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#1
02-02-2017, 12:24 PM
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Texans move 2017 training camp to the Greenbrier Resort (West Virginia)
Texans to move portion of training camp to West Virginia
If the name of the facility rings a bell, it was also converted in the Cold War 60's to a underground bunker that could house Congress if necessary. Quote:
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Last edited by Arky; 06-15-2017 at 06:58 PM. 
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#2
06-14-2017, 01:20 AM
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Texans announce training camp dates and times
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#4
06-17-2017, 03:26 AM
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Although to be honest, he's a reliably good traveler. For one thing, he loves airplanes like I do, and he's happy in them, like I am. For another thing, some goddamn genius invented the iPad. You might be surprised to learn that I've spent an inordinate amount of time in West Virginia and I am very fond of the place, despite the fact that overwhelming numbers of its citizens decided to unleash their inner bigot and succumb to certain puerile fears with the direct (and, apparently, to many of them, surprising) result of now finding themselves in serious danger of losing the healthcare they and their neighbors depend upon to survive black lung, emphysema, diabetes and severe arterial blockage past the age of 45 or so. But it's a lovely state, and it would be even lovelier if they'd tap the brakes on the mountaintop removal mining. I mean, call me crazy, but I sort of like mountains the way they are. I have a friend whose father was the long time mayor of Martinsburg. I guess I should say he was a friend. I haven't spoken with him in years. He was always a little nutty, but finally he got too crazy for me, if you can believe it. I honestly decided that he would get me killed one day. I was living in New York at the time and he'd come visit me and approach people on the street randomly and say weird shit to them. I was like, Dude, you can't do that sort of thing here, man. It's funny, one night I was driving with him and we were on the route you take from the Holland Tunnel to the Williamsburg Bridge. I have no idea what we were doing in Jersey or even if we had been in Jersey. But you get out of the tunnel and you have to juke around a little and you end up on Kenmare Street, which turns into Delancey which leads you directly to the bridge. You have to drive up Centre Street to get to Kenmare. Centre Street is a weird street for me. Back then I played music professionally and there was a studio on Centre Street where I used to record and mix occasionally. Somehow the guys who owned that place managed to purchase the Rolling Stones' mobile studio, a sort of step van that had a control room inside that was used to record countless classic records. I have absolutely no idea how these knuckleheads managed to buy it, but they did, and they parked it out in front of their studio on this very street. It had the Stones logo on the sides of the van and everything. How no one ever just stole it I cannot imagine. I also have no idea how I ever came to work in that studio, what the reason was if there in fact was a reason, what I was doing, but all I know is I did a session where we mixed in the van. I had a sort of paramour who lived on Centre Street, too. I'd visit when her boyfriend was out of town, which, happily, was frequently. She later, MUCH later, married Al Jourgensen, which was sort of bewildering to me when I found out. Anyway, George and I were driving down Kenmare one night and a garbage truck was stopped, blocking both usable lanes. Quickly, all non-municipal garbage collection there is totally mobbed up. These are not people you want to cross. But. I pull up behind this garbage truck that's blocking the thoroughfare and I immediately roll down my window and start honking and yelling at intervals. George, you remember him? The guy that I'm convinced is going to get me killed by being a lunatic? George starts pounding me nervously on the shoulder, Hey, man, hey, man, don't do that! I'm leaning out the window yelling the vilest profanities I can think of. Eventually a doe-eyed, jump-suited simpleton comes wandering into view from the front of the truck. He looks at me and shrugs, Whaddaya want? he seems to indicate. HEY! I yell out the window. Commeere! George is pounding me ever more insistently. Look, man, I understand you have a job to do, and I respect that. But we got two lanes here, and you guys are puukin blocking da bot' of em! He looks around, realizes I'm right and that I have a point and lets loose a piercing whistle. HEY! he shouts, Unintelligible move that unintelligible over there! The driver pulls the truck over and I putt past. George looks shaken, relieved and admiring. Oh, I should mention that he is convinced I am affiliated with the CIA. (I'm not.) So, yeah, West Virginia.
