From Church To Home To Museum

This building was built in 1910 as the First Baptist Church of Canadian, Texas. In 1955 the Baptists sold it to the Church of Christ which occupied it until the late 1970's. When plans were made to demolish the building to make way for something new, it was purchased by Dr. and Mrs. