Monday Evening Sidewalk

Rio Grande Valley and Back

Welcome to a late afternoon Monday Morning Sidewalk. That’s the rub, nailing a regular column down to Monday morning sometimes, just sometimes, goes over deadline. You’re probably out of your cubicles, cars, offices, and limos and home by now, but I wanted to take a second to bring those of you  – who read – up to speed.

It has been a whirlwind week out of town, starting with the loss, and Heaven’s gain of my 98-year-old Grandmother in the Rio Grande Valley. At 98, you can guess that she was ready and willing to go on home, [ppw id=”183910689″ description=”Holiday Update” price=”.25″]

and there was no pain or suffering. It was one of those kinds of dying, the kind we would be more than willing to receive on a dark night with clouds and stars above.

Of course, that breaks my last human bond to the Borderland where I grew up, and that is the strange bitterness that goes with the sweetness. There’s no grand reason to go home anymore, and that is strange to me.

So with a little more than a thousand miles under my feet since last Tuesday, I am back where I began – in a cold, wet and foggy North Texas. If there’s anything going on besides dinky TPWD stocker trout around here? I don’t know about it.

The Pop Up Shop here in Denton is going great guns, and merchandise is running very low. This is the last week of course, so be sure and visit the shop at 301 South Locust St. in Denton – if you are looking to support local artists, and provide a boost to the local economy (instead of the invisible stockholders of Amazon). For a look at merchandise, go to the Texas Fly Caster Instagram feed!

I am going to be manning the Pop Up Shop for the next few days, so I will bring the Texas fly fishing community up to speed, or MORE LIKELY, catch up with the Texas fly fishing community in coming days. I certainly need to close out the year with one final Texas Fly Fishing Report (yes, the original on YouTube), and a Christmas list for fly fishers, and BEFORE YEAR’S END, another Top Ten Fly Fishing Music Countdown (probably an audio broadcast).

There’s probably another trip to Houston to see family for ACTUAL Christmas in a few days, so you have to believe I will be almost as busy as you this holiday season. The schedule is about to clear though, and that starts in the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I am looking for someone who wants to hit Dangerfield for chain pickerel during the holiday break, and if anyone in the Galveston area wants to show me to their fish? All you have to do is give me a text or call at the number you know, and I will give you the potential dates. Our cold North Central and Northeast Texas weather has probably given us the break that we need for both flounder in Galveston and those chain pickerel in Daingerfield. 

There’s going to be a very rough cut to free/paid reading in January, and that is because the part of this site that separates paid/free content is a POS that is more expensive than you can probably believe – you’d laugh at me if you knew. I will try and bring you up-to-speed before end of year, but essentially everything that is “Paid Content” will be rough cut as far as the “teaser” opening content.c

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