Going to Health Camp in Waco

The previous blogging was, in part, about Durango, Texas and a roadtrip I took to check out my namesake. Thinking about that put me in mind of something I saw along the way that seemed a tad odd.

To go to Durango you exit Interstate 35, in Waco, at Exit 333, to Highway 77. You head east and you'll soon come to a big traffic circle.

At that traffic circle, at 2601 Circle Road, is a greasy spoon type burger joint. That calls itself Health Camp. There were a lot of cars parked at Health Camp. If you click the photo, on the enlarged version you'll see "Malts", "Shakes", "Serving Super Burgers."

Health Camp opened in 1949. Making it older than McDonald's. One of the burgers on the menu is called the "Super Health Burger." With that you get a double-decker bun, 2 meat patties, lettuce, tomato, 2 slices of Old English cheese and "special sauce."

You can also get fries and onion rings at Health Camp.

I suppose you're wondering why this greasy spoon is called Health Camp. Well, seems the original owner, Jack Schivetz, had trouble coming up with a name for his new burger joint. All he could think of was Health Camp. Due to Health Camp being stamped on each egg his mom would buy from a nearby farm when he was a kid. Why couldn't he just call the place "Jack's Burger Joint" I couldn't help but wonder.

There's a guy in Texas calling himself Texas Burger Guy. TBG has a very good blog that's all about burger joints. He'd didn't care for the Health Camp burgers, but other stuff, like the shakes, he liked.

You can check out what the Texas Burger Guy thought about Health Camp by clicking here.

Durango Texas, the Town & the Person

Durango became my Internet Nickname way back in 1994. That year, or maybe 1995 my Durango named was tied to the name, Lulu, in a website Lulu's first husband made called Lulu & Durango In As The WWWeb Turns.

As The WWWeb Turns was soon Cool Site of the Day. Back when that meant something. As The WWWeb Turns was basically the email exchanges between myself and Lulu, with Lulu's first husband adding photos, most altered to give me a big forehead. As The WWWeb Turns may have been the world's first blog.

Lulu's husband soon tired of doing As The WWWeb Turns. One day I was summoned to his house and presented with the initial HTML for a new website, including a logo he'd made. The new website was called Dialing Doctor Durango. By then the Durango character had been established as being this sort of overbearing know-it-all. It wasn't a hard part to play.

Dialing Doctor Durango soon became a monster. I got questions from all over the world. Many of them not getting that it was a joke. When a German medical school listed Dialing Doctor Durango as one of the top 20 medical websites on the Internet, I decided the madness had to stop.

So, I started Durango World which continued after I moved to Texas. Around 1999 or 2000 I decided I wanted my own domain. I figured it'd be Durango something. Since I was in Texas I figured why not durangotexas.com.

When I chose that domain I did not know there was actually a town of Durango, Texas. Unfortunately for the real Durango, Texas, my webstuff sort of overwhelms searches for info about Durango, Texas.

Eventually I took a road trip to check out my namesake. It's a bit southeast of Waco. Durango, Texas has seen better days. It's pretty much off the beaten path these days.

You can go here and see what Durango, Texas, the town, looks like.

All you gotta do is look at this blog to see what Durango Texas, the person, looks like.

Zorro's Buffet and the Fort Worth Cops

Being deeply depressed due to my swimming pool being closed on a day so warm I've got my windows open and the ceiling fan spinning, I went to Zorro's Buffet, again, for lunch.

Friday is Seafood Day at Zorro's. I've decided Seafood Day is my favorite Zorro's day. I didn't care for Thanksgiving at Zorro's. Mexican Day is okay. But Seafood Day is more than okay, as in I liked it as much as my first visit to Zorro's, which was also on Seafood Day.

One thing about Zorro's, that I like, is there are always new things. Today I had a really good spring greens salad that had apples and walnuts mixed in with bleu cheese. There was a couscous type salad. You don't see couscous in many mainstream buffets. The grilled shrimp were prawn-sized, tasted like they'd been grilled in butter with garlic. Speaking of butter. Despite being told twice by commenters that the yeast rolls were excellent, I'd not had one til today. They are homemade, like mom's, well, actually better than mom's. And mom's are darn good. The Zorro's yeast rolls are very light and very buttery.

Anyway, good pigout at Zorro's today.

I like to take the backroads back here from Zorro's. It's like a drive through a 3rd World Country. I take visitors from up north on these type tours and jaws always drop. You just can't see this type scenery anywhere that I know of in the Pacific Northwest.

On the way back from Zorro's, last week, I came upon a long abandoned gas station which still had its gas prices on display. Gas prices which, ironically, match about what we are paying now. So, I wanted to take a picture of this to show you. And so I did.

I snapped several pictures, not realizing that there were 2 Fort Worth cop cars parked under the dead gas station's awning.

After taking the pictures I went down a side street, for a bit, due to seeing an odd scene of a kid on a horse in a fenced yard. These were little houses and little yards. The horse and rider looked way out of place.

I'd made it about a block when I saw a cop car behind me, lights flashing with one toot of the siren. I pulled over.

The cop got out, walked up, asked to see my license. I showed him. "What did I do wrong, officer?" I politely asked.

"Why were you taking pictures of us?" the cop asked.

"Huh? You mean just now?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"I didn't see you. I was taking a picture of the gas price sign."

"Why would you take a picture of that sign? They don't sell gas anymore.

"It's for my blog," I said.

"Why would you put that on your blog?"

"Because I think it's ironic and sort of funny."

"I don't see anything funny about it," the cop said, starting to sound cranky.

"Well, you probably don't wanna be reading my blog then."

"Okay, I'm gonna let you go. Watch what you're taking pictures of next time."

"Thank you, officer, I will be more careful in the future."

So, that's been my day. First Fort Worth robs me of my pool. And now the Fort Worth police are harassing me for taking pictures. What's next I tremble to wonder?

Fort Worth Pools Closed Under Warm Blue Sky

We are seeing our first blue sky in days, here in Fort Worth. That's the view from Miss Puerto Rico's balcony at about an hour before noon.

It is almost 70 out there. That's good swimming temperatures. But I am unable to swim. Like I told you yesterday, the city of Fort Worth has shut down the pools in town.

Fort Worth has been overreacting to pool issues, mostly drain and pump issues, ever since Fort Worth was successfully sued for a large amount of money, due to 4 out of towners, attending one of the rare conventions to take place at Fort Worth's Convention Center, drowned in an overfilled whirlpool at the Water Gardens that are adjacent to the Convention Center.

Due to that tragedy my pool was drained and new pump safety devices and drain covers were installed. At great expense. The new thing that the city is insisting on has to be installed by a licensed technician. So it may take awhile to get one here due to all the pools in town needing whatever this fix is.

Meanwhile, in the big city to the east, that being Dallas, none of these supposed safety improvements have been mandated. I suspect incompetent boobery is what is at play regarding the pools here in Fort Worth.

I guess the good news for me today is my bad case of SAD (Seasonally Affected Disorder) is temporarily abated by the return of blue sky and warm temperatures.

If I was still living in my old hometown of Mount Vernon, Washington, I would be snowbound today. They are having heavy snow and record breaking temperatures up there, with the ski areas finally able to open. But with severe avalanche danger. Avalanche danger is a danger we don't have here in Texas. My baby sister is stuck in Tacoma, snow and ice bound, unable to get to Olympia.

The lowlands of the Puget Sound zone can go years in a row with no snow. Where I lived we didn't get snow as often as further south, as in Seattle, or further north, due to being in a valley that was protected by mountains that caused what is called a convergence zone to occur south and north of us. But there was a snowstorm in the 1990s that was record breaking. I was snowbound for about a week. I cross country skied to the grocery store.

Click here and scroll down the page to see snow photos of my old abode in Washington.

Fort Worth Gas-Powered Leaf Blower Ban

Yesterday a small army of what may have been illegals from south of the border descended on my zone to attack the fallen leaves. With gas-powered leaf blowers. The noise is deafening, like a dozen Harley's without mufflers.

It seemed like hours were spent slowly blowing the leaves that surrounded the area around the pool up against a fence right below me. And then on top of the constant blower noise the men operating the blowers would yell at each other. In Spanish. Loud. So they could be heard over the blowers.

I thought to myself I can not be alone in thinking the use of gas-powered leaf blowers should be banned, just on the noise issue alone. Add to that the fact that you can smell the blowers exhaust fumes.

What is wrong with using rakes? These guys are so slow at blowing the leaves it would seem raking would be way faster. They end up using rakes in the end, anyway, once the leaves are blown into a huge pile, then rakes are used to get the leaves into garbage cans.

So, I looked into the issue of leaf blowers and learned I am not alone in thinking they should be banned. In fact, gas-powered leaf blowers have been banned in much of the country.

One guy had this to say on his blog......

