Sunday, November 12, 1972

Nov 12, 1972

13119 Hermitage, Houston

Dear Family,

The weatherman predicted a 40% change of showers today and up to now (about 12:30 PM, just before lunch) it’s been overcast so it seemed a distinct possibility that we’d have a shower. The sun has come out just a few moments ago so hopefully the rain won’t develop this afternoon and it will be dry outside for our proposed excursion to the Ima Hogg home near downtown Houston. Ima Hogg is sort of a “grande dame” of modern Houston — interested in bringing culture to Houston as in the founding of the Houston Symphony etc. — and her home is open to the public on some days. It’s supposed to be beautifully furnished in a way typical of 40 or 50 years ago (she’d quite elderly now), we’ll see how interesting it is. As I write I’m watching the K.C. Chiefs play against the Pitts. Steelers and it looks like a pretty even game so far; perhaps the P.V. Strands are watching this game also, with the interest of the home-town rooters in their case.

It’s been the usual Sunday so far with a later-than-on-a-weekday getting up time, a leisurely breakfast (waffles this morning), then church and the adult class that we’ve been attending (Jean, Palma & I, that is). Today our class started in on a study of the book of Matthew, marking about the halfway point in the class up till now the class had been concerned with the book of Genesis. We’ve found this quite an interesting class — the teacher is a lawyer and quite well read on the subject. We saw the Johnstons at the church service so stood and chatted with them afterward (Elsie is the girl Vivian knew back in Lakota days); they’ve bought a house trailer & a GMC station wagon to pull it and plan to spend Thanksgiving weekend in Little Rock Ark where their oldest son is a Vista worker; their daughter is in the Peace Corp in Africa.

Speaking of Thanksgiving we are a little uneasy about the prospect of the air flight to KC and may decided to come by some other means — the two recent hijackings have been a little too close for comfort. Jean check on Amtrak and we could take the Santa Fe — it’s been a long time since we’ve been on the train tho so don’t know how good the service would be and how we’d adapt to sleeping on the train. We’ll see how our thinking goes on this.

Tuesday was election day of course and I took a day of vacation, partly because I’d heard that voting in Texas at a general election was a lengthy procedure and I’d planned on taking a day of vacation during the week sometime anyway. Well we voted in the late morning and it took about an hour of standing in line — the precinct was really a big one as I was voted #1351 after the polls had been open about 4½ hours. As to the election we were rather disappointed as it turned out, tho the result wasn’t unexpected. In particular I was sad to see Tower re-elected as senator from Texas; a less appealing personality would be difficult to conceive while his opponent Barefoot Sanders (honest that’s his name) was quite personable. I watched the TV awhile in the evening but the result was obvious and I soon turned it off.

Wednesday evening we went to a “college” night at Westchester high. This was designed to give students an opportunity to talk to representatives of various colleges and find out if they were interested. Unfortunately it was poorly represented by western or upper midwestern school so we found it of marginal interest. Palma claimed she had homework to do so didn’t go, but she admitted later she’d seen the list of colleges that would be represented & had just decided she wasn’t interested. Most of Tuesday except for voting & yesterday I spend sanding down an occasional chair preparatory to having it re-upholstered. Made good progress but still have a way to go.

All for now

With love, C.P.