sort of German influenced product and not so good to our liking.

We returned to the states and were assigned to Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, California.  That was striking distance to Tucson.  By then we had a son living in Tucson and so we were able to pick some Desert Rose locally.  We also found some later in local grocery stores.  And we reestablished our telephone contact with the purveyors of the product.  So we were again being supplied with the salsa we liked.

I had retired from the Air Force and was working for Rockwell in San Bernardino and we had salsa and chips every Friday.  I introduced the group to Desert Rose and it became the number one product at our Friday shindigs.  This simply attested that Desert Rose was the very best commercial product of its sort.

We moved on the Ruidoso, New Mexico where I worked out on White Sands Missile range.  We kept getting the stuff via mail from their home offices.  By now it had moved to southern California. 
That did not matter we still could get the product.

That job petered out and I ended up in the Dallas/Fort Worth area working for Texas Instruments.  We resided in small community of Argyle, Texas.  And sure enough we continued to get supplied via parcel post.

Texas Instruments Defense Segment was sold to Raytheon and we were transferred to Tucson, Arizona.  No longer the home town of Desert Rose but you could get it off the shelf in the Whole Foods chain  of grocery stores.  No more parcel post for the time being, just drop by the store and pick it up.  Mind you it was not always available but reliable enough for us.

Then all of a sudden it disappeared.  I searched the Internet to no avail.  Yes, I found reference to Desert Rose Salsa but it was no longer be prepared.  The business had folded, the product line was gone.

To bad, we miss the product.  We constantly check local stores for their salsa shelf and find many brands and types of salsa but nothing to approach Desert Rose.

Leather Sofa's

We have had a pair of sofas in our large living area, both made by Lazyboy and they have served their time.  I liked them but Judie wanted to change the décor and so, why not.

So we saw a sale in Macy's and went and checked out their sofas.  We strolled around and found a dark brown sofa that met the need.  It is all leather, well at lease mostly leather.  It sits a bit higher than the old Lazyboy.  In truth the old Lazyboy had broken down a bit and was getting a bit long in tooth.  So it was time to let go.

We ended up buying two identical sofas from Macy's.  And since it has some electric motors in them we bought an insurance policy.  Said policy also provided some $300 off the next purchase at the end of five years.  The coverage is for five years.  It by itself cost about $500.

Macy's located in the Hulen Mall in Fort Worth only delivers out to our area on two different days per month.  That posed a problem, neither day was acceptable in March.  We bought the sofas in mid February.  Thus delivery was now put off until April.  That was disliked but not much choice in the matter.   We accepted the delivery dates.

Well, we then got a call the day before the delivery.  We expected them to provide us with at time window for delivery but no, the warehouse said both of the sofas had been damaged in the warehouse and they had to get a couple of new ones for us.

We doubted that, we suspect they sold them and were now stuck with coming up with two sofas.  So we had no choice to wait while a couple of new sofas were acquired.

They were finally delivered day before yesterday, May 17.  That's a long time since we bought them.  I used a camp chair to watch TV in the living area.  Not so comfortable but functional.  Of course, I was ready for those sofas.

The delivery was set up between 5 PM and 7 PM, not desirable but doable.  We no longer cared, we want the sofas.  They called us about 6:30 PM.  We said come on out.

A two man crew got the sofas in, removed the packing and set the sofas up for us.  Two nice fellows obviously used to doing that kind of work.

We told them the tail and they said, no, there had not been any damaged furniture that they knew about.  Sort of confirmed out thoughts that they sold our sofas out from under us.  Not provable but really suspicious in our minds.  We also learned that the sofas came from Dallas warehouse, no warehouse in Fort Worth.  So we understand why the delivery schedule was the way it was set up.  Its at least 60 miles out here from Dallas.

Any way we got leather now and they sit pretty good.  The camp chair is back in the garage again.

Crawfishing . . .

When I was a youngster I recall people crawfishing along what was then US 90 now US 190 along the sides of the road.  There was plenty of room in those days as big trucks were a very rare thing and there was not a great deal of traffic.  Also the land were not as well drained and thus the ditches along the sides of the road held water for a long time.  The ultimate habitat for crawfish.

I also did some crawfishing.  Tie a chicken neck on a piece of string and set in to almost any body of water and one could catch crawfish.  More sophisticated crawfishers used a square net about twelve or thirteen inches on the side with stiff wire that came to an apex above the net.  One tied the chicken neck in the center of that net and put the whole thing the turbid water in a canal or ditch.  You waited about ten minutes and then using a long cane pole lifted the net and swung it toward land.  You then quickly got to the net and dumped your catch into a wash tub.  Soon you have a good quantity of crawfish sufficient to take home in the tub.

