Austin

Our 13 year old grandson Austin, who we hadn't seen for almost 6 years, spent some time with us last month. His mom, dad, little sister and he recently moved back to Oregon from the Huston area, and he's full of Texas tales.

They hated the hot weather and high humidity, the insects of every description, and they survived hurricane Ike, which went almost directly over them, knocking down trees onto their house and leaving them without power for days in a sea of mud.

Austin likes to talk, and he told us all about it, with typical Texas exaggerations. (Thankfully, and to his credit, he didn't acquire a Texas accent.) “The mosquitoes down there were twice as big as they are here, and there were giant hornets, huuuge snakes, fire ants, wasps, ticks, chiggers and tarantulas.”

We set up an old Dell computer for him in the den and he and I loaded it up with games for him to play when he got bored with us. Like most teens he whizzed though them in no time, so I had to scrounge up some more. Once I came in to watch him playing a flight simulator game that had proved way too hard for me, and he was operating a joy stick, typing on the keyboard and working the mouse, all at the same time, flying like an ace.

We went to the lake where I showed him how to paddle a kayak, and he quickly caught on. He even challenged me to a race back to the dock. (I still maintain that I let him win.) Every day he went with grandma for her daily walk, and then later with me up the highway to Uncle John's house, talking 90 miles an hour all the way.

On one of our treks he said, “Wait a minute grandpa!” and he climbed down the bank beside the highway. When he climbed back up, he proudly showed me his find, a wheel cover that had fallen off of someone's car. “What in the heck are you going to do with that?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said with a smile, ' I'm thinking about building my own car, and this will be the first part!”

I''m not sure if he was kidding me or if he was serious, but it wouldn't surprise me, in a few years, to see him drive up in a car with a very familiar wheel cover on it.