Fighting in the Middle East continues unabated. I see Hezbollah is now shelling Nazareth, the boyhood home of Jesus. Click to read article. To quote a widely-used phrase, "What Would Jesus Do?"
The diversity of the Kosse business community is continuing to become more interestingly broad-based. Ashley Gouldman has opened Need for Knead across the street from my office. It is a massage therapy clinic. Ashley's mother, Kali and I graduated the same year from Groesbeck High, so the next generation of Kosse entreprenuers emerges.
The grasshoppers are arriving to Kosse, a result of our current hot and dry weather. We have a number of insects and bugs which make an annual trip to our fair city. Among them are the brown little flyers commonly referred to as June Bugs. One Friday night about seven or eight years ago I received a call from a befuddled employee at the cafe. It seemed as if the entire June Bug population of south Limestone County had descended on the front sidewalk of the Kosse Cafe. According to her description, there were numerous hysterical women in bouffant hairstyles suffering the misfortune of having scores of June Bugs suddenly embedded in their hair. It was not a pretty picture. I was at my grocery store at that moment, so I sent the ever-faithful Jeffrey Threadgill armed with a can of Raid to fight the June Bug plague that had unexpectedly afflicted the catfish-eating clientele of the Kosse Cafe. I also mentioned to him to turn off the outside cafe lights.
I read in the Bremond Press that the City of Bremond has hired a traffic control police officer. What!? I’ve been in Bremond almost every day in the past thirteen years and there was only one time I saw a traffic jam. It was the night the Coal Mine Restaurant caught on fire and a large contingent of Bremonders were gawking on the side of Highway 14. I will admit I did my share of rubbernecking as I slowly drove by.
I was glad to see one of my former waitresses today, Nikki Herren. Nikki is originally from Teague. She was fifteen when she started working for me at the Teague Pizza Pro, so I got to see her grow up as a spirited young lady. When she moved to Thornton she was hired at the café, and proved herself to be a very good waitress who was well-liked by the customers. She left the café a few months ago to work for the pipeline company.
Another of my employees who has grown up with me is the premier waitress of Central Texas, Dana (Chicken) Taylor. One day she and I were sitting in my office having a gab session on subjects I do not recall. It was an informal setting so I decided to get more comfortable in my office chair. My chair leans back to a certain degree so I reclined my 1/8 ton girth, as I had done many times before. Unfortunately I pushed back too hard on the chair and the chair and I fell straight backwards onto my very comfortable concrete floor. After laughing uncontrollably for a couple of minutes, the ever-thoughtful Chicken finally asked if I was okay. That red-head is one of a kind.
We need high-speed internet in Kosse. I think we are the only town in this area that does not have it. We have Embarq (formerly Sprint) DSL in Bremond and it downloads from the internet at literally forty times the speed of dial-up. Once you get used to high-speed, dial-up feels like watching paint dry.
The Middle East fighting seems to escalate each day. I have had the news on while working at my office today and every few minutes there is a story of another attack by one side or the other. I read on Forbes.com that the "terrorist penalty" on a barrel of oil is $25.00. It would be nice if this fear factor among oil traders could end so we could see the return of under $2.00 per gallon gasoline.
There were sure a lot of solicitation calls today. I answered one of the calls and could not get a word in edgewise to the woman who was calling. When I asked her to please take a breath, I finally realized I was talking to a recording. The remainder of incoming calls from unrecognized numbers were handled by my answering machine.
Still hot and dry in Kosse. Temperatures over 100 degrees are predicted for the next two days and then we will cool down to a mere 98 degrees. In other words typical summer weather.
I noticed the Kosse Cefco is now renting movies. It is interesting how the formats of media have changed over the past thirty years. In each case the new format was considered state of the art, and would soon be replaced with the next state of the art format. VHS tapes are now virtually obsolete, as are vinyl records, eight-track tapes and cassettes. The good thing is that the price of media and media hardware drops dramatically in price with each new advance. The bad thing is that you then have to replace your media and equipment in order to once again be state of the art.
The space shuttle Discovery is due to land back on earth tomorrow morning. I remember hearing the explosion of the Columbia so hopefully it will be an uneventful landing.
One of the guests on the David Letterman Show last night was Anderson Cooper, host of one of the CNN prime-time offerings. He mentioned that his mother is Gloria Vanderbilt, American designer and heiress to the Vanderbilt railroad fortune. I found it an interesting tidbit of trivia.
Only one month until school begins. I really don't have much direct contact with the local schools beyond paying taxes and hiring school-age employees. As mentioned before, I taught in the Houston school district for seven years. It was at an inner-city middle school comprised of primarily Hispanic students. One year I was assigned a number of ESL classes; in other words these were students who had a very limited ability to speak English. The problem was that I did not speak Spanish. We watched a lot of films that year.
I've been following the plight of Barbaro, the Kentucky-winning racehorse who shattered three bones in his left hind leg during the Preakness race. His injury is life-threatening for a horse and a couple of days ago his veterinarian stated he would most likely would have to be euthanized. Yesterday's report was much better. Click here for article.
Still working on the World War II section of this website. Today I added a biography of Franklin Roosevelt. Click here for page. Between the Great Depression and World War II, I think it is fair to say FDR had one of the most difficult presidencies in history.
Bill O'Reilly put forth the opinion tonight that we are now in World War III. Let's hope he is wrong. The growing number of world crisis' do directly affect virtually every Kosse resident. The price of oil reached an all-time high today and is expected to go much higher if the Middle East fighting continues. I imagine we will see this reflected at the gas pumps by the weekend. Some analysts are predicting $4.00 per gallon gasoline if an all-out regional war breaks out between Israel and her neighbors.
The 100 degree days are here in force. I drove through Bremond today and saw the highway department resurfacing Highway 14 through about 1/2 the town. I have to admire the workers ability to withstand the heat of being on hot asphalt all day. I would probably have a heat stroke within a few hours, yet they do this day after day. When I was sixteen I worked as a groundskeeper and gravedigger at a cemetery. It was not the most pleasant job and I gained a greater appreciation for working outside in the heat all day. I had to endure many a bee sting and wasp bite, but the $2.15 an hour was worth it.
It's a hot steamy day in Kosse. I can almost feel the electric bill going up with each passing minute. Being addicted to air conditioning, I pay the price with only mild complaint. We generally do not think about our utilities until they either go out for awhile or the bill arrives. Three or four months ago the electricity in Kosse went off on a Friday for a few hours. Stacy had to close the cafe during one of the meal times. Friday is our busiest day of the week and it proved to be a very costly utility failure. Over the years we have had to close for water shut- offs, electrical failure, gas leaks, and twice when our outside gas meter got demolished by vehicles. We do not close if the phone goes out but it does negatively affect the business. The silver lining is that these things happen so rarely I can remember each time.
I decided to change the logo of the Kosse Cafe. For a number of years it was the picture of a newly-painted barn. It is now a picture of the Texas flag in the shape of Texas. No specific reason for the change, just thought the flag looked good. Plus I am proud to be a native Texan. I've read statistics on what Texas would be like today if it had remained an independent nation after 1845 (assuming it is comprised of the same territory it was during the era of the Republic of Texas. Click here to see map of Republic of Texas.) We would be the world's seventh-largest economy and a major oil exporter. Anyway, here is our new logo:
I will be gone for a couple of days so the Kosse Blog will return on Thursday or Friday.
