21 June 1938-12 December 2011

Words by his son Curtis D. Tucker
Two families lost someone yesterday. One family lost a long time dad, husband, uncle and brother that had aged into his 70′s, while another family lost a faint memory of someone frozen in time, a 30 year old man captured only in a few vintage photographs and videos, smiling and unaging. With the remote chance of ever crossing paths now forever closed, may you rest in peace Tilford Neal Tucker. Condolences go out to his wife Monica, his daughters Jodi and Jeni and the entire Tucker family.

Hug your crumb crunchers today as I will surely hug mine, be sure they know you love them and take care of any unfinished business before it’s too late.

We made a quick trip to Dallas last weekend and I thought I’d pass on some pictures and notes from the trip.  We went down because my granddaughters were in National Cheer Competition.  On the way down, with gale force winds trying to push us off the highway, we made a note of the fact that the Red River was almost totally dry at the point where we crossed.  You can believe us when we say we are in a drought.

As we drove through Minco, Oklahoma on Hwy 81 South we could see miles of wind mills.  NextEra has acquired land rights to about 9,000 acres with 65 property owners. The Grady County wind farm will have 62 turbines each with a maximum generating capacity of 1.6MW which  gives the wind farm about 100 megawatts of power capacity at the end of 2011.  Their size gives them the impression of monster wind mills.  When we came by, going home after dark the next day, instead of seeing the windmills you see red blinking lights across the horizon.

The girls had their competition at the Dallas Convention Center, downtown Dallas.  Believe it or not the center was built about half way around an old Pioneer cemetery.  The old and often crooked tombstones rise from the grass in the shade of lots of great old trees.  This gives a nice place to sit and think, wander around and read the names and dates of the deceased, or just stop and take pictures.

And finishing the day off and leaving downtown you pass the famous grassy knoll and the spot where President Kennedy was shot.  It’s hard to imagine such an awful event happened on this mildly curving downtown street.  On this day a group of protestors on some sort of quest, were making a lot of noise on the knoll,  but not enough to even make cars slow down.

My uncle JoeAsh, Issoudun France 1918

I hope I haven’t lost all my blogger friends. I have spent almost every waking minute for the last two weeks, sorting and putting photos in albums. I had some in old albums that were about to fall apart so I had to take those photos out and put them in new albums. I have been collecting photo albums from garage sales over the last few years and have some really nice ones now full of great family photos. I have to say I got frustrated some times because there are so many that have nothing written on the back so I had to guess or compare to figure out who they are. I scanned the oldest ones and put them in an iPhoto album on my laptop. I had several boxes full of loose pictures from my moms stuff and my grandmothers things. If you have photos loose like me don’t let them get out of hand. Now days we down load from digital cameras into the computers but there are those old wonderful pictures that are turning a little yellow from age that need to be saved.

At the Restoring Honor ceremony on Saturday they had wanted a flyover but due to air space rules and regulations in DC they thought they couldn’t. God said “Here is your flyover”.

One of the most fun things we did when I was in High School was cruise a street called VanBuren.  We’d drive  down, circle the Dairy Maid and drive back and circle the drive in. We pooled our money, buy 50 cents worth of gas and cruise all evening.   Back and forth, yelling at each other out the windows, talking with the boys, making dates and all that stuff you did in HS.  Well each year until a few years ago the classes did the same thing so someone had a VanBuren Cruise night Friday.  Let me tell you the town was packed with vehicles, old and new.  Do these bring back any memories?

My brother Rick, who died too young. He flew the skies of Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos. He made it through the war and died of an illness. He flew the OV10 and as you can see he was a story teller!!

Well I guess I have figured out enough info to at least post something of great importance, LOL.  I guess a bunch of you have begun planting your spring and summer flowers.  They are sure pretty and I spend way too much money on something that I can’t seem to keep alive.  I DO NOT have a green thumb like my mom and my daughter.   The roses are really pretty this year and seem to be full of blooms already.  All over town the flowers are so pretty.  Look at this Azalea bush!!  I planted one and I certainly hope it looks like this one day.  Note:  comments are on the little sticky note pinned to the wall just to the right  of the subject.