A couple of years ago on the lawn in front of the old Blanco County Courthouse, Maggie Goodman spun a yarn about how a little boy invented the luminaria. He was trying to light up his little house in the country so the “pastores” or shepherds would be able to find his place and seek shelter there on their way to visit the Christ child. He found that if he took a regular brown paper bag and placed a candle in it, it would glow with a beautiful, soft light.

The Piedras Verdes River was the sole water supply for Colonia Juarez from its founding by American citizens in 1885 until 1948 when modern water-well drilling techniques made it possible to sink deep wells and relieve the pressure on the river for irrigation. The Piedras Verdes (Green Rocks) was and still is, in reality, little more than a tree-lined creek for most of the year.

Last Sunday I pulled into the church parking lot and got a ticket. As I stepped out of my pickup, a small boy walked up and handed me a yellow slip of paper inscribed with a hand written message that said simply, “Parking Ticket.” “Oh, great!” I exclaimed. “What is this gonna cost me—forty bucks?” The boy looked me straight in the eye and said firmly, “No.

A few years ago a man went on a rampage from California to Texas killing and maiming several people. He was apprehended near Van Horn, Texas, where he was incarcerated, tried and convicted of murder. During the trial a local minister testified that, while in jail, the perpetrator had found the Lord, was a new man and that he should be shown mercy.

Mondays were wash days when I was growing up. Mom had an old wringer washing machine in the basement where she would spend an entire morning washing clothes and putting each item through the wringer. She had to be careful to avoid popping the buttons off the shirts when she put them through those rollers.

I had a coach in high school who told his team that as long as he was yelling at us everything was alright. “It’s when I quit yelling at you that you need to worry because when I stop yelling at you, I have lost confidence in you.” Minerva Teichert (1888-1976) had a similar experience.

Early in my career as an educator, I had the opportunity to provide a series of workshops for some school administrators. I was fresh out of college back then and, of course, with my new degree in hand I supposed I knew all there was to know about teaching. My motivation was to make a little extra money to help my young family with expenses.

I had the opportunity last school year to substitute teach for a coach at Blanco High School. The last period of each school day was spent in the weight training room with a group of boys, some of whom were there because of off-season football and others were there because they needed physical education credit.

My father attended high school at the Academia Juarez in the little Mexican town of Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua. The town was nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountains which provided ideal hunting and fishing for the men and boys of the community. On one particular break from school, my Dad went on a deer hunting expedition with several of his schoolmates.

From April into June of 1957 north-central and northeast Texas and much of Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana received 20 to 36 inches of rain, leading to widespread flooding. (How different times can be!) On May 31 of that same year, the noted film producer, Cecil B. DeMille, at Brigham Young University’s commencement exercises, spoke of the freedom that comes through obedience to God’s laws. To make his point, he said, “We have been reading about the terrible, destructive floods in Texa ...

While driving through Silver City, New Mexico, we passed an elementary school where I noticed that the United States flag was flying upside-down. I told my wife that that was a distress signal. We turned around and she parked the car in front of the school and I went inside.

We the people are giving away our rights, privileges and freedoms one little piece at a time. J. Reuben Clark said, “In the United States sovereignty rests in the people, not in the government or its officers. That is the fundamental difference between our Anglo-Saxon Constitution and the government set up under it, and the Justinian and Napoleonic codes and the governments set up under them. “With us the government possesses only those powers we give to it; we the people, the sovereign, p ...

My work in Uruguay, South America, often took me to the home of the Benaventi family. I thought it a little peculiar that when Mr. Benaventi came home from work each day he would get out of his suit and tie, put on his pajamas, occupy a comfortable chair on the sidewalk in front of his house and leisurely sip his mate tea as he watched the world go by.

One day when I was nine or ten years old, my buddy and I came upon the opening to a long, dark “cave.” It was built of concrete and was four or five feet in diameter. It went back under a hill and curved so that we couldn’t see the other end.

In response to the most recent Mustard Seeds, “Where Were You When the Eagle Landed?” I received the following response: “As a member of the Apollo Eleven Recovery Team aboard the USS Hornet, I was watching the satellite feed of the landing in the HS-4 squadron ready room. I was the Maintenance Chief for Helicopter Antisubmarine Squadron Four when we recovered Apollo 10, 11, 12 and 13 aboard USS Princeton, USS Hornet, and USS Iwo Jima.