skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Everyone has been using this stuff for years, but have you ever wondered about Tabasco Sauce? On a return trip from New Orleans, my wife and I saw a sign about tours of the Tabasco Plant and decided to pay it a visit. The Tabasco Sauce operation was founded in 1868 right on the coast of Louisiana so shipping the product out would not be a problem. Now just about any place you stop to eat has a bottle of this stuff right there on the table waiting for you..
This is the original Red Tabasco Sauce...BUT it also comes in other flavors that I didn't know about until our visit to the facilities. It can also be tried in: Green Jalapeno... Chipotle...Buffalo Hot Sauce... Habanero... Sweet & Spicy... and my favorite, Garlic Pepper Sauce. As you tour the plant there is a glass wall separating visitors from the actual operations, but you can see everything they do in the bottling process.
The plant is open for visiting hours from 9-4 daily and it is a easy walk-through operation you can perform at your leisure without anyone rushing you along. The entire McIlhenny complex is a 170 acre operation as the pepper seeds are grown, harvested, and processed right at the Avery Island location. Once the product has been completed, the sauce is placed in hickory barrels and sealed with a layer of salt and then stored for at least one year before being bottled.
The Tabasco Plant has numerous greenhouses like this one and each is dedicated to a different type of pepper plant. The seedlings will grow in the greenhouses for 30-40 days before being transplanted to the fields..
This field is about midway thru the maturation process. When fully grown the peppers will be picked, cleaned, and start the secret process that will ended up as one of the country's top brands of pepper sauce. The Tabasco people also have a country store on the premises and you can not only buy their products there... they even have tee-shirts, caps, bandanas, and other apparel on hand for sale.
This is my wife in front of the store... Naturally we had to have shirts and caps for the grandchildren..but I also bought a variety pack of their peppers and that is how I discovered the garlic style sauce. The Jungle Garden Park surrounding the Tabasco facility is also a great spot to visit for photographers. In the park you will find everything from alligators to a real statue of Budda.
The Tabasco Plant is located at Avery Island, Louisiana and you can throw a rock into the Gulf of Mexico from their facility since they are so close...
Interstate Highway 10 connects Houston to New Orleans.. At Lafayette turn south on U.S. Highway 90 and go to New Iberia.. there turn south on LA 329 and go south.. It will take you right to the front gate of the Tabasco Plant and Jungle Garden. It was a fun trip and the people are super nice... and to think...we almost drove right past it.
I have owned motorcycles since I was 14...My first real motorcycle when I moved up from scooters was a Mustang. Since then I have owned Zundapps, Nortons, Triumphs, BSA's, Hondas, Kawasakis, Yamahas, and of course, Harley-Davidsons...but never a Suzuki for some reason. All of my rides listed above were in the cruiser catagory... In 1999 I bought a 1985 Honda Gold Wing.. my first highway bike.
Okay,...Hold off on the 'white legs' comments... I paid $2500 for this bike and bought it from a Hawaiian dude that worked as a cook for the local Holiday Inn. Evidently he didn't have much of a social life as he sunk most of his money into the bike. When I bought it there were 24 lights on the rear end of it.
I had removed some of them by the time of the above photo...but it still looked like Christmas time when I applied the brakes at night. It was a super running bike as the 4-cylinder 1200cc engine was fed by 4 carburetors. The later 6-cylinder Gold Wings had 4 carburetors and lacked the immediate punch of the older four bangers. Now they are all fuel injected. This was the Aspencade model which was the top of the line for Gold Wings at the time.
If Honda offered an accessory for this bike the previous owner had it installed. At this time I worked at a job 183 miles from my home and I rode this bike back and forth many times as it was a joy to ride. It had air-suspension for an incredible ride for someone accustomed to riding hard-tail ridged suspension bikes. It also had cruise control, AM-FM-CB radio, and air conditioning.. Okay,.. little joke on that last option. The dash was all-digital and the gas gauge was a series of bars that kept getting less and less as the gas got lower in the tank. One time while stretching it to the limit I sweated out the final couple of bars and when the last one went out I turned into a gas station just as the engine quit... Lucky-Lucky !
