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If you owe the bank a thousand dollars and you can't pay it back, you have a problem. If you owe them a million dollars and can't pay, they have a problem. ---- Source unknown.
Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness. --Seneca
After 18 years of dedicated service to the Fort Worth T&P Federal Credit Union and its members, Claudia Dawson retired April 20. Best wishes to Claudia and her family as they start the best years of their lives.
Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are. -- Nancy Stafford
My friend and former co-worker, Willie Kirby, says that the Depot at Sterling City, Texas is still intact. It was built for the Concho, San Saba & Llano Valley Railraod a-way- back-when. At one time, before good roads, the city had a daily passenger train to and from San Angelo.
Jack Douthit, editor and publisher of the old Sterling City News-Record, once wrote of "The Great Sterling City Train Robbery."
The story goes that one day a flue busted on the steam engine that pulled the train. The water and steam put out the fire, and of course the train could go no further.
The train was only about five miles out of Sterling City, so a couple of the crew decided to walk the rest of the way and send back for everyone else. They decided, while they were at it, to take the U.S. Mail sacks with them.
As they were climbing the fence to get to the adjoining dirt road, they thought their luck might be changing. A man in a Model-T Ford automobile was driving up the road toward them.
The man was about to stop and pick them up when he saw the U.S. Mail sacks. He thought it was a train robbery in progress, and drove off and left them.
In short order, he returned with the Sheriff and a posse made up of nearly everybody in town.
Just in case you think a Model-T Ford won't hightail it, my father said the Model-T was the fastest thing in the world, for the first fifteen-feet. He said they could jump that far.
Special Announcement: The International Date Line is NOT one of those `900' numbers.
Today's paper said that just five companies now control 80 percent of the "sanitation paper" market. Folks, they are talking about toilet tissue -- one of modern man's most basic necessities. These companies could collaborate and raise the price to two dollars a roll and we'd pay it. Come to think of it, we could yet find a real use for junk mail.
The IRS has got what it takes to take what you've got.
The modern Capitalist or Free Enterprise system seems to have degenerated into seeing if you can come up a good get-rich-quick-scheme such as long distance telephone service "slamming", "you could be a winner - send us money or your credit card to find out" contests, "sowing" visa and mastercards to people who shouldn't have them and telemarketing. The trouble is, these rascals now appear to own half the world and all three branches of government.
Alexander Graham Bell would probably roll over in his grave if he saw how his wonderful invention, the telephone, was being used to cheat and annoy people. You can bet he never envisioned 976 and 900 numbers.
When you do a good deed, get a receipt, in case heaven is like the IRS.
I'm desperately trying to figure out why kamikaze pilots wore crash shelmets? --Dave Edison
"The Shiite Republicans aren't interested in fixing government -- They want to destroy it." -- Molly Ivins
Conductor James Heedley opined recently that the word "politics" was derived by combining the words "poly," meaning many, and "ticks," which are blood sucking insects.
You would think that with all the wrongs that exist in this old world, the militia groups could find some worthwhile causes to support. 1. Get a job. 2. Get a life.
Someone said on the internet BNSF is running Employee Appreciation Trips with their Steam Engine. They even intimated that BNSF was running more steam trips than we are.
Dennis Hogan of the North Texas Chapter of National Railway Historical Society say that VIA, San Antonio's transit agency, is planning a vintage trolley line in conjunction with other municipal departments. The first-draft plan is to extend the existing Texas Transportation Co. electrified freight line to the Sunset (SP) depot and to Brackenridge Park.
The line would use "new" vintage-like streetcars plus the authentic No. 300, now on lease to Portland, Ore. The SP depot is undergoing re-development as a hotel, shopping center, or some other commercial use. San Antonio planners want to use the vintage trolley line to jump-start interest in a modern light rail system.
In 1945, I was 11-years-old, and for a while, I had a paper route for the old Fort Worth Press. It covered most of Oakhurst. Throwing the paper wasn't nearly the trouble that collecting for it every Wednesday evening was.
The newspaper cost 15 cents a week, delivered. Today, it seems hard to believe, that some folks (in an area that most people regarded as relatively affluent), would not have 15 cents when you came around to collect. Most people would pay up, but it took a lot of them 10-minutes to search through their pockets and purses to come up with the money.
However, I remember later as a young adult, trading in milk and soft drink bottles so we could go to a movie when I was in the service or later in college.
Cy is a Locomotive Engineer in Fort Worth.
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