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#5
06-18-2017, 01:10 AM
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If you haven't heard, going to be a solar eclipse Monday, Aug 21. Goes from Oregon to S Carolina - sweeps the entire US. For Houstonians, closest place to get in the path of total darkness is somewhere north of Memphis.
http://www.eclipse2017.org/eclipse2017_main.htm And, just to stay on topic, looks like the Texans will be completing there first day of practice at the Methodist Training Center on Monday Aug 21. Last edited by Arky; 06-18-2017 at 01:17 AM.
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#7
06-19-2017, 01:25 PM
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#8
06-19-2017, 02:35 PM
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The reason George thinks I'm in the CIA is that I have a particularly good sense of direction. I am a man of modest abilities, very few outstanding ones, to be sure. But my sense of direction is for whatever reason superior. I can't really think of any time in my life I have been truly lost. I have wandered the tangled streets of second-tier European cities, immersed myself in the medinas of Araby, trekked the interminable shopping malls of American suburbia. I always know where I am. And I always know where north is. I had some bandmates that loved this. We'd be in a megamart somewhere or a record store (remember those?) or who knows where and one of them would slip to up me and ask, Which way's north? And I'd just casually point over my shoulder or whatever it was and go back to what I was doing. Just for the hell of it I did this with my mom last year. Her sense of direction is truly terrible. We were in a mall in the US that I'd never been in before. We were passing a Hot Topic when I asked her, Hey, which way's north? She just laughed. Which way is it, then? she wanted to know. I pointed. Then I took out my phone and opened the compass. I'd been off by about five degrees.
I had a girlfriend once upon a time with a weird ability. You could tell her any word, any word at all, and immediately she'd alphabetize its individual letters. You'd say Alphabet! And she'd pause for a microsecond and then spit out a-a-b-e-h-l-p-t!, rapid-fire. I sure as hell can't do that? Can you? George was obsessed with the band Toad the Wet Sprocket. I mean, obsessed. It strikes me as a very, very odd thing to get obsessed with, but I suppose it takes all kinds. He and I were living fairly close to one another in Arlington, Virginia, at one point. One day he phoned, saying that he knew someone who had offered him tickets and passes and who knows what all to a TTWS show at the Tower Theater outside Philadelphia. Would I like to go (and of course to drive because as far as I know George doesn't drive)? Sure, why not? So I tool over to his house and pick him up and head up to Philadelphia. I'd been to Philadelphia many times, of course, but I'd never been to Upper Darby which is the suburban town where the venue is. Before I left I pulled out and consulted a paper map (remember those?) and confirmed my route. It's really not that big a deal. But when I drove us straight there and pulled up at the venue, well, as far as George was concerned I had either divined our route by some sort of bizarre witchery or, much more plausibly in his mind, I'm simply CIA. How an average intelligence operative would just naturally know how to access each of the nation's art deco styled theatrical installations I really can't explain. I'm not seeing a connection, but at the same time I don't really watch too many spy movies. George published a book of poetry back when that is basically exactly what you're imagining it might be. Literally each and every time he mentioned the book to me he assured me that "it has an ISBN number and everything!" I just checked and it turns out George's father is in fact still mayor. He was re-elected to his, what, fifth term last year? And George, alarmingly, is working at a well known, private college preparatory academy outside Orlando. I would be fascinated to know how the hell he ended up there and what the hell he does but of course I daren't contact him.
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#9
06-20-2017, 01:16 PM
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And for anyone thinking about it it's only 19 hrs nonstop to The Greenbrier by car. Of course you will have to stop some. Also, I believe you still need to get tickets to the practices, but I could be mistaken.
__________________
There is no failure, only feedback.
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#10
06-20-2017, 01:36 PM
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Ticket info:
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#11
06-23-2017, 12:15 AM
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Memoirs? I got your memoirs.
