By Dickie Dixon

Belated birthdays:  October 10^th:  Edgar Rogers  11^th: Jan (Tucker)  Selman

For Posterity’s Eyes  October birthdays:  12^th:  Ina Jane Thames 14^th:  Michelle Shaw 16^th:  Johnnie Holley Sandra (Wade) Litton 18^th:  Pam Johnson 19^th:  Carli Bynum, Maria (Lopez) Moreno 20^th:  Betty (Ricks) Collins

When It’s Time For The World Series  About this time of the year as baseball season is winding down, and we all get ready for the World Series, a lot of pleasant memories come back.  I grew up in a sports loving family.  On my mother’s side of the family, two of her brothers, Ira and Rip Hinson, were semi-pro baseball players.  I grew up in a gym watching my brother, Ardie Dixon, play basketball for the Lufkin Panthers, the Tyler Junior College Apaches, and for North Texas University.  On Sundays at my grandmother’s and grandfather’s house (that would be Bony and Blanche Dixon), the sexes segregated:  my father, his brothers, and all of us cousins migrated to what my mother called “the bull pen,’ which was Bony’s and Blanche’s bedroom to watch the baseball, football, or basketball games.

Sports was an old tradition in the family.  My father told me his father had to stop him and his six brothers from playing baseball at lunch so they could get the farm work done that afternoon. Much later, when we came to his parents’  house for the Fourth of July, with my Dad and his six brothers and the thirteen other first cousins, we fielded two full baseball teams out to the left of her house in the driveway.  Sometimes a cousin Paula Young would come from Uncle Jim’s house on FM 2021 to play.  By the way, Daddy and Mother were such devoted fans of the Astros that they went to bed many a night listening to them  play on the radio on the night stand.

At our house on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, my perch to watch the games with my Dad was sitting on the right arm of his recliner leaning up against his shoulder.  Sometimes he would get a “sweet tooth” and send me down to A. O. Dias’s convenience store a block away on Timberland Drive (across from Shipley’s) to buy him a Bit-O-Honey.  My Dad really got in to those games, but one thing you could be sure of:  he was never going to root for the New York Yankees.  (He said they won too much.)

When I was a teenager and was driving the delivery truck and delivering furniture for him in his furniture store—before he expanded the size of the store building—if we weren’t too busy (and we tried to make sure we weren’t), the whole delivery crew sat down to watch the game at the store with my Dad.  My Mom, a great cook, usually had some sweets for us to eat, unless those freeloaders like Mack Carnes, Murray Hall, Tony Mateo, George Honea, Loyd Bowden, Roy Myers, or Oscar Hightower had got to the pie or cake at coffee that morning.  We watched every game we could, and doing so was just interesting watching how intensely my Dad rooted for his team.

So as we approach another World Series, and, of course we are all hoping our Houston Astros are there, I just had to let you know what kind of memories I have when it’s time for the World Series.

Save the Date!  John Langston, a brick collector, will speak to the Angelina County Genealogical Society on, as you may have guessed, brick collecting, at 4 pm on Monday, October 16, 2017 in the Railroad Depot meeting room of Kurth Memorial Library on 702 South Raguet in Lufkin, Texas. Reminder:  Those who pay their dues for next year, 2018, anytime between October 1, 2017 and December 31, 2017, receive those three months free as well as the whole year of 2018, receiving five  issues of the newsletter thereby.

For book notices or reviews please send me a complimentary copy to Kissin’ Kuzzins  P. O. Box 151001 Lufkin TX 75915-1001

Send your queries to dickie.dixon@hotmail.com by mail to Kissin’ Kuzzins P. O. Box 151001 Lufkin TX 75915-1001 or by phone to (936) 240-8378