Best Photos of 2025

Well, this is photography blog, as well as other things. And I have been a bit absent minded when it comes to posting. So here are my favorite photos of 2025. Happy New Year.

We took Joey down to Galveston for New Year’s.

Kitchen Sunrise.

Celebrating our 10th Wedding Anniversary in Memphis, with some friends.

North Fork Holston River — Virginia.

Our granddaughter.

Our sleepy grandson.

Celebrating my 64th birthday at Tricky Fish in Fort Worth.

The LAST pair of Birthday Tecovas we will ever buy. See my previous post. AS a follow up, I did get my first pair resoled and the man who did it said I should buy Lucchesse next time.

Joey’s 18th birthday!

Joey’s graduation. I’m proud of him.

Our first visit to downtown Knoxville, with the rain shower option.

We found a quaint loft in downtown Knoxville.

Completely relaxed.

Picked up the boys for a drive over to Rockwall for some burgers and ice cream

One of the perks of my job: field trips to the petting zoo at the fair.

The absolute best breakfast of the year!

Ducking out of the wind, trying to enjoy the beach.

The best part of Galveston.

The best sunrise of 2025.

The best gift of Christmas.

Heidi and I found a great barbecue restaurant in Lebanon, TN. It was our last meal together before I flew back to Texas, in order to preach last Sunday. Alas, I was too sick to preach and slept all day. Heidi stayed in Tennessee with our daughter and grand children. We all ended the year under the weather.

Where I Wanna Be…

New Year’s Eve at the Beach

After enjoying Christmas down in Galveston, we decided to go back for New Year’s. This time, we had Joseph with us and managed one good day on the beach. It was actually too cold and windy on New Year’s Day.

The above photo was replicating the photos Heidi and I took on Christmas Eve. This one below, is our first attempt, when Joseph was trying to keep his shoes dry.

Heidi says it looked like a body was lying there.

The Best of the Fall of 2024

A few photos for a photography blog???

Standing on the Seawall

How many thousands upon thousands of people have strolled along the Galveston Seawall since it was first constructed in 1902 is hard to imagine. We would probably be surprised at the numbers, or the celebrities, or even villains who have strolled along the wall, looking out over the sand and the sea.

But for me, walking with Heidi was a moment that I desired for a long time. I wanted to stand there, look out over the sea with her, just as my grandfather had once done with my grandmother. And perhaps, as my father had done with my mother. The sea wall, the soft sand, the pitiful waves, are part of my family history. Not a huge part, but a part nonetheless.

We stood, looking over the pitiful waves, feeling the wind on our faces, watching the sun set. It was a moment, where history came together, along with the love the LORD had given us. Words fail me…

Gaido’s in Galveston

I was almost like a kid last week as we crossed over the bridge in I-45 driving into Galveston. We were getting there before our check-in time at a VRBO down close to the Strand, and Heidi suggested we head on to Gaido’s for an early dinner. It had been almost 50 years since my last visit there, back in the late 1970s. My family often spent weekends in Galveston while living in Houston, either to go spend time on my father’s boats or to stay at my mother’s beach house out at Jamaica Beach.

I wanted to take Heidi so that we could enjoy the restaurant together. We certainly did, because it is an old-style restaurant with white table clothes, carpet, and no loud music. It had music, but throwback music to the 1940s or maybe 1950s jazz.

AS you can see, it has a wonderful set up, like something from the 1960s or before. Restaurants likes Gaido’s use to be the norm, but so many of them have opted for the Spaghetti Warehouse model, concrete, wide-open spaces, with loud music, so that if you want to have a conversation, you have to yell to be heard.

We started our dinner with a plate of oysters. Since it was November, that is an acceptable month of oysters. You never order them in May, June, or July, only in months that have an ‘R’ in the name.

Our oysters were covered with a hollandaise sauce that has bacon bits and green onions mixed in for extra flavor. Delicious.

Heidi had one of the specials of the day, blacked snapper, which just melted in our mouths. Yes, she let me have a bite.

I opted for a combo plate with charbroiled snapper, fried shrimp, and scallops. As usual, hers was better, but mine was still excellent.

Did I mention the bread the brought with our appetizer? It too, was extremely delicious. By the time we finished, I think our waitress (yes, that is the gender proper form), knew better than to offer us dessert. We were stuffed.

Another neat aspect of Gaido’s is that they are also part museum since they have been there so long.

This is one of my favorite pictures, the construction of the sea wall from the early 1900s. The only problem with the sea wall is that it doesn’t circumnavigate the city. Otherwise, it was a great idea.

Thursday Doors — February 4, 2021

I love the yellow door on this blue house. Caught my eye and reminded me of so many of the beach houses I grew up around in Galveston, TX as a boy. There were not a lot of blue houses with yellow doors, but there were a few. So in one sense, this yellow door is out of place. We are no where near the sea. But it is a fine looking door.

I also included a wall mural of Starry Starry Night I found on a building near by.

This post is my entry into Thursday doors, hosted by Dan Antion at No Facilities. Check his post for the day, and others who also post as part of the challenge.

Hearing the Beach

Standing underneath these palm trees, I could almost hear, and smell the beach. These trees seemed so out of place, here in north Texas, but were able, for the moment, to remind me of growing up going to the beach in Galveston as a boy. There are plenty of palm trees in Galveston. There is also the smell of the sea, the sound of the surf, the cry of the gull. It would be nice to walk along the sea wall, even with social distancing, and stop in some local restaurant for some fried shrimp and stuff crabs. There are only 316 miles to go, before I could do that. Given the situation around us, I’m quite certain it’s not going to happen.