They say the only way to improve on photos of a bike is to place a pretty girl on it.. This is Momma looking good in the saddle. She is not a rider, except on the back when I am in the pilot's seat. That Queen Ann seat for the passenger was as comfortable as a recliner. Those arm rests would swing out to allow the passenger to get aboard, and the saddle-bags & trunk were spacious enough to allow us to take lots of stuff with us on road trips.
When I would get to work in Palestine the bike would sit for five days until it was time for me to come home. Momma made this cover for the bike so it would not have to suffer at the hands of the elements. It did keep the sun and dust off, but since it was made of denim it offered no protection from rain. When wet it weighed about fifty pounds and added to weight already in the trunk on my ride home. I had this Gold Wing for over a year and finally sold it to Plano Honda for $5000, which I thought was a good deal. They put it in the middle of their showroom and sold it for $6500.
Picking up the story from earlier this week.. (Summertime: 1990) I had a 1989 Mazda MX-6 Sport Coupe that was really a neat little car....BUT..it had a leak in the sunroof that poured (POURED) on me when I made right-hand turns on rainy days. Numerous trips to the vendor and dealership did not alleviate the problem so I threw a temper tantrum in the sales manager's office. They offered me a 1990 Cadillac Coupe DeVille someone had traded in on a Mazda for better fuel economy.
The Cadillac had less than a thousand miles on the odometer so I agreed to the exchange and rode home in my Caddy. I called the dealership about a week later with a question about the registration of the Cadillac and they informed me the Mazda had been sold the same day we made the switch.
The Coupe DeVille had all the options I had with the 1985 Toronado I owned before the Mazda and I realized how much I missed it. The interior of the Cadillac had crushed velor bucket seats and still had the 'new car' smell since the previous owner was a non-smoker. I was still working in radio as well as television and you can see the antenna of the two-way radio I had installed in the car for news reports. I could also claim it as a business expense on my income tax.
As you can see, I also applied my usual SMU sticker to the rear window. This was really a neat car and drove like a dream in comparison with the manual-shifting Mazda. I loved the burgundy color of the Caddy when I bought it, but it turned out to be a nightmare when washing the car. I am one of those freaks that can spend hours cleaning and detailing a car... but no matter what I did wiping down the car it had streaks in it. I can't tell you how many times I would finish cleaning the car, only to come back out when I would view it from my apartment window and see how streaky it was.
This was a good driving car and I had it for a couple years, but on a trip to the local Cadillac dealer to have it serviced I got some bad news. The engine in this model car had an aluminum block, and they were cracking and warping under the cylinder heads. In an effort to avoid a financial downfall, Cadillac was offering to take the cars back and make deals on new cars giving me the same price I gave for the car. My DeVille had not given me any trouble during the time I had it, but the dealer told me it was just a matter of time. I made a call to the dealership where I bought the car and they told me they would abide by the General Motors directive, so I did it. I drove this car for almost two years and never had a single problem with it, but if I could avoid a major breakdown and get my money back in full, it was a no brainer.
Springtime has hit Texas full blast and the shoulders of the state's highway are in bloom with Bluebonnets and Indian Paint Brushes. Here at home my wife's green thumb is starting to pay dividends as our house is surrounded by her handy work. She has one rose bush that is well over twenty years old and it seems to bloom different color roses each year. One year they were red, the next pink, and then they bloomed white with red streaks through each petal. It is the 'bud' stage now so we are anxiously awaiting to see what color it is going to be this year. It's kinda like Christmas morning for us old folks...
This is the flowerbed just below my office window and she has it filled with Bluebonnets (state flower of Texas), but the far left side of the flowerbed is Mexican Heather, and it has yet to bloom this Spring. The Redbonnets (hybred plant from Fredricksburg, Texas) are a stark contrast to the Bluebonnets and get a lot of comments. Each time we get a different mail-man it is a sure thing he will ring the bell and ask about the red variety.
We visited Tyler, Texas a few years ago and it is the Rose Capitol of the state. My wife bought a few small sprigs and some seeds; now our house is surrounded by Roses in addition to other flowers. Momma is one of those people that could plant railroad spikes and small nails would bloom.
The down side is I have to mow AROUND all of her flowerbeds. This one sprung up along the fence around our backyard. The backyard remains shady most of the day and is the domicile of my big dog.
Sarge is an eight year old Lab and tips the scales at one hundred and twenty pounds. He is a sweet dog IF HE KNOWS YOU..
The front flowerbed is also filled with various flowers Momma has nursed back to health over the years.
Even on the far side of the garage she has flowers growing alongside the chain link fence. The rose bush closest to the camera in the above photo is the 20 year old plant. It gets a small flowerbed all to itself.
This is Marilyn and she guards the flowerbeds from weevils and bugs...The symbolism is I am a grad of the University of Maryland...and their mascot is the Terrapin... thus our terrapin is named Marilyn.
Picking up where I left off ten days ago... April 19, 2013 I told you my 1985 Olds Toronado was destroyed by a hailstorm. The hood and deck lid of that beautiful car looked like the surface of the moon when Mother Nature was finished with it.. The windshield was also cracked in several spots...
...I found a dealership in Dallas that sold Oldsmobiles, but also sold Mazda cars. My wife and I had gone separate ways and I wanted to find something a little more 'sporty.' You guys will know what I mean.
I had driven a friend's 1989 Mazda coupe and I really liked it. The dealership found the above car for me in Oklahoma City and had it brought to Dallas. Mazda calls it a Fawn color and the interior was leather and velor. It had a 5-speed manual transmission with the bigger 4-cylinder engine so the air conditioner would have no effect on the performance of the car. An after-market vendor came to the dealership and installed the sun roof and tinted the windows before I took possession of the car.
The spoiler wing on the trunk really made a good impression on me and was $189 dollars extra. There is a Scot's 3M store locally and they fixed me up with a roll of red vinyl tape one-quarter of an inch wide and it just fit in the molding around the car. Other MX-6 drivers would question me where I got it. Small touch, but I think it sets off the car.
I also ordered the car with alloy wheels and kept the tires as black as I could with Armor-All.
Now the bad news...I had it six days and someone ran into the front fender while I was working at the TV station. Naturally, they did NOT stop or come inside to inform me. I had to take the car to a paint and body shop for repair and touch up paint, and it didn't even have 150 miles on it yet.
The ex-wife had moved 45 miles away and I had to make the trip each weekend to see my daughter (above). We also made a trip to Disney World in Orlando in this car and got excellent gas mileage. I had the MX-6 for two years, but finally got tired of it. The sun roof leaked despite numerous trips to the vendor to fix it, and during one of my frustrated moments I decided to let the Mazda go. I'll tell what came next in a future report..... Stay Tuned !!
Okay,...I know it was a cheap way to get your attention..but I figured the cheerleaders would stop you from scrolling right on through.. Now let's get down to some football..
The 2013 edition of the college draft has just been completed and many of the young faces selected over the past three days will be showing up on Sundays in the National Football League later this year.
It will NOT come as a surprise to anyone that I am a hard-core Dallas Cowboys fan....since 1960. Even in Vietnam I was known to go out on patrol wearing an old ragged Cowboys sweatshirt.
Dallas has not been burning up the league for the past several years, and they hoped to make some improvements this season with talent from the college level. The Cowboys had the 18th overall selection in the first round of the draft, but traded that pick to San Francisco for an additional pick in the 2nd round plus the 30th pick in the 1st round... With the 30th pick the Cowboys selected Travis Frederick, the massive center from the University of Wisconsin.
Frederick is number 72 in the red above ...He is six foot four and weighs in at 330 pounds. Dallas has had poor performance in the offensive line for the last three years and Frederick can play guard as well as center. The Badgers led the nation in rushing this past season, and Frederick is one of the main reasons.
The Cowboys had two picks in the second round of the NFL draft thanks to the 49'er trade and on the second day of the draft used the second pick to secure tight end Gavin Escobar of San Diego State.
Escobar is six foot six and 255 pounds. San Diego State used his pass catching skills extensively the last couple of years but he is also a good blocker. He will be behind Jason Witten and John Hanna at the tight end position but will see action when the Cowboys deploy all three tight ends on some plays.
Some would think the Cowboys are set in the wide receiver postion with Dez Bryant, Miles Austin, Dwayne Harris, Cole Beasley, and three other receivers on the current squad,..but with their third selection Dallas chose Terrence Williams.
Not having RG III as his quarterback for his senior season did not hamper Baylor's Williams. He is six foot two and 205 and is described as big, tough, and extremely physical. He led the Bears in receiving in 2012.
Day three at the NFL Draft was to be a key day for the teams that did their homework. Once the glamor names were gone it was time to find some real football players. With their 4th pick of the draft, Dallas selected B.W. Webb, a cornerback from William & Mary University.
Webb started every game as a collegian and recorded eleven interceptions at W&M. He is five foot ten and 183 pounds and was one of the fastest players on his college team.
DeMarco Murray is the starting running back for the Cowboys of Dallas, but when he is not in the game the offense has suffered. With their 5th pick in the draft, Dallas chose another Cowboy...but this Cowboy came from Oklahoma State University.
Joseph Randle was a two year starter at Stillwater and will bypass his senior year to jump to the National Football League. He is six foot and weighs 202 pounds. Randle is fast and powerful...could be a good fit for Dallas.
Linebacker is a spot that was completely devastated by injuries for Dallas in 2012 as Sean Lee and Bruce Carter were lost for most of the season. Pick number six for Dallas found them going for DeVonte Holloman from the University of South Carolina.
Holloman played both linebacker and safety for the Gamecocks and is listed at six foot one 246 pounds. Opposing coaches always had to be aware of where he was on the field and in 2012 he made eight stops behind the line of scrimmage.
With their final pick of the college draft Dallas again went for help in the defensive secondary as they chose J.J. Wilcox, a safety from Georgia Southern.
He is five foot eleven and 214. Coaches describe him as extremely quick and a hard hitter, two attributes a safety must have.
The draftees will all be in Dallas in the next week to get familiar with the surroundings of Valley Ranch and the personnel they will be playing with...and then a first practice coming up in May.
This weekend we celebrated the 7th Annual Birthday Bash at Texoma Harley-Davidson in Sherman. The dealership actually dates back to the 1960's but this is the anniversary of the move to the new facility in the Town Center Shopping Complex off U.S. Highway 75 (exit 64). A little bit of everything was available at the dealership this weekend.. Dyno-tuning of your bike, lots of free eats, tattoos, air-brush painting, a jumping-jack trampoline for the kids, ice cream, and the patch sewing lady was on hand..
Okay,...right off the bat let me admit the patch sewing lady is my wife and if I don't start with her I'll never hear the end of it. She does excellent work, and riders from Dallas and Oklahoma City come to the dealership just to have her do the work on their apparel.
The biggest draw for me is always the bikes... and if Harley-Davidson wants to let people test ride them, count me in. Last year I rode every bike they had in the truck. Since I sold my bike this is my only opportunity to satisfy that hunger for the 'wind in your face' feeling. Harley has a new model out this year called the 'Breakout.' It comes standard with a 103 cubic inch engine and really has a great deal of power....BUT the handlebars are straight across. They are similar to the early models of the Nightrain and I hated them. It forces you to hunch over the gas tank like some crotch-rocket fool. This is the Breakout in the photo below.
There is NO limit on how many bikes you can ride, so most riders usually check out two or three to see how they compare, and that is exactly what HD wants.
Naturally, the food is a big draw for hungry riders...and our thanks go out to Lupe's cafe in Sherman, Buffalo Wild Wings, and the Cupcake Factory for helping feed everyone.
Tex had his usual painting facility set up and did a fantastic job painting a Jeep Cherokee with the Harley-Davidson colors of black and orange. He also is 'world famous' for his air brush work on bikes, cars,...and women.
You would have to say that a good time was had by all...but the weatherman let us down again. Cloudy and rainy skies put a damper on the festivities and only the hard-core riders came out. Hope everyone had a good time and remember that Texoma HD tries to have one blow-out activity each month. For the next one please go to the webpage for more info.. TexomaHD.com
