Return to the Index for 1992

On this page, I will be putting any pictures I have in my album that don't pertain to a particular trip or event. They will be in sections by date.

September 10: Larry Marshall and I With Grant's AIDS Quilt Panel

Since Spring, Larry Marshall, one of the best friends that Grant and I had, and I had talked about creating a "panel" for Grant to be included in the AIDS Memorial Quilt. I thought about first getting some information about what the Quilt is and copying it here, but let me let the website for the Quilt speak for it:

Beginning early this summer, we spent some time designing what we wanted and getting just the right materials for it. Then we spent a number of weeks cutting out the patterns for the boat, the birds, the hills and the letters. I took strips of sailcloth and hand-painted the nautical flags to spell out a message from Larry and I to Grant around the border of the scene. Once we had everything cut out, then we began to sew it all together. The whole project took about three months, what with Larry's work schedule and my own, but the result was something of which I think Grant would have been proud:

We used stencils for the letters and found an outline for a sailboat in one of Grant's sailing books, and we enlarged it for our purposes. The flags were colored with special pens that can color small areas of fabric in strips, and then were sewn to the main blue fabric.

The day after we took these pictures, we took the panel to the local office of the Names Project, and it was sent to San Francisco to be included in the Quilt. Larry and I are hoping that a display of the Quilt or part of it will occur in Dallas or Ft. Worth sometime soon. When you add a panel to the Quilt, you can specify the cities that were of importance to the person who died, and then when the Quilt is displayed (it is too big to be displayed all at once in one place anymore), they will make every effort to get that particular panel to that particular city. I listed Chicago, Dallas and Ft. Lauderdale.

NOTE:
(Written in Summer, 2016)
Larry and I did get to see Grant's panel at a display of a portion of the Quilt in Fort Worth in 1993. It was an emotional time, as it was the first time we had seen the panel group into which Grant's panel had been permanently incorporated:

The distance of time has softened the memories of that first year following Grant's death- both for Larry and myself. Memories are precious, but all of us make new ones all the time. That doesn't mean the old ones ever go away; mine certainly haven't. They are coming back more and more clearly as I am working backward in my photograph collection to turn them into these album pages. And when I begin work on 1991, the year of Grant's death, they will undoubtedly be as poignant as they were then.

I should say, again from my vantage point 25 years later, that my relationship with Fred has not, nor could it, cause the memories I have of my six years with Grant; memories simply don't work that way. But it has given me a focus to move ahead into the future and into life. I do not know whether Larry has been as fortunate; I lost track of him in the year following the death of another close friend of mine in 2000. I can only hope that he has.

Whether or not you lost anyone close to you in the epidemic, you might find the website of the Names Project (the custodial foundation for the AIDS Memorial Quilt) to be inspirational. Even if you are too young to have known what was going on in the 1980s and 1990s, you will, I think, appreciate what committed groups of people can do to change the status quo. For if one thing is sure, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome will not be the last epidemic that we face; and not the last one that will claim tens or hudreds of thousands of our fellow human beings.

You can use the link below to open the AIDS Memorial Quilt's website in a new tab in your browser. The tab for this photo album will still be open, and you can return to it at any time.

Visit the Names Project Foundation

September 30: A Class at Lee Apparel in Kansas City

The Methodology Class for Lee Apparel was held in a Holiday Inn in Overland Park, Kansas- a hotel I had actually been to before. Unless I am going someplace interesting, like New York or San Francisco, I usually don't take my camera with me on trips, but this time, since I had flown here directly from Fort Lauderdale, I happened to have it with me. It was fortunate that I did. I usually don't take pictures of my classes, either, but this time I brought the camera in one day and took two of them.

Some of My Class Members

The Class for Lee Apparel

It was the second guy from the right that prompted both these pictures. I usually don't have many attractive people (of either sex) in my classes, but he was an exception; he had all the right qualities. Some discrete inquiries revealed that this guy was one of the models for the company's catalog; they had a series of them, all employees and of both sexes, that were "perfect" sizes for the clothes they manufactured, and so they saved money by using them as models rather than expensive professionals. An interesting concept, and they couldn't have picked a better size 32. Sadly, conversations during the week revealed him to be married with children.

November 14: "There Were Horses"

During Frank and Joe's visit today (see the regular album page for photos of that visit), I happened to take a picture of a new print I have hanging in the kitchen.

I got the print when I saw it in a local store that has furniture and artwork with a western theme; I thought it to be a poignant reminder of how our past has been forever altered by our present.

The print is almost like ledger art; it is very finely drawn. I have just spent some time trying to identify the print, which has been on that wall now for over 25 years; apparently, the title is not what I thought it was.

What makes it interesting, although you can't make it out in the photo at left, is that there is the faint images of an oil derrick sticking up through the clouds above the standing Indian. It is meant to contrast the rugged simplicity of the lives of Native Americans and the complexity of today's technological society.

I am still trying to identify the work and if I do, I'll return here and add that information to this entry.

November 20: Larry Marshall's House in Irving

My friend, Larry Marshall, has arranged with his best friend Betty to occupy her mother's old house in Irving now that Bette's mother had entered a nursing home. This will be good for Bette as there will be someone to watch over the place and because Larry plans on doing some improvements himself to the house. Beginning early this month, Larry has spent much of his spare time at the house getting it ready to move into. There was much work to be done, and I told Larry that I would take some pictures before the major work got started so he could have an album of before and after pictures. These pictures will probably only be of interest to Larry, and I am only adding them here in the interest of keeping my online album as complete as possible.

So if you aren't interested in seeing some "before" pictures of a house that isn't yours, go ahead and skip down to the next section.

The pictures are in two slideshows, and you can move through both of them with the little "backward" and "forward" arrows in the bottom corners of each picture. The number in the upper left will tell you where you are in the show.

1/7 2/7 3/7 4/7 5/7 6/7 7/7 < >

At left is the slideshow for any portrait-oriented pictures that we took, and below is a slideshow for those with landscape orientation. (It is easier to do two shows rather than mixing the two.)

1/8 2/8 3/8 4/8 5/8 6/8 7/8 8/8 < >

December 5: A Star Trek Experience

There was no particular reason for me to take the single picture that is in the album for today, except to show off an early Christmas gift that Fred brought to me.

This Saturday, when Fred came down this weekend, he brought me two early Christmas gifts. The first was the beautiful poinsettia that you can see sitting on the kitchen counter.

The second was a small model of the Enterprise shuttle Galileo with Spock's voice that he had gotten at Hallmark. He also found the candles, but he needed those to plug the Galileo into. I had seen the shuttles advertised, and he thought that being a Star Trek fan I would like to have it.

Fred never seems to miss an important date or holiday, but I have never seen him carry around a little reminder book or anything like that. I, on the other hand, have difficulty remembering more than just a few birthdays. Anyway, Fred is very thoughtful and considerate- just like Grant. He is the one who remembers everything people say that might indicate what they would like for a little gift or a big production.

He is very interested in the people he meets, and tries to find out as much as he can about them, and he remembers most of what he finds out. I fault myself for not being as attentive to detail as he is.

December 5: Some Pictures from Fred's House

My photo album seems to be expanding in purpose; now I want to include one picture that not only did I not take but I wasn't even present when it was taken. But since Fred took it, and since we are growing closer, I'm going to include it here.

The first picture Fred brought me was a picture of himself amidst the poinsettias in one of the Crump's Garden greenhouses where he works. Fred told me that he used his tripod and camera self-timer to take this picture of himself in the greenhouses one day at work, and wanted me to have a copy.

Fred works very hard at the greenhouses, and my impression, from all the talking he does about what goes on there, is that he is a very conscientious employee. There is a lot of politics that goes on at Crump Gardens; apparently if you are not a member of the family then you get the short end of the stick. Fred and a fellow named Bill Warden are the only two non-seasonal employees who are not members of the family, and even though the family members seem nice enough to them, there are things the family members get that they do not- like insurance.

Working for a family firm when you are not a family member can be trying, and I know that Fred wishes conditions were different. He has had an opportunity to go out on his own with a friend of his, but the greenhouse business is an uncertain one, and perhaps the saying about a bird in the hand applies here.

Anyway, Fred is a real asset to Crump Gardens; I just hope that they know that and act accordingly. (He is also, as you can see here, a very good-looking horticulturist, but that probably doesn't matter to the Crumps.

The other two pictures from this weekend I actually did take, and I think they are the first two pictures of Fred's house that you have seen in this album.

I suppose this was perhaps only the second time that I have been up to Fred's house- possibly the third. I think he enjoys more being here in the city for a change, so that's where he is most weekends.

So this was one of my infrequent visits up to his house in Van Alstyne. Fred thinks that he is a terrible housekeeper, and doesn't want anyone to see how bad things can get, so invitations to come up and visit are few and far between. If the truth be known, Fred is no worse a housekeeper than I am, it is just that I don't have all the trappings of a house in the country that can cause the house to get cluttered; if I took the newspaper and had all the catalogs that Fred does, my living room would look just like he says his does when he doesn't keep after it.

He is kind of like Grant in that respect; he doesn't want anyone to see the house until he has had an opportunity to clean it thoroughly. I suspect that, like Grant, the house really is not in such bad shape before he cleans it, but that is the way he is.

On this particular trip, I brought my camera and took a couple of pictures of the house. Unfortunately, it was late in the day already when I got there, and the sun was fading. This is the front of the house. Fred has no garage (yet) but says that he hopes to build one on next year.

To the left of the entry hall is one downstairs bedroom, and to the right is a bathroom and another bedroom. The living room is where the fireplace is, and then there are a dining room and kitchen across the back of the house. The master bedroom and a large bathroom are on the second floor, along with a nice landing at the top of the stairs that has bookcases and a place to sit and read.

Here is Fred's house from the back, and since it faces west, this is the east side of his house. He has a nice porch along the back of the house, and a balcony off the master bedroom on the second floor.

Fred spent a lot of time deciding how to orient the house on the lot, and it is designed to provide the maximum in views from the back of the house, and especially from the master bedroom. The back of the house faces East, so he also gets the early morning sun, which he likes.

Fred's house is very comfortable, and I like it a great deal. It is simple, but then so is this townhouse. I like the way he has it decorated; he has simply collected furniture and accessories that fit into his general Western theme, and I think everything goes well together. He is still in the process of getting all the things he wants.

The only drawback to the house, I think, other than not having a garage, is its distance from the city, but of course that doesn't matter to Fred. Because he is so far away, and because there is no cable where he lives, he doesn't get very good television reception, but then he doesn't watch it a great deal. He is, of course, north of McKinney, so when he commutes to work in the morning and home in the evening, he misses the traffic in Dallas, and of course McKinney is too small to have much of a rush hour.

All in all, I think the house is great, and I have never seen it messy or can imagine its being as messy as Fred says it sometimes is.

December 12: A Saturday Evening at My House

Well, we've come to the last picture of the first year that I have known Fred, and, fittingly, Fred is in it.

This Saturday evening, as we have done a few times this fall, Ron Mathis and Chris Young have come over to my house from Ron's condo up on Forest Lane east of Central Expressway to go out to eat and to play cards. (Greg was also in town and staying with me, so he was the one taking this picture.)

This is our typical activity on Saturdays when Fred comes down to the city (which I am happy to report he does frequently). Chris works in Sherman, three or four days on and then four or three days off, and he is always coming back down to Dallas on Saturday evening. Once he gets to Ron's apartment, where he stays, he and Ron come on over and we either just play cards (or some other game) or both play cards and go out to the Brick Bar.

It's an activity we all enjoy, and it has become something of a habit. We play Hearts and Spades, mostly. Ron is very competitive, like me, so it is not just a casual game. We play for blood (at least he and I do). Fred and Chris are a bit more interested in the getting together than the game itself.

Ron and Chris have been together only about six or eight months, so they are still at the stage where they use a lot of pet names (like the abominable "pookie"), but Fred and I try to overlook that, hoping that they will grow out of it.

You can use the link below return to the index for 1992.

Return to the Index for 1992