"Whoever invented the leaf blower should be shot. See here. These contraptions are noisy, dirty, and environmentally destructive. First, they throw dust, dirt, and organic matter into the air, making it difficult for people (especially those with respiratory problems) to breathe. Second, they use gasoline, which pollutes the air. Third, they're infernally noisy. Whatever happened to sweeping or raking? Brooms and rakes are quiet; they don't throw dust into the air; and they don't destroy the ozone layer. They're also less dangerous. Would you want to walk around wearing a container of gasoline on your back? What moron would do such a thing? Nothing symbolizes our wasteful, arrogant, obese age more than the leaf blower. The sooner it is outlawed, the better."

Los Angeles has banned gas-powered leaf blowers. There is a website devoted to enforcing the LA ban. The website's URL is zapla.org. "zapla" comes from Zero Air Pollution Los Angeles. I found the following blurb from the Zapla website amusing...

"Los Angeles Residents, if your neighbors can’t or won’t control their gardeners after your polite requests, REPORT a blower in progress to 877-275-5273 and select number 1, Non-Emergency Crimes."

So, while it pleases me to learn I am not alone in my aversion to noisy leaf blowers, I know there is not a bat's chance in hell they will be banned in what one of Fort Worth's best known citizen activists, Don Young, refers to as Dirty Ol' Town.

So far today, no noise.

Alma's Men

Alma, the Songbird of the South, currently singing down at Port Aransas on the Texas Gulf Coast, sends me the funniest stuff. Some people who send jokes and forwarded things they think are clever, should do some re-thinking. But Alma's stuff is like it's gone through the Alma Good Humor Filter and so it's always worth opening. Alma sent a record breaking amount of good stuff today; disturbing video, a disturbing history lesson, the Redneck Book of Manners, all sortsa good stuff.

And then tonight Alma sent me an amusing thing about men. And how women really don't much need us. I'll copy and paste below...

For all those men who say, "Why buy a cow when you can get milk for free"? Here's an update for you: Nowadays, 80% of women are against marriage. WHY? Because women realize, "It's not worth buying an entire pig just to get a little sausage".

MEN ARE LIKE

1. Men are like Laxatives....They irritate the crap out of you.

2. Men are like Bananas.....The older they get, the less firm they are.

3. Men are like Weather....Nothing can be done to change them.

4. Men are like Blenders....You need one, but you're not quite sure why.

5. Men are like Chocolate Bars....Sweet, smooth, & they usually head right for your hips.

6. Men are like Commercials....You can't believe a word they say.

7. Men are like Department Stores.....Their clothes are always 1/2 off.

8. Men are like Government Bonds.....They take soooooooo long to mature.

9. Men are like Mascara....They usually run at the first sign of emotion.

10. Men are like Popcorn.....They satisfy you, but only for a little while.

11. Men are like Snowstorms....You never know when they're coming, how many inches you'll get or how long it will last.

12. Men are like Lava Lamps....Fun to look at, but not very bright.

13. Men are like Parking Spots. All the good ones are taken, the rest are handicapped.

Now send this to all the remarkable women you know, as well as to any understanding, good-natured, fun kinda guys you might be lucky enough to know !!!!!!!!!!

Now, see why I like Alma? She is such a good judge of character. And humor.

Foggy Fort Worth...etc.

Today started of with a zero visibility fog cover which had everything wet with slow motion drizzle, like a stereotypical day in the Pacific Northwest. But from what ocean is this Fort Worth fog coming?

I was in the pool, in the drizzly fog, before 8 this morning. I liked it. The view in the photo is well after the fog began to lift, taken about 2pm from Miss Puerto Rico's balcony. That's my official weather reporting station.

I left here about noon. When I got back here I was shocked, shocked, I tell you, to see "Pool Closed" signs on my pool. Apparently the city of Fort Worth has closed all the pools in the city. Why I do not know. Last summer they were all closed due to the outbreak of some parasite. I was in Tacoma when that happened. But why close them now? No one but me is swimming. I'm taking this very personal.

Neither rain, nor ice, nor bitter cold has kept me from my appointment with my pool. And now I'm to be stopped by the city of Fort Worth?

At noon my destination was Arlington, driving through the fog to Veteran's Park to do some walking and its attendant thinking. Walk/Think time is very important. At Veteran's Park a big statue has been added to the new Veteran's Memorial. It was impressive. Obviously that is what you see in the photo. That and the fog.

After I'd had enough walking I went to Chinatown to the Hong Kong Market. I got a lot of good stuff. There was something sort of disturbing going on in the Hong Kong Market though. The store has the usual piped in Muzak. It is usually Chinese sounding music. Today I could tell it was Christmas music classics. In Chinese. I heard Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, White Christmas, Jingle Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas. All in Chinese with the music part sounding very country western.

