My Old Friend, R P

https://imgur.com/a/c2vPq
Kevin Raus, R P Majors, Me, Vin (my brother). I met R P Majors when he was a neighbor of my sister Nancy and my brother-in-law Kevin around 1979 or 1980. R P hit on me immediately. He said "Are you with child?" Confused and irritated, I thought "Do I look pregnant or something?" Then he said "Would you like to be?", which made me laugh. I was always a sucker for someone with a quirky sense of humor. We hit it off and started dating. A better description of our early relationship would have been that we "loosely associated". We didn't ask a lot of questions or make many demands, and we both were seeing other people. We would dip in and out of the relationship and each others lives- days or weeks or longer together and then days and weeks or longer apart- a pattern that continued for many years with occasional exceptions. At this time, I rode a bike because I didn't know how to drive a car. R P rode a bike because he just liked riding bikes. Soon enough, R P met the rest of my large famliy and then were all riding bikes together. R P owned a business called "Texas Trees". He had a Volkswagon pick up truck and a one ton International truck that he used to haul tree trash, but he often rode his bicycle to a job site. He would load his bicycle with his chain- and other saws, some special spiked ankle binders and a strap (or belt) that he used to shimmy up the trunks of tall pine trees, and other equipment. That 'spike and strap' tree climbing was a sight unto itself! I swore that R P was part squirrel the way he would shimmy up a tree. The wealthy ladies in some of the better neighborhoods of Houston absolutely loved R P because he was never in a hurry and would often spend quite a bit of time chatting them up and generally shooting the breeze with them while working on their trees. R P was very small for a guy. One of the ladies he did tree work for said to me "When I saw that littly-bitty man get out of that great big truck, I just laughed and laughed!" I loved that he was my size! He also did beautiful work. There is an art and a science to trimming trees and it was something he was very good at. R P particlarly loved oak and pecan trees and would take me around to visit his favorite trees in the area, of which there were many. He (and we) planted a few trees, too. I still see them around town today and they still remind me of him. His favorite tree was a huge, ancient oak at a Houston area cemetary. We biked here to visit this tree pretty regulalry.
Favorite Tree: a Live Oak, estimated to be 250-300 years old. This tree is about 20 feet in circumference and the branch spread is about 120 feet.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Mewling, puking babes, " Jean Shepherd

" Mewling, puking babes. That's the way we all start. Damply clinging to someone's shoulder, burping weakly, clawing our way into life. All of us." Jean Shepherd from here:  The Endless Streetcar Ride into the Night, and the Tinfoil Noose From  In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash By Jean Shepherd https://www.nsftools.com/misc/EndlessStreetcarRide.html IF you find yourself feeling alone in the world, you aren't wrong about that. You have no one to rely on but yourself. That's just the way it is. Those that birth us often invest much in our survival. But that may be the extent of their investment. IF during your life and by some chance you happen to find someone who loves you for yourself, just they way you are, you are very fortunate indeed. It's unlikely that this will happen but it could. And IF that person turns on you- even after a significant amount of time- just remember:  " Mewling, puking babes. That's the way we all start. Damply clinging
Read more

Goodbye to my daughter.

It's been over 2.5 years since you left and nearly 2 years since we last communicated. I have  struggled all this time with the complexities of this issue. I no longer want to know where you or how you doing, have asked others to stop telling me what they know, and have asked others to stop urging me to be "the adult" and attempt reconcile. You are an adult too and it's unfair that I bear this burden alone. I can no longer "parent" you or be the "bigger person". I too am only human after all and clearly I have gravely failed somewhere along the way. I am sorry for that. I had no parents. I was abandoned as a child and it's probably the strongest experience that I most wanted that you would never know for yourself. Somehow you knew this and this is where you chose to strike at me. I should have known better to let you in. It's not safe. Whenever you make yourself vulnerable, you will get stabbed in the heart- even from you own child, who kno
Read more

Kevin Spacey

 There's a new podcast coving Spacey, some of his history, and the charges against him. https://www.radio.net/podcast/the-kevin-spacey-trial-unfiltered While I will never defend adults hitting on minors, and I recognize that everyone has their own responses to unwanted (or even wanted) sexual advances, I also have questions about Rapp suffering 40 million dollars worth of 'severe psychological trauma' from the sexual advance he claims Spacey made on him when Spacey was 26 and Rapp was 14. The event is described in the podcast several times in detail using trial and deposition transcripts, and including Rapp's own words. I (female) certainly fended off unwanted advances from adults (both male and female adults) when I too was a poorly supervised/unsupervised minor and some of those advances were much more aggressive and problematic than what Rapp describes. Perhaps I just have something in me that made me more resilient or more resistant to damage from these advances tha
Read more