The Terrible Catsafterme

I didn’t know a lot about John Nance Garner except that he had once been the Vice-President of the United States. Our first stop of the morning of Wednesday, April 2, 2008 – and in fact the reason that we had stayed the night in Uvalde, Texas – was to see the grave and former home of Garner. It didn’t take us long to find Garner’s grave in the Uvalde Cemetery so we had plenty of time to stop for some breakfast at Burger King before venturing over to his home, which was now restored into a museum of his life. Read the rest of this entry »

Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower most certainly rose to power as our nation’s 34th United States President from 1953-1961 due to his exemplary military record. He had served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and had planned and supervised our invasion of France and Germany, effectively forcing Germany to surrender. As President he had less of an impact, but did contribute to our country’s economic and military growth by the the deveopment of the Interstate Highway System. In addtion he oversaw the cease-fire in Korea, began the course of de-segregation of our schools, continued our country’s commitment to the Cold War, and advanced the Social Security system. Read the rest of this entry »

The title of this posting may sound like a nightmarishly tacky variety show, but I am really referring to my initiative in both Summer of 1992 and 1997 to collect autographs from celebrities who worked in friends with Robert DeNiro. Since 1991 when I first saw Goodfellas and followed it up with Cape Fear – and then began collecting DeNiro films one by one, I have been enamored with his film career. In the early 1990’s my goal was to acquire all of his movies on Laserdisc, which at the time was costing $30 (for the cheap ones) and upward. Since then, I have shifted to DVD’s and am close to completing the entire catalog. Read the rest of this entry »

If you believe those folks who said that the new millenium didn’t begin until January 1, 2001 – then we didn’t officially enter the 1980’s decade until January 1, 1981, at which time we celebrated the holiday with a traditional jaunt to Bill and Dottie’s house in New Lebanon. As usual, we killed two birds with one cake by also celebrating Grandma Range’s 68th birthday. Since it fell on December 29, she never wanted to disrupt the Christmas holiday with any kind of celebration until we had crossed over into the next year. Read the rest of this entry »