FAMILY OUTING TO KLEB WOODS

While my son Dave's family was in Tomball at Easter I suggested we visit the Kleb Woods farmhouse and nature preserve. It is located not far from my birthplace in Rose Hill.

It was a beautiful sunny day and the weather was appreciated by Dave's family, who had left their home in Michigan in a snowstorm. Instead of first checking in at the visitor's center we walked directly to the old farmhouse. I remembered visiting there as a child with my parents. After peering through the windows - the house was locked since we had not asked a volunteer to open it for us - we walked back to the visitor's center and looked at the collectibles there, including a Kleb baptismal certificate signed by one of my uncles.

Elmer Kleb, the last family resident at the Kleb farm and a great-grandson of the original owner, "marched to a different drummer." His mother's nickname for him was "Lumpy," spoken with a German accent. I believe he quit school around the 4th grade and rarely left the property. However he seemed to have an easier life than his sister Myrtle, who I believe was institutionalized several times and later committed suicide.

After inheriting the farm, Elmer stopped growing or harvesting anything but let the place go back to nature, enjoying the birds, bees, natural flora and fauna. He also had a relaxed attitude toward taxes and never paid them. Eventually a judge, realizing the property was worth more than its back taxes, appointed an attorney to manage Elmer's affairs. The farm was turned into a nature preserve by Harris County and the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department and a trust fund was established to take care of Elmer's needs. Elmer continued living on the property until he died in 1999, at the age of 90.

Kleb Woods today has many features including picnic areas, camp sites, a walking trail, and an educational garden.

As an adult I also visited the Kleb place, when Elmer contacted me about fixing his refrigerator. The house was so full of newspapers, boxes and other items that I could barely make my way to the kitchen. Eventually Elmer could no longer navigate through the piles and, rather than get rid of anything, he moved into a shed outside the main house. Although he had electricity when I fixed his refrigerator he gave up that and phone service, and later heat and running water.

Whoever unearthed the interesting items, including vintage Coke bottles, tools and jewelry on display at the visitor's center, must have had a lengthy project in sorting those treasures out of the junk. My daughter Sarah suggested that maybe the house should have been left full of clutter and displayed as a museum to hoarding. Keeping worthless items for too many years may be more of a national problem than people not paying their taxes.

MY GRANDDAUGHTER KELSEY AND THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER

Kelsey is the youngest daughter of my oldest daughter Pam, and Kelsey is no less accomplished than her two older sisters. Under Ben's Links at the right-hand side of this blog you can read about her softball scholarship to UT Arlington. She is also an excellent basketball player and honor student. I had a rare chance to talk to Kayla in detail on Easter Sunday and got many updates on her activities including her April trip to Geneva, Switzerland.

Kelsey is one of 18 high school journalists from the U.S. who won a competition sponsored by the US Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation to visit the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built, by a magnitude of 7, and will start running later this year. It is 27 kilometers in circumference, located 100 meters underground and spans the border between Switzerland and France. Physicists and other scientists from the US and around the world will use the data from LHC particle collisions to learn more about the basic forces that have shaped our universe. Among the mysteries they hope to solve are the origin of mass and the existence of black holes.

Education is a major part of the LHC effort, and it is hoped that the excitement of the LHC will inspire more young people to study science. Kelseya will be accompanied by a teacher and other students from Dobie High School in Houston.

ALL THINGS BRIGHT & BEAUTIFUL (Cat Stories)

Several years ago my wife's family was gathering for Christmas at her youngest daughter's home on Lake Buchanan at Burnet. We arrived several days before the 24th and had some time to ourselves. One afternoon my wife's daughter and husband were busy and a niece took their four children to a local park to play. My wife and I had taken enough reading material to occupy us, but by mid-afternoon I felt the need to stretch and do some walking.

The water in the lake was very low and there was no activity within sight. I noticed the four-car garage open and walked over to look. Besides the usual things found in a garage I noticed a number of pieces of good furniture, which I later learned belonged to our son-in-law's mother. She had closed her house and moved to a small apartment in Houston, making it necessary to leave some pieces of furniture in her son's garage. On top of a chest of drawers was a 1973 set of the Encyclopedia Britannica and a single hardcover book. I rubbed off the dust and saw it was a copy of a James Herriot book, All Things Bright and Beautiful, published in 1973. I wondered if this was the source of the TV series by the same name that ran on our PBS station Channel 8. I remembered watching some of the TV shows years ago on our 17" black-and-white TV. I think they appeared on Sunday afternoon.

Looking at pages randomly, I realized immediately that these were the same stories, some of which I remembered reading in a magazine such as Reader's Digest. I found out later that this was the first of a series of books telling of the author's experiences as a veterinarian in northern England. The original series of four books took their titles from a poem (hymn lyrics) by Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895): "All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all." The stories from these four books have also been recombined in separate volumes about cats and dogs.

I asked permission to borrow the book and took it to the guest bedroom where we were staying for the holiday. After a glance at the contents I immediately started reading. By Christmas Day I had finished the book, which brought back memories of small and large animals I have known. One story in particular, in Chapter 22, helped me to recall an experience that I had with cats. Mrs. Bond in the Herriot story took in stray cats. Dr. Herriot's description of the odor he encountered when he entered her house for the first time immediately took me back to the early 1970s.

I leaned the book against my chest, closed my eyes, and could sense the smell that overwhelmed me that day. At the time I was still selling and servicing Frigidaire appliances and air conditioners, and the company had just issued a recall on their refrigerator icemakers. A woman from Pinehurst that I'll call Mrs. C.L. (Cat Lover) called to say her icemaker was not working properly, and I assured her it would be replaced at no cost. We agreed on an appointment time and she gave me directions to her home. From the outside, her house was a typical 3/2 home on a tree-shaded lot, but when she opened the door the odor took my breath away. It was a combination of dirty litter boxes, fecal matter on the floor, in the corners and under furniture, plus the smell of tomcats that had not been castrated. By taking only shallow breaths I made it through the living room, the dining room, and into the kitchen. Cats were everywhere: on the refrigerator, on the counter, on the back of the stove, and when I opened the freezer door, more came running. The icemaker was held in place with two screws, which I quickly removed. I unplugged the electrical connection and slid out the icemaker, all while holding my breath. I put the old icemaker in the sink to let it drip, then opened the window over the sink and took several deep breaths while I unpacked the new unit. As I turned back to the freezer, Mrs. C.L. rushed in, slammed down the window and said, "Honey, if you are hot, take off your shirt. I can't let my babies get chilled." I quickly finished the job, hoping I wouldn't have to throw up, and let myself out the back door. Her neighbor later told me that Mrs. C.L. kept over 90 cats in that house.