I was remembering today, as I replied to a comment Teal made on my previous post, a vacation our family took to New York when I was a kid. It was more like a working vacation, as my dad's job with the Oklahoma Military Department often took him to confereces in far flung parts of the nation. We would often make a vacation out of it and go along. Believe me, at those conferences, there is still plenty of time in the afternoon to do the sightseeing a body would want to do. Back to my story.

He always had (and still has) an uncanny knack for finding the seediest, most dangerous parts of any city, without even trying. I don't think he sought them out, they found him. Well, in New York, guess where we found ourselves on our first foray into the city...the Bronx. He had heard about the Bronx in movies and in the news and just wanted to see it for himself. This time I guess he did seek it out. Lo and behold, we pull up within a block of some policemen in a kefluffle with some malcreant and he wanted to get closer. So, against the insistent pleading of my mother that he just get back in the car and drive away, he went walking up as close as he could in order to find out what was going on. I don't remember what the final analysis was, but my real confusion rests in whether or not I accompanied him. I would like to imagine that I did, but I really don't remember. I might ask him next time I see him.

Now, I don't in any way mean to imply that Teal's New York is the Bronx, but I rarely think of New York without thinking of her, now that we all know how terribly fond she is of the city.
 
In other news, since my nephews are coming in from Fort Worth this weekend to spend the week with my parents, I'm going to put up my mother's swimming pool today. Dad has the truck and trailer away on an extended portable building delivery, so I get today off in addition to my regularly scheduled Monday off.

We need a little gate at our house before we can put our pool up. There are too many neighborhood children who might be tempted to take a dip without supervision. I've found it's just better to keep your pool a secret when you can. Especially from children who are prone to walk into the back yard uninvited anyway. Fortunately, we have a very tall privacy fence with no gaps all the way around our back yard. We only lack the gate.