Once at home, we flushed the water a couple times until it was clear running.  This got rid of most of the trash and of course the dirty water.  You dumped the crawfish into a boiling pot of water.  In about 10 minutes you had you cooked crawfish and could grab then and eat them.

Later as teenager, my neighbor had a bid sugar kettle and we built a big fire around it.  We then poured in four or five thirty pound sacks of crawfish.  We had added big round onions and dozens of lemons and a ton of seasoning.  Took a while but after a few visiting beers to encourage appetites, we had well season tasty crawfish to eat.  We youngsters acted as the labor and the adults drank the beer.

Now things are very sophisticated.  We have caterers that have a specially built trailer with a hundred gallon tank that is fired by propane gas.  He can boil several hundred pounds of crawfish at once.  He tosses corn ears and small potatoes.  Some even add sausage others toss in pineapple chunks, mushrooms and artichokes but that is mostly neighborhood boils where one cooks fifteen or so pounds at a time over a single propane burner.  The water is heavily salted and a great deal of cayenne pepper is add.

So we do our crawfishing today at the grocery store or a known supplier who imports to our region, Dallas/Fort Worth.  Those same caterers will sell you fresh crawfish too.  They are all imported to Texas from Louisiana, mostly from the rice fields in and around Ville Platte, LA.  Crawfish are the second cash crop off those rice fields today.

You no longer see people crawfishing along the sides the highways.  It is all a big commercial operation, an industry.  No matter they are just as tasty and if well season are spring treat.  We have been to three such boils already this year and probably will have one more, this one back in Louisiana at the camp on False River. 

Yummy!

Just Fix'en . . .

Spring has sprung and tis the season to repair.  Today I was deep into it.  Little stuff but it has to be done.

First I dug up a pop up sprinkler located in the side flower bed.  Parts of the bed is cover by five or six inches of Jasmine Ivy.  And the Jasmine vines get quite entangled and one has to cut his way through them and hand dig the sprinkler with a hand garden tool.  I hesitate to call it a shovel because it has a very short handle, perhaps a blade two and half inches wide and five or so inches long.  Just gotta sit down and do it.

Anyway I get down to the basic irrigation plumbing and screw in a 12 inch extension and them replace the sprinkler on top of that.  Now the Jasmine will not block it up.  I have done three so far, got several more to do.  But I have run out of materials for that job and moved on to other things that need some minor albeit time consuming action.

I have a weed eater with a shaft that accepts other attachments.  I can run a small tiller, a weed whacker, an edger and a blower off one 2cycle power head.  There are a few more attachments but I do not have them.  Well, the edger needed a new blade, got that done.  I have not one but two weed whacker heads both need work.  One had to be restrung.  I have perhaps 100 yards of weed whacker line, so I uncoil some of it, cut it and rewound the head.  The second weed whacker head simply needed to have the line fed out of the reel again, plenty of line still wound on the head.  That done too.

Then I tackled a big sprinkler in the back yard.  I had noted on one side of the unit, a hole had developed.  That usually indicates a leak of some kind.  This one had a broken case and water was spraying out of the side where the head screws on to the case.  I replace the whole thing.  It probably got broken by the lawn  tractor rolling over it.  These sprinklers are the more complex kind that rotate back and forth, a little water turbine is inside and provides the energy to turn the sprinkler head.  These often also wear out as the well water has very fine sand it in and that tends to erode the innards of the sprinkler over time.  As you can imagine I keep a couple of spares around all the time.

Irrigation systems are indeed constant maintenance.  A leak here, broken sprinkler there, pump problems, and so on.  But it has saved us thousands upon thousands of dollars in avoiding city water expenses.  City water is quite expensive and can cost you upwards of four or five hundred dollars per month if you irrigate.  The well is a fixed cost and after that it is a maintenance cost and some electricity and is amortized in a couple of years.  Probably costs us about $15 dollars a month in parts and power.  Cheap at that price and keeps the yard green.  The well has been with us for 12 or more years.

Finally I had to change a Delta shower control valve in the main bathroom.  It was a learning experience.  I finally broke down and bought a tool to turn the water on and off at the water meter.  A long T handled affair but gets the job done.  Yes, there is a water shut off but I think we have covered it over and so it is not accessible.   Thus you turn off the water at the street meter.

