Happy

Here are the last of my "Happy" shots until I have time to get to town and take some more. We have several historical markers around town, which I think will be fun to share. My sister has posted some of her pictures from our stroll around town on her blog. I liked reading what she remembers from our childhood.

This is the Brooks Memorial Chapel. It used to be the Presbyterian church. It's the church where my brother, sister and I were christened. We were the last babies christened there. When the church membership decided to close because of numbers and age, they sold the building to a funeral home in Canyon. Brooks did an outstanding job refurbishing/remodeling the building. It is neat that a piece of our history is still a usable asset to the community.

This is the top of one of the elevators. You can faintly see the words "Harman-Toles." It's now owned by Attebury Grain. My dad worked here until Attebury bought it, then he started farming.

Here the cousins are on our shoot. You may have noticed that our Main Street is brick. I think that makes it cool.

More shots of Happy

This is the south side of Main Street. The brick building houses Happy State Bank. It was founded here in 1908 (I think). It has grown into a very competitive regional bank with branches all over the Panhandle. My Aunt Judy has worked here for as long as I can remember. My kids always look forward to the sucker and balloon they get when we stop by. On our photo shoot last week, Judy invited us in to the back to watch coins being rolled.

Beside it is the Grand Theater. A local lady, Carolyn Bloodworth has refurbished the outside and is in the process of doing some work on the inside. She had her annual craft fair there. She's also working on a pictorial history of Happy. The Masons used the building after the theater closed. I've been to many a Rainbow meeting there. The Bloodworths purchased it when the Masons and Eastern Star quit meeting. We're lucky that someone is interested in keeping a building up. unfortunately, most of the buildings on Main Street have fallen into disrepair.

This is a very poor shot of our fire station. It sits on the North side of Main Street. We have an outstanding volunteer fire department with great equipment.

I'm not sure who owns the part of the building on the corner. I do remember it being a drug store and then a restaurant in my lifetime. The white building to the west of the fire station is the old Lions' Den. The Lions no longer meet, but I believe the Cub Scouts use the building for their meetings. A chiropractor from Lubbock (with Happy roots) comes either weekly or monthly and sets up shop there as well.

This building, the "Happy Center" is where the senior citizens meet. A group of ladies quilts weekly. I believe they have monthly luncheons and either weekly or monthly game nights.

You can see our "new" water tower in the background. To the west of the Happy Center is Jackson's Tax Service. She does taxes and keeps books for people. One more store to the west (not shown) is where my grandparents used to have Tirey Hardware. I'll try to get to town and take some better pictures if it ever warms up.

Around Town

I bought myself a new camera for Christmas. I have no idea how to use it yet, so I'm just leaving it on Auto. Yesterday, my sister and I took our kids for a photo shoot around Happy. For the next several posts, I'm going to share some shots of my town with you. It was a very overcast day yesterday, so the sky was terribly gray.

First off, proof that there really is a place called Happy, Texas. This is our post office:

Our old water tower:

A shot of the elevators along the railroad tracks. The elevators you see are concrete and were built by POWs during WWII. I'm not sure about all of the details, I'll try to go read the historical marker and get back to you on that.

There are more behind me and some to the west of the tracks. Unfortunately only one is open all the time now and one is open seasonally.

Happy sprang up along the railroad when it went through. It was important to the cattle industry and eventually to the grain industry. My grandmother told us about how they used to drive the cattle to town and put them in the pens (that would have been south of the current post office) by the tracks and then load them up to ship north. She told about how her uncle road the train with the cattle in 1918 and caught the flu and eventually died because of complications. (All of this happened before she was born.)

When we have a good wheat year we cut our grain and bring it to town to the elevator. Sometimes we even harvest maize in the fall. The grain is eventually shipped out on railroad cars.

A Day at Home

T.S. woke up in the middle of the night with a stomach bug. I've been fighting a cold and Robby is terribly busy at school, so we made the decision to have me stay home with T.S. today. This was my first "day at home" since school started.

I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself. I got caught up on laundry, finished some craft orders and made marshmallows. T.S. was better by lunch time. I even got some presents wrapped. It was an interesting afternoon watching the progress of the cows that were out most of the day and of the electric coop as they replaced a pole in the pasture to our south. We even had some uninvited visitors to our north. By the time I figured out we had company, they realized I was home and left. It appeared to be two men with some sort of bird--I'm guessing either a hawk or a falcon. They were up near our tree line and would hold out an arm periodically and a bird would return to it. It kind of made me wonder what all goes on out here when we're not home.

I enjoy my job. It has been nice to be among adults and be a part of civilization, but I was reminded today how nice it is to just be at home.

Ready or not, it's winter!

Well, we've survived a VERY cold week. I'm not sure how many days we were below freezing or right above. I'm hoping this week wasn't a taste of what the rest of the winter will be like. It's funny how fast you can block out the memory of making sure all of the animals have unfrozen water. I'm hoping for a warm up next week.