A ghost from Christmas Past??

I was up at the community building this morning about nine to get the ham into the oven for our volunteer Christmas Dinner.  The community building is located a ways behind the RV pads, and has a front room, full kitchen, shower, and laundry room for the use of the volunteers, interns, and occasional Friends of the Refuge meetings.  It is not open to the general public.  Have I told you that the RV pads are rather isolated as well? 

 

Anyway, as I was taking the plastic wrapper off of the ham, the door opened, and a crusty older gentleman entered the building.  His first words to me were “How come you don’t have the TV on?”  Well, hello, who are you?  Turns out he wanted to know if Glenn or Sonny were around.  Glen was a volunteer that was here for the last several winters, and Sonny was the ranger that ran the hunter’s check station last year; both a couple of ‘good old boys.’  Neither of them are here this year. 

 

As I worked away at stripping off the layer of skin from the ham, he regaled me with tales of how he would bring the boys some flounder and teach them how to filet the fish.  The conversation turned to Hurricane Ike, and how he was one of the few that sat out the storm in the nearby community of High Island.  There was a mandatory evacuation of the whole area, but he refused to leave.  When the police came to make him evacuate, he and a bunch of his cronies were ready for them, and stood their ground in his driveway with shotguns loaded!  As he tells it, the police backed down and he stayed. 

 

He asked me if he could have the ham trimmings to fry up for his hunting dog, Beau (I’m surprised it wasn’t named Bubba :)).  I said sure thing, and he wrapped them up in the plastic from the outside of the ham and was gone as suddenly as he appeared.  Funny thing is, I was here last year, and don’t recall this gentleman ever showing up…especially on Christmas Day.  Hmmm…

As I went back up to the building shortly before noon, two of the other volunteers had erected a small Christmas tree to make our meal more festive.

That’s Dorothy and Bob in the front, and Fonda and Denny in the back.  As usual, there was more food than we could possibly consume, and it was all delicious.  I especially enjoyed the raisin gravy, of course.  It’s only on a group occasion like this that I get a chance to make it.  :)

And in the surrounding fields, the cattle were lowing (or bawling) on this very blustery cold Christmas Day.  One of those young ones even found a way out of the fenced field and went high tailing it down FM 1985!  That was when I was back at the rig, and Emma went berserk!  She could see it out the side window.  Next thing, it’s mother was in hot pursuit down the inside of the fence line.  As they disappeared from sight, I hoped the young one found a way back into the field.

 

Thanks for stopping by…. talk to you later,  Judy