It is supposed to get back into the 70s for the next couple days. In the 70s and me without a pool. Life should not be this difficult.

The Great Success of Texans on Reality TV Shows

As my one longtime reader may remember, I canceled my subscription to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram at the start of December. My reader may also remember that I had one or two things I liked to point out and make fun of in that failing newspaper that I thought were goofy or funny or both goofy and funny.

The goofiest and funniest one was over and over and over again in all areas of the paper, including editorials, I'd read verbiage along the line of this, that or the other totally ordinary thing in Fort Worth was making cities and towns and people, far and wide, "green with envy." There were variations of the verbiage, like it could be some lame thing in Fort Worth was the "envy of" cities and towns and people, far and and wide.

I don't have any idea if it is true, but I like to believe that it was my making fun of this embarrassing trait that caused it to end. It's been a long time since I have seen the "green with envy" verbiage. Now that I no longer read that paper, I hope someone out there is monitoring it close enough to report if there is a fresh outbreak of cities, towns and people being "green with envy" over some Fort Worth thing.

Click here to read some examples of what you in the rest of the country have been "green with envy" about.

One of the other things that always struck me as goofy was if there was even the most remote connection between someone in the news or on TV and the Fort Worth area, that connection would be part of the story. It could be that some person on a reality show lived in Fort Worth for 2 months when he was 4. Or someone on a reality show is married to someone who lived in Fort Worth for 3 months 12 years ago. I am not exaggerating.

So, yesterday, or was it the day before, I told you that the banished Fort Worth Star-Telegram had been slammed up against my front door. Well, I read it. Why wouldn't I?

In an article about The Bigger Loser, Michelle Aquilar, winning and being from Fort Worth, the Star-Telegram's TV writer, Robert Philpot had this to say...

"That Dallas-Fort Worth residents tend to get on reality shows isn't unusual, but their success this year---in which So You Think You Can Dance, Nashville Star, Last Comic Standing and The Amazing Race were all won by people who were North Texas residents at the time---has been noteworthy."

"That's the Texans," said Bridget Braxton, another Aquilar supporter at Boston's (a Fort Worth pizza joint were a Biggest Loser viewing party took place). "It's their competitive spirit."

Gray Sky and Thawed Swimsuits in Fort Worth

Today the bone-chilling freeze of Fort Worth lifted. My swimsuit thawed and was once more wearable. It is a balmy 45 at 4 in the afternoon.

We have been covered by gray skies for 3 days in a row. I am slipping ever deeper into Seasonally Affected Disorder. A couple hours ago the gray skies started to drop little bits of moisture. The Weather Service just issued an alert for Dense Fog tonight.

In other words, even though the weather is being a living hell, here in Texas, this morning, unlike yestermorning, I managed to get in the pool. I lasted all of 2 minutes. It was by far the coldest yet. Which, I guess, makes sense, due to the temps not getting above freezing for about 48 hours.

My getting in the pool in the morning is starting to be an issue with the neighbors. I was told, minutes ago, that someone called the paper to tell them they had a crazy Yankee who was going swimming every morning, one of those damn Polar Bear Yankees. I will not cooperate with someone wanting to do a story about a damn crazy Polar Bear Yankee going swimming in Texas in December. Especially if it's the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The Return of the Unwanted Fort Worth Star-Telegram

My one longtime reader may remember that at the start of this month I cancelled my long standing subscription to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

I had a lot of reasons to cancel. I've not missed reading a morning paper. I thought I would. A couple times this month, out of deeply ingrained habit, I've headed to the front door to get the paper in the morning. I've always caught myself before I actually open the door.

And now, today, the 17th, at about half past 6 in the morning I heard an extremely loud bang on my front door. The only thing that makes such a bang is the arrival of the paper. But it'd never been that loud.

So, I got up and looked out the window. There was a paper laying up against my front door. Maybe it's the Dallas Morning News, trying to get me as a subscriber, I thought, hopefully. But, I opened the door to find that it was the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that had made the loud thump.

Now for the weird part. I took the paper out of its wrapper. An envelope fell out. There was nothing on the envelope, no address, no name, nothing.

I opened the envelope to find a card, the cover of the card said "Christmas Wishes." Inside the card it said "Hope you have a Christmas that's as merry as can be!" Followed by the stamped signature and address of my fired newspaper carrier. Written in big letters under the teeny stamped signature was my fired carrier's phone number.

I've never gotten a card from my paper delivery person before, not that I remember. It perplexes me. I know she's an on her sleeve, constantly blessing you, Christian sort. Maybe she was turning the other cheek. I know some practicing Christians actually know how to do that.