All the sinks and toilets have shut off valves but there is no where to install one on a shower control valve.  It is a mixing valve and has a single handle, range from full cold to full hot.  Well almost.  The old one had developed a drip and had to be replaced.  Had I known what I now know, I probably could have replaced the valve poppets but I did not know that.   I had to get a new Delta valve and I watched a video on the Internet on how to replace it.  Not hard but . . .

The newer valves come with a temperature control and are shipped in the literally cold "on" mode.  One has to adjust the control to get the hot water flowing.  And then water temperature is modulated by where the valve handle is set and can be varied.  But first one has to adjust the control valve to allow the hot water to flow.  Simple enough once you see it but unless some shows it to you or tells you how, well you get cold water.  Got that job done too.

I am getting good at replacing leaking Delta faucets valve seats, and toilet tank units.  Recently, the control valve washer broke up and infected the toilet tank unit.  I did know you could remove the top of the unit and clean it out, so I ended up replacing.  But I had to fix the control faucet before.  That is when I learned about shutting off water at the street.  I am pretty good at now.

Well next task is to lube and change oil in the lawn tractor.  But not his Saturday for two reasons.  First a cold front is on its way and it will be chilly and second we have the annual LSU crawfish boil.  I elect for the boil and will wear warm clothes.  There is plenty of time to deal with the tractor later.

Labor of Love, Well Maybe . . . .

Judie complained yesterday that the shower in our bathroom was "dripping."  Like I was to immediately cause the shower not to leak.  That is her logic sometimes, not irritating just expecting me to make it stop - now.  Of course I can not do that.

I turned to the computer and asked a question, "How do I fix a leak in shower valve?"  And I got about four or five answers.  Of course it depends on the brand, but I knew what that was as I had replaced the shower head a couple of years ago.  It is a Delta shower control valve.  I was surprised to learn it had a life time warranty.  But of course, we did not have the original purchase receipt so that free replacement stuff went out of the window.

I went to Lowe's and found a replacement.  There were a couple of models but I chose the one with the lowest series model number figuring it was the oldest design.  I was right.

The job is not hard to do but it is wise to listen to the fellow on the computer give his expert advice.  I learned for instance to be sure an use plumbers grease, a product I had never heard of before.  Luckily I heard him say it was silicone based grease.  And I found a little container of such silicone grease on the shelf in the plumbing department.  Expensive grease, I am guessing about an ounce of the stuff cost over three dollars.

The control unit was not cheap either.  If I got the Delta brand valve, it was $39 plus change, but the substitute brand, Danco, was ten bucks cheaper.  We now have a Danco control valve.  It does exactly the same job, looks the same, etc. for ten dollars less.

It seems technology has changed a bit since the original Delta control valve was installed.  It mixes the hot and cold water and positioning of the valve handle controls the water temperature.  However the new control unit, one can change the mix manually on the control valve to sway the water temperature.  I learned that watching the video.  And sure enough the new control did indeed have such an capability to make that kind of change.

At first I left it set as it was and found the water all the way on the hot side was rather cool.  It was not at all like the mixture of the leaking valve.  So I had to disassemble again and make the adjustment toward warmer water bias.  Now it runs like the old control valve, all the way counter clockwise is full hot and all the way clockwise is full cold.  There is a balance sorta in the middle.  Works for me!

Unlike faucets on the sinks, there is no accessible turn off valves down below somewhere.  So to do the job I had to turn off the water outside coming into the house.  That takes a special tool but our two "Old Handymen" were next door working on our neighbors bathroom.  I had seen them use the tool.  And they showed up about 9:00 AM to work and I walked over there and asked to borrow the tool.  "Sure, they said," and pulled lt out of the back of there old jalopy."  I was now in business to get the job done.

It all worked just as the video said except, the old valve did not come out as easy as theirs did.  But I got it out.  And sure enough, when I turned on the water again, no leaks. 

Wonder of wonders, Chip had done his magic once again.  I am sure the two old handymen could have done it, or a big time professional plumber but at a tremendous cost.  I would have expected a plumber charging a couple of hundred dollars to do the job and the two old handymen probably a hundred bucks plus parts.  I did it for plus parts or about $34 which included my 10% discount from Lowes.

Iris' Again . . .

The weather broke for warmer times so I took it upon myself to weed around a couple of Iris patches we have.  I did other Iris patches last year and these two patches got the treatment this year.  Both were literally over run by the St. Augustine grass and need to be weeded.

