Once again Shreveport where dad lived and the adjacent Bossier City where we normally stayed was our starting and ending points for 2011.
In early January we escaped south to Texas primarily to visit San Antonio and replace the photographs of the Missions I had lost somewhere along the way. Passing through again late February Lori found a belated Christmas present of a large quilt showing all the Winnie the Pooh characters.
Unfortunately as will happen to us all dad was having increasing problems with memory loss and there were increasing demands for us to resolve some issues.
Several years before I had to start handling dad's finances and last year Sally and her husband Paul moved in with dad when the few times a week assistance was no longer adequate. Our baby sister Mary dancing with dad in front of the flag as the child closest to Shreveport had inherited medical responsibility and his girl friend Kitty who lived in the local area were all critical parts of the support team trying to insure dad could live as best he could.
Back again in April to finalize dad's taxes before heading to St Louis, Missouri to start our Great Train Adventure we stopped at Shreveport's downtown Riverfront Park for a shot with my new Canon Powershot S95 camera I got for the train. No, I did check it out and the building is not leaning toward the middle of the picture. It is an illusion from the cornice at the top hanging out over the edge. By now I have a wide variety of Shreveport skylines from both sides of the river.
Shreveport where dad lived and the adjacent Bossier City where we normally stayed was our starting and ending points for 2010.
I needed to be back in early April to finish dad's taxes but that had become more my thing than anything he cared about. Early May was the annual golf tournament which was a much bigger deal. First we made several trips to the driving range to practice. No he did not miss the ball, it's just next in line. Dad claimed he needed a partner because he could hit the ball further than he could see; he just could not see very far. During the tournament which was a four man scramble (after every stroke they all move to where the best ball is located) he was actually most valuable here on the green. He seemed to be the best at getting real close to the hole.
Dad really liked his golf and one of his greater thrills was when I got tickets for him to see Tiger Woods at the Memorial in Columbus Ohio. To me it has all the excitement of watching paint dry so I was rather bored and looking in other places.
Biggest deal of the year was dad's 90th birthday, but he really did not like portraits of himself. Several years before we had his slides and other pictures scanned and put into an electronic picture frame for him to view. For the party I got permission from a guy on Flicker to use an image of a C-47 dad flew during WWII. Laying that on a picture I took flying over the Rocky Mountains in the fall made a base to use AndreaMosaic to combine some 1600 pictures taken by him or the family. Up close the individual pictures are half by three quarter inch and recognizable. Backing away the plane and even the props are clear.
Obviously I have enough pictures from the party to fill several pages but I'll just include a few highlights like Charles who has been a fixture at the Barksdale Officers Club since like forever. The commanding general of the base also stopped to congratulate dad.
And again the star of the show was dad's great granddaughter Rylie both with her mother and uncle. Due to delivery complications she has trouble walking but is otherwise very sharp. I'll have more about her as I get a few more years complied.
Shreveport or more properly Bossier City next door where we were actually staying was our starting and ending point for 2009. We arrived for Thanksgiving in 2008 and stayed until the first week in January. Back in April to finalize dad's taxes we escaped to Dallas Fort Worth, Texas for a couple months with frequent day or overnight returns to help dad. Dad was developing dementia and could still live on his own with my brother around to keep an eye on him but he still needed additional help occasionally.
We timed our stay in Dallas Fort Worth to be back passing through for my brother's oldest daughter's wedding. I won't bore you with a lot of pictures that belong in the wedding book but her brother and niece dancing together were too nice to pass up. The crape myrtles were also in fill bloom all over.
After the wedding we headed back to Columbus, Ohio and meandered around the Columbus Shreveport corridor for a few months before getting back here at the end of November for the rest of the year with dad. Again a lot of family get togethers I'm not showing except green thumb dad's Christmas cactus in full bloom for the holidays.
The Red River forms out in the west Texas Amarillo area and becomes the southern border of Oklahoma and then Arkansas until it diverts from the defined state borders just north of Texarkana and meanders through southwestern Arkansas and northwestern Louisiana before almost joining the Mississippi River at the southwestern tip of Mississippi but becoming the Atchafalaya River running to the west of the Mississippi River down to the Gulf of Mexico. Whew, I hope you followed that. At the upper limit of navigation (questionable in the old days due to log jams) it divides the metropolitan and financial city of Shreveport to the west from Bossier City hosting Barksdale Air Force Base with it's thousands of employees and a magnet for the tens of thousands of military retirees in the area. Despite all the modern bridges the river still forms a wide gulf between the two cities and a classic case of sibling rivalry.. For right now I'll concentrate the pictures on the Shreveport side and later I'll probably have to create another page for the Bossier City side.
The cloudy evening picture is the Shreveport skyline including two casinos from Bossier City. In the very center of the Shreveport skyline is a parking garage I used for the other overlook across Riverfront Park and the conservatory at the visitor's center toward the big gold casino in Bossier City. Rivaly in all things.
This mural is actually on a sloping street and normally has cars parked in front of it. Even standing across the street it took two pictures to capture the full width and after stitching them together I was not able to completely eliminate the bloat in the middle. I have since learned some of the special techniques for making panoramas and expect future efforts will improve.
Shreveport has decorated catfish as a city mascot but has not gone the extreme of having hundreds.
They have a very nice riverfront park with gardens, a conservatory, water feature, and concert area. The water jets in the play fountain vary in height and provide a cool area for children of all ages to get out of the heat. The bridge in the background is the Kansas City Southern rail line across the Red River. The Union Pacific tracks run right through town a block west of the park. The park is also the northern end of a five mile trail along the river. Driving through town on I-20 the big mural on the building is a predominate feature and frustratingly difficult to photograph. The sculpture looking like a sunk ship is just one of several along Texas Street and the downtown area.
As you may have read on other pages Lori likes pigs. Driving west on I-20 toward dad's house this sculpture was on the swine barn at the Louisiana State Fairgrounds just before our exit and Lori would always exclaim There's my piggy.
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Not to get excessively morbid but I was curious about the elevated structures we frequently saw in local cemataries. Due to the very high water table many of the older graves were in above ground vaults. You may of heard about heavy rains saturating the ground and lifting swimming pools right out of the ground. Similar problem with a creative solution until modern technology came to the rescue.
One of the major challenges in our early travels was the need to help John's dad in Shreveport and still have time to travel. Mom was the financial guru and dad was no longer capable of making sure all the bills got paid. We were ending up 2-3 months with him in Shreveport and 2-3 months in Columbus, Ohio leaving only about half the year to travel. We did manage a family Christmas party and I let my niece take over the camera with minimal instruction resulting is some very interesting photographs like this fun shot of my brother-in-law Paul. More pictures of Shreveport and Bossier City to come in the future.