The Red-Tailed Hawk

I suppose that for the rest of my life that whenever I see this watercolor painting of a Red-Tailed Hawk, or for that matter see a live one soaring in the sky up above, I will remember Christmas of 2009 and remember how quickly things can change from a blissful peace-of-mind to a state of panic with just one telephone call.

This story really starts one morning in late April of this year when our daughter, Karen Duban, and I are sitting in my booth at the Lubbock Arts Festival. It is just after ten o’clock of the last day of the festival and it has just opened. There wasn’t much going on and Karen and I are pretty much exhausted. Suddenly, there is a woman in the booth looking at my drawings and paintings of wildlife and Texas scenes. She doesn’t say anything as she just studies the drawings and paintings. After a while, she turns to me and says, ”How would you like to have an exhibit of your artwork in our museum?” Stunned, I mumbled something like that would be great.

After introductions, we learned she was Viola Moore, Director of the Carson County Square House Museum in Panhandle, Texas. The museum is about twenty five miles east of Amarillo, Texas. The theme of their museum is on Texas history and early farm and ranch life in the Panhandle of Texas. After some discussion, we agreed that I would bring about fifty framed drawings and paintings for an exhibit for the months of January, February and March of 2010.

A few months ago, Viola suggested that my stories should also be in the exhibit. So I had to figure out a way to exhibit about fifty five stories that had to be mounted and hung a certain way to meet the requirements of the law for the American Disability Act (ADA). That turned out to be a major work effort for me over the last few months. Also, making the labels and pricing sheets turned out to be a lot more work than I had estimated.

My wife, Corinne, and I planned to spend the Christmas Holidays with two of our daughters that live near each other in the Dallas / Fort Worth area. On the way up there last Thursday, December 23^rd, I called Viola on my cell phone to discuss some last minute details. During the conversation, it was decided that I would bring some additional drawings and paintings to be hung in one of their other galleries.

During our visit with our daugthers, on Christmas Eve, the weather turned bad and it started snowing. With the snow and ice everywhere we couldn’t go anywhere, so I did this painting of a Red-Tailed Hawk to begin to learn better the patterns of the feathers on birds. It is evident in this painting that I have a lot to learn on this subject, however it is a start.

On Sunday after Christmas, the weather cleared and it was a beautiful sunny day. We packed up and headed for our home in Houston. On the way, I started reading email messages on my Blackberry cell phone. One of those email messages was from a lady that had bought a painting from me in 1969 at a small art show on the University of Texas campus and had recently found my web site. Getting that email really was an ego boost.

Along about lunch time, we stopped in Fairfield, Texas, to eat a hamburger at The Texas Burger. After lunch, and still thinking about the ego-boosting email message, just as we were getting in the SUV, my cell phone rang. It was my neighbor, Debbie, in Houston calling. She was frantic. She had gone to our house to feed my KOI and gold fish and had found my large main pond up out of the ground and almost empty with the fish all in one end in a small amount of water. I have three fiberglass ponds. The main pond is 20 feet long, 8 feet wide and 2 1/2 feet deep. I have about a dozen large KOI fish and a bunch of goldfish in that pond. Something had gone wrong with the circulation and filtration system and had empted the pond and it had floated up out of the ground. If something wasn’t done soon, all of the fish would suffocate and die. To fix this problem was way beyond what Debbie could do and we were still 135 miles from Houston.

So Corinne started driving so that I could concentrate on what to do. I started calling people with my cell phone asking for help. A lucky thing happened. I called the Lowes Water Garden Store. Steve Lo, the co-owner of the store, was there. He designs and constructs fish ponds. Of all the people in Houston, he was the only one that I know that would know what to do. He agreed to help and closed their store. He got the pumps, aerators, piping, etc. and went to our house. To make a long story short, Steve saved our fish.

When we got home, the main pond was back in the ground and was filling with water. The fish were swimming around, however our backyard looked like it had been bombed. What a mess.

The next morning, in the rain, I was working on getting the pumping and filtration systems going again. While walking on one of the flagstone paths around one of the ponds, I stepped on something slippery, and my feet went out from under me and I fell. I hit the rocks flat on my back without even putting my hands out to soften the fall. I lay there stunned and looking up into the rain. If felt like my hip was broken. I was wondering if I should try to move. I thought about my grandfather, who at my age fell in 1936 and broke his hip during a rainy period. He lived out in the back woods of East Texas and the roads were muddy and impassable. His family couldn’t get him to town, so he died out there in agony.

After a little bit, I decided that no bones were broken and rolled over and slowly got to my feet. It was time to count my blessings and get things into perspective.

Somehow, someway, things will get done. The fish will be alive, the filtration systems will be working again, the drawings and paintings will be loaded up and early Wednesday morning of next week I will leave to go to Panhandle, Texas, picking up Karen on the way, to set up the exhibit at the Carson County Square House Museum for the opening reception for my exhibit on Sunday, January 10, 2010, at 2:30 PM. All of you are invited.