The Travels of LynDen Haus: Visiting with some of the Texas Metzer clan

Saturday, 10 November. The day of our little mini-Metzer reunion. We drove out to Doug & Beke’s place a few miles outside the little town of Brazoria around 1:00pm. Doug had told everybody we’d eat about 4:00pm, so we had loads of time to visit and get a tour of their place. Doug & Beke were in the middle of getting ready for the wedding of their daughter, Shawna, at their place in a couple weeks. Doug had just put the finishing touches on a bridge over the lake on their property, complete with a covered roof, benches, and hanging Boston ferns. Should make for a beautiful setting for the actual marriage ceremony. We’re all praying for good weather, BTW. Slight chance of rain right now, but you know what they say about Texas weather: If you don’t like the weather, stick around for 10 minutes and it’ll change. One of Doug & Beke’s sons, Matt, also came out. Matt is “infamous” in his family for bucking the Texas A&M college trend and graduating from Texas Tech in Lubbock. Me, I’m impartial: I root for the Texas Longhorns! Ticks everybody off!

My Aunt Francis (who I will know forever as Tootie (and is only two years older than I am) arrived around 4:00pm, along with her daughter Carrie, and Carrie’s daughter, Emily. Tootie’s son, Jarvis, and his family arrived a little bit later. This included his wife Glenda, and their daughters Ashley (who could be a twin with her aunt, Carrie – two very beautiful young ladies) and Courtney, and their son, Zack. Doug and I grilled burgers for everyone, while Tootie brought some delicious potato salad and a wonderful lemon cake. Beke rounded out the rest of our eats for the day with all the fixings for the burgers, and we were set to enjoy some outstanding, down-home Texas-style hospitality. Throw in some cold beer and chilled wine, and we were good to go. After eating, we all just set back and visited, told old family stories, laughed-and-laughed and thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company well into the evening. For the blog readers our there, I was actually born in Kingsville, Texas. We lived in the Bryan/College Station area until I was about five. Then my Dad packed up the whole family in the middle of December 1951 and we moved to Washington State, where I grew up. But while living in Texas for those first five years, we lived right across the rural road from my Dad's folks, my Grandpa & Grandma Metzer. And my sister, Sandi, and I had our Aunt Tootie and Uncle Sonny (Harold) as playmates every day. We grew up as brothers and sisters and had more fun; we were so close in age. And to this day, regardless of any "other" influences, I still call them Sonny and Tootie. We took lots of photos, but unfortunately the flash on my camera wasn’t working properly. So, I apologize in advance for the appearance of the photos in this blog entry. Sorry about that. Darn it!