My Father’s House

Back in March 2014, my father took me and my boys down to Galveston, TX, and we were able to tour the house where he was born and grew up on Ball Street. The house was built before the 1900 hurricane (the worst hurricane in U.S. history) and most recently survived Hurricane Ike. It’s a well-built home.

The family lived in this house until after World War II when they moved to Houston.

Childhood Bedroom

Out on the balcony, my father told us that this was where his bedroom was growing up. It was closed in, but not with much which made the winter’s especially hard. The cold, wet winds off the gulf in the winter can be brutal.

1940’s Hurricane

The house was hit by a hurricane in the early 1940s, but since there was a war going on, most people don’t know about that one. My dad told the story that they were sitting down to each lunch after church on Sunday, when the chimney came crashing through the roof into the room where they were eating (see photo above of him pointing up at the ceiling where the chimney fell through.) He was about 12 at the time. He said his father calmly suggested they take their food downstairs and finish lunch. My dad wanted to make sure and get some of the fried chicken, so he grabbed two chicken legs, and stuffed them in his pockets and went down stairs to eat.

Moody Gardens Galveston

From the trip I took with my dad and my sons back in March 2014. I also took the Twins picture there that I love.

East Galveston Beach

Another one from the archives…

Both my Dad and I were hit with the smell of salt water the moment we opened the car doors. For us, it was special and a thousand memories flooded our minds. For my two sons, Andy and Joey, it was a first-time experience. Yes, they have been to the beach before. But this is the first time that they will remember it. We were down in Galveston for the day and we took the boys to walk around on the beach. The smell of the air, the seagulls flying about, even the smell of suntan lotion fired up our memories of vacations and day trip pasts. And now I was sharing them with Andy and Joey.

We told Andy he could walk in the water, but no higher than his shins or knees. Yeah, right! In the first five minutes he was soaked and upset that he didn’t have his bathing suit. Not sure what we were thinking, but I let him play in the water nonetheless.

As for Joey, he was sitting with me on a patch of soft sand, digging our toes into it. He wasn’t feeling well and wanted to stick next to my side.

Dad just wanted to walk along the beach and so we sat there while he took a stroll.

My father was born and raised in Galveston back in the 1930s and 1940s. His father, William James Newton Hammons, had come from west Texas where he was born in Callahan County back on November 4, 1902. His mother was a Missouri girl, born in 1898 in Sedalia, Mo., and her family made it to Texas as fast as they could, arriving in Galveston around 1908 or 1910. Apparently Clara Helen Varnon was absolutely gorgeous and a fine catch. She was also known for pushing social boundaries. According to legend, she was the first woman in Galveston to get a driver’s license and the first woman in Galveston to buy a car. At that time, it was scandalous. But she had a job and wanted a car and didn’t let anything get in her way of obtaining one.

My grandfather was a bit of a charmer and it is reported even went on a date with Mary Martin, the famous actress. He didn’t make any impression on her because she ended up marrying some guy named Hagman. You know the offspring of that union, Larry Hagman, their son, from Dallas fame. My Pops did however secure the affections of my grandmother. Since she was living in Galveston, that is when Pops moved there as well, and he became a real estate broker. He was part of the deal that sold the house known as the Bishop’s Palace, or Gresham’s Castle, to the Roman Catholic Church. The story goes that the Catholic Church wanted him and his fellow brokers just to give it to them, but they were not in a position to be that charitable.

There we were kicking about Galveston for the day. Dad took us to the Moody Gardens to explore the rain forest exhibit, then down to the beach just to walk around. He said east Galveston beach is one of the few places he can take off his shoes and walk barefoot. Now I know where I get my propensity to wear shoes all the time from. There are very few places I feel comfortable taking my shoes off and going barefoot. And yes, Galveston beach is one of them. The sand is extremely soft.

Dad grew up coming to this beach as a child. He told us that when he was extremely sick and covered with boils from some unknown malady, his father took him down to the beach to immerse him in the cold waters. It seems odd to us, but Dad recovered from whatever ailment it was. I’m not suggesting we all do this with our sick children, but it worked for Dad.

One of my favorite memories of east beach eating lunch there. We would make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, with Lay’s potato chips and Oreo cookies for dessert. What made it so special was the Texas sun would warm up the Oreo cookies for us while we were playing in the water, which made them extremely good to eat. It’s very similar to sun-warmed plain M&M’s. Just the right temperature for softening up the chocolate in the middle. Try it some time.

One of my worst memories was the time I met some guy my age and we decided to go up and down the beach popping all the Portuguese Man-O-Wars with handfuls of sands. Why, I will never know. But it was something boys do that makes no sense. My desire to do so quickly ended when my companion in this endeavor popped one, sending all the nice acids from the explosion all over my body. That ruined my day.

After spending an hour there, we decided to head up the boulevard to get something to eat and Landry’s. Given that Andy was soaking wet, we also decided to stop and Academy and buy him some dry clothes. We didn’t want to go all the way back to the hotel before we ate. Andy loved the new pants and shirt we bought him.

Of the Photos: top is Dad with his shoes off, Andy getting ready to get soaked, and Joey at my side. Below, me on one of our trips to the beach back in the late 1960s.