I had my eye on the first patch for awhile now, the remnants of St. Augustine grass had totally over run the patch.  I was a ball of dried grass and of course old Iris stems.  New Iris shots had popped up in the last week so I new I had to do something about it. 

I dug in sitting on an old chair pad and starting pulling out the grass.  I am here to tell you St. Augustine can be tough as nails.  At least my finger nails were packed with dirt when I finished.  Some of the basic backbone of the St. Augustine runners were an inch under the soil and tough to pull out.  But I got it all out in a hour or two.  Filled a bucket full of grass and some old oak leaves and Iris stems.  All of that went into the compost pile out back.

Yesterday I attacked another patch of the Iris.  This was a bigger patch, longer in length and took longer to weed.  But this time I used a couple of tools, one being a pair of pruning shears and the other a screw driver like device.  I cut around the edge and used the pry bar to get under the runners and pull up.  This sped up the process and was easier on the finger nails but they got plenty of dirt under them anyway.

After I finish each patch I grabbed a hand full of 13-13-13 fertilize and scattered it about the patch.  The Iris seem to like that fertilizer.  I bought a sack of it long years ago and have steadily used it here and there in the yard.  The gardening experts say I do not need that combination, just spread some Nitrogen fertilizer around.  I have some of that too but I am trying to get rid of the other stuff first.

Did a bit of grass cutting.  The weedy side of the yard next to the vacant lot was a bit high.  The remainder of the yard did not at this need a trim.  But I had to go get gas and I put in some treatment to make it last longer and fueled up the lawn tractor.  It fired right up and I went about doing the side yard.  Actually most of  the grass cut is really in the vacant lot territory but makes our yard look better, so I cut it.

Next I need to spread some manure compost or just manure in the front flower beds.  The house builder scrapped off all the top soil when he built the house and everything on the South side needs a soil boost.  So I spread some out every spring, some day I will have good soil there but not now.  The North side of the yard has no problems like that as that top soil remains.

Early Spring so some early work done.

A Time To Reflect . . .

Today is a time to reflect, it is my 77th birthday.  I am getting old.  But that is not the issue.  Passing of time is the issue of the moment.

I never thought I would get this old.  I just did not consider that factor at all.  But I am and now I have to consider it all the time.  Did prepare, not really.  I just lived this long although I do have health issues.  Heart disease is prevalent in my family, my brother died years ago due to heart attacks.  Today's medicine probably would have prevented that altogether but modernization of Cardiology had yet to arrive in his day.  He did live well.  I have minor heart issues.

My mother probably died of heart failure.  Her sisters died of it.  My grandfather literally dropped dead on the street.  His physician simply said his heart was worn out.  He died in 1942 on a side walk in New Roads on his way to the local movie.  He loved moving pictures.  He was in his late sixties.

My father, on the other hand, died of cancer.  He had survived three previous cancers, but the fourth one got him.  He died of breast cancer as did his mother before him.  He was in his mid eighties when he past on having lived a full life so to speak.

I have no cancer and I believe that is because I spent my adult life away from Louisiana.  I do not know if it is bad water, bad air or some kind of combination of the two.  I certainly lived in bad air in California smog.  Air pollution was horrible out there. But so far no cancer.

I quit smoking on January 1, 1980.  I had made a deal with myself to quit and stay quit of tobacco smoke by my 40th birthday.  Now that is 37 years ago plus a few months.  I took a year to break all the habits surrounding smoking tobacco.  They are all gone now.  No regrets, don't miss it at all but I am not bothered by other smokers at all.  So I am not a rabid anti smoker kind of person.

Agent Orange exposure in Viet Nam led to my current health issues.  I am Type II Diabetic because of the exposure.  The chemical of detriment is Dioxin, it gets into your liver and stays there.  It took almost 40 years for it to catch up to me and it has play havoc with other parts of the body.  That is what diabetes does to you.  I get nice compensation from the Department of Veteran Affairs for my afflictions but would rather not collect and be healthy.  Not gonna happen.

I have slowed down.  I have lost weight. I am more moderate in alcohol consumption.  I adhere to the old adage of "all things in moderation" now days.  And I view everyday as a new day in my life to enjoy.  So a positive attitude helps me through the day.  Yes, I do have some small aches and pains but you learn to live with that.

So upon reflection I have been a lucky person. I had a great career in the USAF, I enjoyed working most of the time in Aerospace Industry as a System Safety Engineer.  I have the right personality for all of this after life and enjoy it.  So thank you, Lord, for all that you have done for me and my family.