 Let me just say, I debated whether I wanted to post this or not. It was planned before Chuck's recent outpouring and I've even had to go back in an edit a few things because, it seems, Chuck and I have been connecting with the same muse. At any rate, I knew it was going to be lengthy and I would have to do some background research to confirm my more fuzzy memories. I didn't want to have anybody's eyes glaze over about half way through and click elsewhere so, I'll try to keep it interesting. It's the off-season so WTH, here goes....grab something to drink. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Preface: Washington state, November 1963. Kennedy had just been shot while my dad was packing the 1960 Rambler station wagon to go to our new home in Houston, TX. The station wagon was stuffed to the gills with suitcases, clothes and necessities. The people in said vehicle would be me (age 10), my older sister (age 15) and my little sister (age 6 months) and the parents. We were headed to the state that had just shot the president. :/ After making it to Houston and staying with an aunt (dad's sister) and uncle for a few days, pops found a rent home off of South Park Boulevard. This was an area that was street after street of post-WWII housing - 3 and 4 bedroom one-story jobbies all built about 15-20 feet apart. We were quickly enrolled in our new schools, me at Mading Elementary and big sister at Jones HS. Sterling HS might have been closer but it had not been built, yet. Talk on the street was that some of the AFL Houston Oilers lived in the neighborhood. I didn't doubt this as pro football players were far from the multi-million dollar players they are today. Some players had to supplement their football pay with an off-season job and many were just regular Joes. I loved baseball and was good at it (if I say so myself) so, in the spring, I signed up with the Edgewood American Little League. The teams were made up of kids from the surrounding South Park/Bellfort area. I was assigned to the Cardinals. In 1964, the Edgewood American Little League All-stars would go on to become Texas state Little League champions before falling to Alabama in the South Regional. Was I on that team? No, I was a 10-year old and caught up in the whole majors/minors division thing... Do I have a picture of the 1964 Edgewood American Little League Cardinals, my team? Thanks to an ongoing deep closet cleanup, why yes, yes I do. (standing, 4th kid from the right). South Park Boulevard would, of course, later be renamed to Martin Luther King Boulevard and not many white folk are around that area these days.... --------------------------------------------------------------------- Last thoughts on Camp Touchdown By 1965, our family had relocated to the Clear Lake area. At some point, I was approached by the parents about attending a summer camp run by a couple of the Oilers, Charley Hennigan and Jerry Fowler. According to the ad in the paper, it was a full-time summer camp (not like today's 2 or 3 day affairs) with concurrent two week sessions. Attendees had to be between the ages of 7-14, if I recall correctly. It was called Camp Touchdown and had a football theme but included many other activities including basketball, archery, swimming, water skiing, etc. It was located in the tiny town of Bryceland in northern Louisiana. If you google-map Bryceland, the nearest "city" is Arcadia, La. about 8 or 9 miles away. (Bonnie and Clyde met their end near Gibsland, La. also about 8 to 9 miles away, in fact, Bryceland/Arcadia/Gibsland compose an 8-9 mile equilateral triangle). The camp itself was housed in an old abandoned high school. It had a basketball court in the center with 8 or 10 classrooms surrounding it in a "U" shape - all in the same building. I found a 1941 picture of the building here. I'm guessing it was still new or brand new in the picture. You can see the highest part of the roof over the basketball court and each classroom was about five windows wide. Meals were served in a cellar-like area and you can see these cellar windows underneath the classrooms. Looking back, I have questions about who built such a large structure out in the boonies and why was it abandoned but in 1965 (12 years old), I wasn't concerned with this. It was built BAC (before air conditioning) so cooling in those days was solved by building with lots of windows. Cots were set up in the classrooms boot-camp-style and one large (4 ft.?) box fan was set up on the floor to push the air down the aisle. At night, with the (screened) windows open, it actually wasn't too bad but take a nap in the afternoon and you could expect to wake up soaking wet. The camp counselors were (mostly football) athletes from a mix of Louisiana colleges - seems like one or two from LSU, one guy from Northwestern St., one from La Tech, one from McNeese St., etc. I suppose some of them had aspirations of becoming pro athletes but who knows how that turned out. I will say they were pretty good at organizing us campers for the day's activities. Charley Hennigan was, of course, one of the Houston Oilers early stars. A wide receiver, his name still gets mentioned in "best season" statistics. In 1961, Lionel Taylor of the AFL Denver Broncos was the first to hit 100 receptions in a year. Hennigan came along in '64 and had 101 (both, 14-game seasons). That stood until the NFL went to a 16-game season in '78 and not till '84 did Art Monk top the record with 106. Further, it was not till the 90's when 100 receptions a year started to become commonplace. He also had a record of 1,746 yards receiving in a season, broken by Jerry Rice in 1995, standing for 34 years. Charley was officially a "director" of the camp and could be seen mingling here and there. He looked like one of the Mercury astronauts with his buzz cut - just like you'll see in the old photos of him. I recall sitting in on a session outside where he and the counselors were tossing the football around and he was showing them how to have your feet just so when the ball arrives - not just for sideline routes, but for all routes - sort of an Advanced Receiving class. If I recall correctly, I believe it was he that spoke to everyone on the first day of camp and gave us orientation (where to sleep, where to eat, etc.) I do recall him also encouraging us to brush our teeth with the baking soda in the bathrooms as the water in the area was high in minerals and would darken your teeth over time. Probably a good idea since, I'm sure, they didn't want to have parents come pick up Junior at the end of camp and have him sporting a happy hillbilly smile. Jerry Fowler was the other director of the camp and I guess what we would call today a "fringe player" for the Oilers. An offensive guard/tackle, statistically, he only shows up as having played in four games in 1964 although he may have been around the Oilers in other years. I suppose he and Hennigan met through the Oilers and having shared the same college (Northwestern St. in Natchitoches, LA) although, there was a five year age difference - Fowler was the younger one. Perhaps they were old family friends, not sure. Large, chubby, gregarious, he was around quite a bit and would join us in pickup basketball games and the like. Yep, the expression "good ole boy" would fit. (I also recall he had a beautiful young fiancée/wife who would visit the camp and chat with some of us campers. And that just goes to show that large, chubby O-linemen can do quite well in that department). Probably due to advertising in the Houston papers, attendees from the Houston area were well represented. I would say the rest of the attendees were from all parts of Louisiana. In my estimation, the camp consisted of roughly one half Houston "city boys" and one half Louisiana "country boys". And we all got along swimmingly. There were a lot of rich kids from Houston, doctors sons, private school kids and the like. Tuition was not cheap - I want to say it was around $400 per 2 wk/session which would translate to what, $3000 today? Now, my parents weren't rich but they both worked so there was some extra money. I remember one set of three brothers from Houston that were "veterans" having attended the camp before. One guy was from the Kincaid HS area. Another guy was the son of the owner of KILT 610 AM radio. 610 radio was THE radio station back in those days. If you wanted to hear rock 'n roll, you tuned it to 610. New Beatles songs? 610. FM radio was just getting going in earnest and was no competition at the time. I saw this same fellow maybe a couple of years later after a rock show in the Sam Houston Coliseum. He was up on the stage scarfing up "souvenirs" (no doubt, allowed because of who his dad was - KILT sponsored rock shows back in the day) and I called out to him. He motioned me to come on up and after a few how-ya-doings, he gave me one of the leftover drum sticks (now since lost). The Louisana boys were from all parts of Louisiana - Sulphur, Natchitoches, DeRidder, Opelousas and a lot of other places I can't pronounce. I remember one of them was a day late to camp because he was busy completing the sale of a cow to pay for his tuition. They had names like Vernon, Purvis, John Charles (JC), Cotton...... those were the first names. (wow, 10000 character limit, cont'd)
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#12
06-23-2017, 12:16 AM
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(cont'd)
At camp, there was something scheduled to do every day. They had a dozen or so .22 rifles - all just alike - and they would bus us to a nearby rifle range where we would learn/practice target shooting. The next day, it would be a bus trip to a lake for swimming and water skiing. There were your requisite punt, pass & kick competitions. Nothing was really strenuous except for maybe the non-mandatory one mile jog back from the rifle range. It was all pretty much just fun 'n games and competitions. At camp, one of more popular hang-out areas was the ping pong table room. IIRC, there were two ping pong tables set up. There were free bottled sodas and one of the more popular choices was a bottled chocolate milk drink - something like a Yoo-hoo. I suppose it was made by a regional company but the name of it escapes me. Anyhow, I remember spending a lot of time playing ping pong and drinking bottled chocolate milk. There were a few pro football players that would visit the camp and give a talk to the campers. The only fellow I can remember was Billy Shaw who played guard for the Buffalo Bills. Shaw was a perennial All-AFL guard. I remember him relating a story of how when he was a rookie, he was getting overwhelmed in a game. After the game, his nemesis on the other side of the line had told him he could tell whether it was a run or a pass just by looking at his knuckles. White knuckles = run, no color = pass. I'm guessing he made the necessary corrections in his stance. Friday nights were movie night. They would bus us into Arcadia to the local movie theater. I remember seeing "The Pink Panther" and a rerun of "Shane". And, get this: the bus driver was none other than Billy Cannon. Most of us knew who Billy Cannon was - Heisman trophy winning RB from LSU, gridiron hero of the Saturday night lights and with a name straight out of central casting. He was one of the AFL's first big steals from NFL having signed with the Oilers straight out of college. In '65 and '66, I believe Al Davis was turning him into a tight end for the Raiders. I have no idea where he was living at the time but apparently it was in the area and he was, no doubt, pals with Hennigan and Fowler. Looking back, I suppose he was one of the few that had a bus driver's license. Didn't see him around camp much but come Friday night, there was Billy in the school bus waiting for us to load up. I remember on one trip someone asked him, "hey Billy, why is your hair so long?" (We were into flat-tops and buzz cuts at the time - long hair and bell-bottoms were just around the corner. Cannon had kind of a rockabilly-do.) He replied, "I'm like Samson. If I cut my hair, I lose all my strength." I think most of us were thinking "makes sense to me". I attended Camp Touchdown for one 2-week session in '65 and two 2-week sessions in '66, IIRC. It was a fun time in a different era, in a different world. Everyone got along for the most part and behaved like good little soldiers. Now, some of the campers, especially some of the younger guys, you just knew that athletics were not going to be a part of their future, yet the staff was there to encourage everyone to do their best and everyone was treated with respect. Looking back, I am really amazed at how smoothly every thing was run. The organizing of the activities, the ladies that prepared the meals in the kitchen - never so much as a blip - the camp was really run the right way. For a last anecdote, when my parents came to pick me up one year, Jerry Fowler started gabbing with my dad. Fowler learned of our Arkansas roots and told a story of how his college, tiny Northwestern St., had scheduled a game with the Arkansas Razorbacks one year in Little Rock. He said his team walked into the stadium and the Arkansas faithful, pretty much the whole stadium, began calling the Hogs (Whooooooooooooooopigsooie). He said his team started shaking in their boots. They lost - badly. Eheh, they both got a hearty chuckle over that one. I looked it up and sure enough, Arkansas beat Northwestern St. 42-7 in 1961. Thanks to the previously mentioned deep closet cleanout, a few momentos. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The following taken mostly from www.wikipedia.com Charley Hennigan - went on to get a doctorate at U of H, raised a family and after taking a stab at politics, went into teaching, helping prisoners get their GEDs. Jerry Fowler - eventually went into the family's political business and in the early 2000's, was sentenced to 5 years for bribery, income tax evasion and accepting kickbacks. (my note: that's some old school Louisiana politics, right there). He served 4 years in a federal prison and a number of months in a half-way house. Rumors I've heard were as much as 3 million embezzled, mostly to pay off gambling debts. In 2002, wife #2, Mari Ann Fowler, disappeared in Port Allen on a trip to visit Jerry at the prison. She was never found. Rumor is she may have been abducted by a serial killer that was stalking the Baton Rouge area at the time. Jerry Fowler died in 2009. Billy Cannon - after his football career, Cannon went into dentistry. "In 1983, after a series of bad real estate investments, he became involved in a counterfeiting scheme and served two and a half years in prison. In 1995, he was hired as a dentist at Louisiana State Penitentiary (aka Angola), a position he still holds as of 2017. "
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#13
06-23-2017, 02:54 AM
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Great story! I was grinning like a goon when looking at your baseball team photograph. I have plenty just like it tucked away who knows where. I'm ~15 years younger than you are so mine are in color, but you could colorize yours and I would never know that it wasn't Willow Creek Little League in 1974. I don't know for sure but I think it took until I was seven and playing for the Owls to have a black teammate. Sammy. He could throw, and I could catch, which were talents of some distinction at that time. I became the catcher. That evolved without my really realizing the implications into my being A catcher. I remember watching as an Owls opponent hit a ground ball to one infielder or another and he somehow fielded the ball and tossed it across the diamond to Raymond, our freakishly tall and freakishly unathletic first baseman, who somehow caught it to complete the play. Gene, our coach (I just remembered his name, he was young and childless and not a creep or anything, just wanted to help some kids kind of vibe), Gene literally leaped from the dugout, arms raised triumphantly, and screamed, FAR OUT!
It was the 70's, you know? And so I am certainly old enough to remember South Park Blvd before it became MLK. I'm always curious about the lives you necks lead. I like to wonder, but I also like some background that comes from a place other than my fetid imagination. I mean, I know about Buford's life, of course. And Keith and I have actually met. But that was back when his son was just a little boy. He's probably about 25 now, paying for Buford's so-securtee.
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#15
06-23-2017, 01:19 PM
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I'm seeing a lot of quiet out of both Texan and Bronco fans - and for the same reason. They have a championship-caliber defense and some parts on offense but the quarterback is untested and the offensive line is a worry. So they aren't sure if they can get to the playoffs or not but they are guardedly optimistic. On paper, I don't think any team in the AFC South is better than Houston as long as we get decent play from the OL and the QB. Conversely, I could see the Broncos finishing last in the AFC West with a slightly better squad than Houston.
If we can get Watt, Clowney, Mercilus healthy at one time with all the Johnsons and Jacksons in the secondary, we could have one of the best-ever defenses. IF. The window will close quickly.
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#16
06-23-2017, 06:18 PM
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Where are you located, BTW? Is it Puerto Rico?
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#17
06-23-2017, 08:57 PM
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I'm hoping to drop by Greenbriar a day or two, some good friends and family in Virginia and PA.
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#18
06-23-2017, 09:50 PM
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Arky, right this minute I'm hanging out in my balcony hammock here: https://www.google.com/maps/@8.9900512,-79.525441,20z I was walking around earlier and passed one of those police checkpoints I was talking about. They had some fairly affluent looking guy stopped and he was out of the car, furious, screaming at someone on the phone, They're going to take me to fng JAIL! I don't know whether his registration was out of date or he didn't have valid insurance or what. I just found it remarkable that the local constabulary was able to detain and subdue such a dangerous criminal without resorting to gunplay. I mean, these guys were super nonchalant. They didn't even have their guns drawn and trained on the suspect or anything. Maybe they're just naive and don't realize the perilous danger of a routine traffic stop. Of course the scofflaw was white, so that probably had something to do with it.
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#19
06-23-2017, 11:09 PM
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So that's where all the not-a-necks live.  I can't speak Spanish very good at all. My neighbor doesn't speak English very good at all. The other day I was out repairing the chain link fence that separates our two yards. He walked up and offered to help. For the next 3 or 4 hours, we communicated with single words and hands motions. Finished a full day's job in probably half a day. ....
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#20
06-23-2017, 11:29 PM
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Well, it's where one not-a-neck, one colombiana and one pana-gringuito live. There's quite a mix in the building, and quite a mix in the city, which I like a lot. It's not New York or London or even Houston as far as diversity goes, but for Latin America it is an unusually diverse place. So nobody takes much notice of whatever I might be up to.
I prefer to live in my house on the beach but my son is in a sort of school here in the city that's doing him a lot of good and that's obviously the priority. There are more and more schools popping up out there as the expat community grows so who knows, maybe we'll end up back out there at some point. Where is your neighbor from?
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