Distant Cousin Photo Album

[wilsondm2]

I've read a good bit about the Judge and visited the center in Langtry dozens of times. When you travel with kids, it's a welcome stop on a lonely road. I can still see them holding those earphones against their ears as they listened to the spiel in front of each diorama window.

I've been through Del Rio many times, but never stopped for any attraction except the Val Verde winery.     Next time I'm there I'll research it better.

My dad was a prof at UTEP. One of his colleagues was a woman who must now be quite elderly who told me her dad worked on the railroad in the old days and she spent her early years in Langtry, with the Judge still alive...I think. At any rate, one of her earliest childhood memories was her mother refusing to let her go outside because there was a dead body in the street.

Those dioramas and headphones are now set up at the Whitehead, donated by the state. I remember them from Langtry and from Del Rio.

I grew up just down the street from the winery and knew the Qualias well.  Oldest bonded winery in Texas. Thw grapes are all descended from Italy.  Great wine.

[BrassMan]

Is that cool! I have a bottle of their sherry, I think, that was so expensive (by my standards) that I haven't opened it after 15 years. I bet it's corked by now. I bought two though. I drank the other one.

Funny. I thought Del Rio was just a truck stop and a boat yard and an Air Force base until we searched out the winery. Neat neighborhoods back there. Sorry we didn't know you were there!

[BrassMan]

Here's the weird part about the maguey bloom. If the plant is way out in the desert, no problem. But if you have one in your garden, big problem.

A couple pictures above show the florettes as they bloom. There are probably 50 to 100 of them. Now let's take a closer look.

First, they make buds:




Then, each one of them sprouts:




Then, the sprouts mature into baby maguey plants:




Then they fall off--in the garden, in the yard, or wind-blown onto the roof and then to the other side of the house. Hundreds of them take root, everywhere, and you'd better dig them up before they get very big or they'll take over the whole area. One of the sprouts started growing while trapped between two boards of our back deck. The plant from hell, I tell you!

The only good news is that you can let the whole giant flower die and dry out, cut it down, and make a Christmas tree out of it.

[BrassMan]

E.g.: