It's a Process

It's a Process

Disclaimer: Graphic images below. Bird lovers proceed with caution.

Food for thought as we go: ". . . Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God's upward calling, in Christ Jesus." - Philippians 3:13-14

While practicing the annual discipline of reflecting on the past year - from silly times to Hurricane Harvey to graduations to deaths in our family and more - I remember the celebrations, the joys, the milestones, yes; but I also swallow hard as I recall our family's losses this year and the whirlwind of changes that have swept into our lives because of them. And our family has experienced much less loss than many others, so I am not complaining. It's during these pre-New Year days, however, that I often look to nature and find a source of grounding from the changes in the simplicity of creation and well, ranch chores. 

Therefore, today I chose to transplant my reflecting mind and busied self out of the house and onto the ranch to help Robert, and I'm grateful to have had such an option! With the ranch owners lodging here for the holidays and steadily quail hunting (Bob White Quail), it's "game on" time - Robert and the guys stay busy. Between quail hunts back-to-back and other events, he has precious little time to eat. 

Earlier today, he flurried in momentarily for lunch to scarf down a tuna sandwich before the next hunt and realized that he and the guys would have zero time to finish cleaning the quail from the morning hunt. In his conversation, he pleaded, "We need a bird boy." 

My head turned toward him. "I'll be your bird boy."

"Aw. I couldn't do that to ya." 

"I'm serious. I'm your 'bird boy'. Right now. That's it. It's done. Teach me. It's been a while." 

We squabbled a bit more, but I reassured him that the work would be "therapeutic" for me.

"Okay," he sighed in a final surrender.

The last time I cleaned birds was for Dad and when I was about twelve. He had a truck bed full of dove from a hunt in Mexico and started me on it by promptly teaching me to rip off their heads. My childlike fragility was shattered at that very moment and has never returned. 

I am still emotionally squeamish, however, toward handling bird carcasses for one simple reason; I am a bird LOVER - to a freaky degree. We communicate without speaking - me and birds - and I foster their lives by cleaning their cages, feeding them, singing to them, you name it. But not in a long, long time have I thought to rip them apart and dissect their frame by the process they call "cleaning". No. Not until today. 

The fortitude to clean quail came from nowhere and like a surge that had been waiting until the proper moment for its arrival. It was time. Time to handle the birds. From the house to the field and into my hands they would go. And then, of course into the freezer and onto a plate as a meal for others: their final end.

Also, because I am a public school teacher who is on break, I saw this as the perfect opportunity to get out of the house, to learn something new, and especially to help my other half from drowning in quail guts. 

The process was nothing short of nasty, perhaps more so for me because I had "conversed" with such creatures while they were living and felt an almost spiritual attachment to them. Each tiny carcass lay in a sacred mound on the crude wooden slab like tiny jewels waiting to be polished (see picture below). With pity as my guide, my ready hands were now determined to transform them from bloody messes to the delectable and rare treats they were bred to be, but this would not be easy. Like life, it would be a process - a messy, stench-filled process. In fact, it would be much like parts of this past year. And similar to the Bible verse above, I just had one thought: Bring. It. On.

Although it was a messy process, it was oddly satisfying. In total, there were sixty-three quail and one pheasant in that batch that were followed by one more group this evening which will be followed by one more tomorrow morning. For the ones we'll catch and put out at the Sunday morning hunt tomorrow, I cringe at the thought that this is their final night to coo; yet I also know that they are blessed to have been purchased by someone who fed them so well for so long and who allows the ones that get away to be left to breed at will on this 3,500 acre ranch, which we have actually had happen last year! 

One day last spring we were all outside and two quail came waltzing by our front window with a waddling string of seven little babies behind them. They became so tame, that couple did, that we named them Ma and Pa. They did disappear at some point though, and who knows where or how. Quail have a lot of prey in nature - ants, hawks, dogs, coyote, cats, raccoon, and more. Robert says they are the shrimp of the ranch. That's a fact, but they are the cutest doggone shrimp I've ever worked with.

Back to the gory part - the cleaning process awakened me to a whole other side of their brief existence. In essence, I equated the whole organized mutilation of some parts and careful trimming and processing of other parts to be much like the aches and pains of 2017. As I stated earlier, it grounded me to work with nature today. It brought it all home for me. With every snip of a neck bone or tail I was reminded of how each were no longer needed and had served their purpose. 

Their new purpose was simple - to obediently fall into the gut bucket of skins, feathers, hearts, lungs, and other remnants as a decadent meal for some living animal to consume. It is a comfort, in this process of the life cycle and such, to know that nothing is ever wasted. With that thought in mind, I am moving forward from this experience a bit changed. I am reminded by it that it is never meant to end there. It keeps going and moving forward as does all of God's creation and things living, including us. 

As we press on into the New Year, I hope to remember a few things about the process of life (and hope you do too) so that I don't get too "drunk"on the world nor too disheartened by it: 

• It's about progress, not perfection, as they say.
• Things will get messy, and that's okay.
• Just do the next right thing.
• And for God's sake, keep going! Don't give up!
• "To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world" - Bill Wilson
• None of us are here by accident, and God LOVES us all madly.

The Williams Family Nucleus - (left to right) David, Christie, Robert, Landon

The Aviary - aka The Quail House

Robert and Landon - Post-hunt quail cleaning with helper dog Josh

Christie - cleaning quail for a first time in decades after merely cleaning their cages and fostering their lives for the past four years - reluctantly learning to handle their carcasses

My sweet husband was nice enough to prep the quail for me by cutting off their darling little heads, wings, and feet to ease me into the process. 

Do I really have to cut that tail?

Yes. Yes, you do. 

And now to cut its cute little (Crunch!) - Oh, somebody help me. Eeeew.

Guts. Those are guts. Deep breath -

Scooping guts - NO. FUN. This will get better as I get used it. Surely. Naaastola. Putrid, stanky, skanky smelling - blach.

The first rinse bucket where they can chill in peace until the final part of the process.

Seriously? A lung? I have to squeeze off lung remnants? How many are like this? This is good for me. This is good for me. This is good for me. 

Finally - the salt water dip. Lean and clean. Done, son. 

Put y'all to rest on ice. And I'm out! Not exactly feeling Texas Tough, but hey. I done did it.

Snow Day at the Star Ranch 2017!!!

#snowisbeautiful #noschooltomorrow #hotchocolatetime 

Remembering the Life of Grandaddy Cooper 9-11-20 to 11-12-17

On Sunday morning, November 12, 2017, our beloved Grandaddy Cooper went home to be with His Creator. Below his picture here is the full obituary written by my dad, Charles Hanson Cooper, about his father, Charles Antoine Cooper. For a man who lived his life so fully with love toward God, country and man, this hardly gives one a glimpse of the legacy left by the life of our Grandaddy. Because he taught us to love, we can only pray and hope to live our lives as he did - so unselfishly and full of giving.

When I think of Grandaddy, this Scripture comes to mind:
"And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." - Micah 6:8

Charles Antoine Cooper - AKA – son, Cooper’s Bakery clerk, student, Daddy, Grandaddy, soldier, sergeant, husband, brother, uncle, cousin, teacher, principal, dealer in antiques, lover of God, lover of mankind, and lover of all creation.

Obituary written by Charles "Charlie" Cooper to follow: 

Charles Antoine Cooper

Wherever Dad went he made it a better place.  Dad was born, at home, to Leslie A. Cooper & Margaret Hanson on Sept. 11^th 1920.  The Dr. Rode a horse & buggy and the delivery took so long that after Dad was born he went to the buggy and took a big slug of whiskey.  Leslie went to the offices of the San Marcos record, where he was a regular contributor and exclaimed "It's a boy, he'll either be a prize fighter or a baker!".

Dad was raised a Methodist.  His Grandfather was from a family of Presbyterians and his Grandmother from a family of Baptists, so they decided to be Methodists when they were married. 

The Coopers owned Cooper's Bakery in San Marcos, Texas.  Dad grew up relishing the smell of fresh baked bread, cakes, pies, & cookies.  He learned the Spanish language while working w/ the Hispanic patrons. 

His young life in San Marcos was filled with hunting & fishing the San Marcos and Blanco Rivers with his brothers Jack & Edwin. 

He trapped furs as a youngster and sold them for $.50 a pelt which was "good money for the great depression days" he would say.  He was bitten through the right hand by a bobcat he tried to befriend and he and some buddies released 2 opossums in the darkness of the Palace Theatre that to start a near riot.

When it came time to graduate from high-school they had to retrieve him and some buddies for the ceremony, from the 5-mile dam on the Blanco river where the boys were seining fish coming over the flooded river dam.

Dad graduated from Southwest Texas State Teachers College in San Marcos (Now Texas State) and played trombone in the college band and his father played the baritone in the same band.  His trombone playing would follow him to war in 1941.

Dad joined the army and served in the celebrated Texas 36^th Division.  He was stationed at Camp Bowie, went through the Louisiana maneuvers and fought during WWII as a Seargent in the North Africa and Italian Campaigns.  He was there at the landing at Salerno, some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

He returned to the USA sickened from Malaria and Battle Fatigue.  While recovering at Moore General in Ashville NC, he met a beautiful nurse, Lieutenant Laverta Green.  They were married in Ashville May 15^th 1945.  Brother Leslie was born in March 1946. 

Dad received his Master's of Science Degree from Oklahoma A&M (Now Oklahoma State). He taught industrial arts at Texas A&I and started his public teaching career in 1949 as a Principle of the Utopia Texas School District.  While there me and my sister Margaret were born.  Charles did the county census for the Uvalde & Sabinal Counties and had some great stories about the hillbillies.  He also worked as a constable during summer breaks as well as operating a leather goods stand at Garner State Park. 

Dad was an artist, business man, and a jokester.

While living in Utopia he saved a man's life during a water well digging incident by using oxygen tanks. 

Dad took over the Superintendent of the Martindale School District in 1953.  He also worked as the Principal, Science Teacher, Spanish Teacher, and School Bus Driver. 

Sister Evelyn was born in Lockhart in 1953. 

Dad taught us kids how to hunt and fish the San Marcos Rivers, took us hunting arrowheads and taught us how to swim.  During the summers dad ran a horse stable on the little Blanco River; we learned to ride for free.  He also worked as a constable. 

Dad moved the family to San Antonio in 1961 and began his 25-year long career as a teacher in the Northeast ISD.  All the kids, with Dad's help, graduated from SA MacArthur HS.  Dad was a math expert and would invent games and techniques to make learning fun and was recognized for this and was sent as an ambassador to several Central America countries to help teach the techniques to the local teachers.

He would have boy's summer camps here in Medina at the 42-acre ranch he named Camp Manzanita.  He taught the young boys, swimming, fishing, river riding, about nature, plants, animals, fossil hunting, local geology.  All the things he had taught his family. 

Dad, his whole life, bought, sold, & traded antiques and collectable.  When he retired from teaching in 1986, he made it his second career.  Antoine's Antiques was the name of the business he ran out of his home in San Antonio.  He loved history and loved to "wheel and deal" and visit with his patrons. 

Mother passed away in 2006 and we moved Dad from San Antonio to live with us.  Dad visited a good deal to the Old Timer, Core, & Ace Hardware and with his dogs befriended many of the local residents. 

He loved to go to the Medina Days to run Dogs & visit.  Mr. McDaniel told me that he must have shown his photo of mom at least twice to every resident of Bandera County.  Mother was a pretty woman and he felt fortunate to have had married her.

Dad stopped driving when he turned 90 but wasn't happy about it.

He enjoyed taking care of the chickens, gardening, and watering his fruit trees. He remained in good health and caring for himself until his final days.  He passed away last Sunday morning in Bandera at the age of 97 years, 2 months, and 1 day.  On his office door growing up he had posted that: "A stranger is a friend you have never met" That is how he lived and his epitaph shall read.  "I loved my fellow man"

Southern Special Dinner

Southern Special Dinner

by Mom w/Dad’s coaching on the pork chops and potatoes

This meal was so yummy that we want to make it again, so the short and sweet recipes for each are below! We had many random fresh garden vegetables to cook, and this worked!

Skillet Pork Chops

Heat a few tablespoons of canola oil in a skillet to medium-high heat. Rinse pork chops (boneless) and dip in a mixture of flour, salt, and pepper. Fry the chops in the skillet for about two minutes on each side. You might want to lower the temperature to medium for the second batch to avoid burning the flour. Set on a paper towel or paper bag to drain the grease.

Sauteed Okra n Squash

Heat a few tablespoons of butter and olive oil in a skillet on medium heat. Add chopped, fresh okra. As you saute the okra, slice and add a zucchini squash and a yellow squash to the mix. Sprinkle with garlic salt. This was our FAVORITE!

Boiled Radishes

Wash and trim edges off of fresh radishes (save the green tops to rinse and tear for the mixed greens side dish). Boil a couple of cups of chicken broth, salt to taste, lemon juice, and a couple of tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. Add whole radishes and boil for about 15-20 minutes. Turn off, cover and let sit until you’re ready to eat. This was also surprisingly delicious!!!

Mixed Greens

Boil chicken broth. Add greens of all types and a couple of fresh garlic cloves (thinly sliced or however). We had left over greens of every type - turnip, collard, arugula, spinach, and radish greens - including a bit of thinly sliced carrots! Mmm mmm!

Baked Sweet Potatoes/Potatoes

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Wash potatoes and pierce them several times with a fork.

Smother the sweet potatoes in coconut oil and then butter. Smother the russet potatoes in butter. Bake for one hour.

Tips: To make this run smoothly, I cooked these in this order - baked potatoes, started greens & turnips, then sauteed okra and squash - dumped it out of that skillet and used the same skillet for the pork chops. By the time the pork chops were done, everything else was all just finishing!

Strawberry "Burrito" Carmelita Dessert

Strawberry “Burrito” Carmelita Dessert

(Dessert #2 in the "Carmelita" series - A quest for more dulce de leche desserts is always in order!)

The pictures speak for themselves - ingredients and all! As a side note - these were yummy except that a nice cold dollop of either yogurt, sour cream, or whipped cream would have been a perfect addition! Be sure to save any left-over dulce de leche on a spoon for your coffee or hot tea the next morning (see below)!

Banana Pudding Carmelita

Banana Pudding Carmelita

(the banana pudding with a tan)

By Mom

2 boxes instant vanilla pudding (5.1 ozs.)

1 can La Lechera Dulce de Leche (13.4 ozs.)

4 cups of cold milk

1 large banana

½ box of vanilla wafers

• In a large bowl mix the dulce de leche with the milk until well blended and frothy on top.
• Add the instant vanilla pudding mix and blend until mixed well.
• Smooth about a cup or two of the pudding mixture onto the bottom of any large glass dish that can hold up to 2 quarts. Just cover the bottom.
• Place rows of vanilla wafers on top of the first layer of pudding. You might use all of the broken cookies for this part and save the whole ones for the top.
• Smooth another 1-2 cup layer of pudding on top of that one.
• Top with banana slices - one large banana works.
• Add the rest of the pudding and smooth the top with a spatula.
• Don it with rows of vanilla wafers, and you’re done! Cover and chill for best results!

Gnocchi Chicken Italiano de Roberto

Gnocchi Chicken Italiano de Roberto

(Proof that a country boy CAN survive - and cook too.)

Gnocchi - 1 package

3 chicken breasts

Half and half creamer - 2-3 cups

Onions - chopped

Celery - chopped

Carrots - chopped

Spinach - chopped

Butter - ½ stick or so

Salt, pepper, poultry seasoning

Brown and steam the chicken breasts in a skillet until fully cooked, then shred or chop the chicken and set it aside. Sauté onions, celery, and carrots in butter while heating the half-and-half in a pot to boiling. Add chicken and all vegetables with spices to the half-and-half. Simmer for 20 minutes adding the gnocchi for the last 5 minutes. Serve with your favorite side of bread (we love yummy naan bread) for dipping!

Knot Justa Swingin'

Knot Justa Swingin’

By Christie Williams

“A figure eight on a bight," David casually explained.

"A what?!" I cross-examined.

bight - /bīt/ noun - a loop of rope, as distinct from the rope’s ends

This was the gift of our son, David, toward what would become the seat of fun for his niece and nephew . . .  two ready swings hanging from an oak tree in the yard. Our newest family members - Chelsea and Grant - now three and one, would surely enjoy such fun. From this fresh idea for a family that could use something to lift them.

One year has passed since their parents divorced, with this being their home away from home when they are with their dad, our oldest son, Landon. Moreover, it has been three years since my husband, Robert, lost his leg in a hunting accident and joined the ranks of other BK (below knee) amputees. These little things like swing raising bring joy and make a difference.

As a rock climber, David knows the importance of knots and ropes and the science behind how they support not only fun and sport, but most importantly the lives of the ones they sustain. When I asked him how he tied the rope, his response led me to the dictionary following his careful explanation demonstrated with the physical gesturing of a figure eight tie around a simple bight.

It was not as complicated as it sounds but surprisingly effective and sturdy for the part of rope that secures the swing to the tree. Mesmerized by the process, it occurred to me that what each of them gave mystically mirrored who they are - climber and fisherman - even to the very type of knot and its placement.

In fact, David’s figure eight with a bight was something likened to him - methodical and purposeful, yet adaptable. This was David’s contribution.

My husband, Robert, on the other hand, applied the crafting of the fisherman’s knot - fixed, strong, and unbreakable like him. This was Robert’s contribution.

As I watched these two raise these swings like suns rising to burst the darkness, my heart smiled. I saw the blossoming of our son, David, providing for our grandchildren something he had used to scale the mighty two-thousand-plus-foot mountain, El Toro, in El Potrero Chico, Mexico; to something that would safely hold family a foot or two off of the ground.

With every part of this swing-raising event, gleaming rays of the character and personality of each continued to shine. Robert stood sturdily and gracefully at the base while welcoming his son to ascend the ladder. Assisting David to the higher part at branch-level where his own footing would have been less secure, he humbly supported it below, yielding way to his assistant. Later scaling it himself for a final shake to test the system of purposeful knots and loops applied, Robert was still providing.

My guys were not just hanging a swing that night, but like children themselves - God’s children - they were securing love for their family by the greatest means of all - their actions. What began with a bight, a loop of love, transcended our little yard that day. Like the figure eight, our family dynamics continue to gain strength from such expressions where using God-given talents supports everyone.

“Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.” - I John 3:18

UNT Mariachi Aguilas 2017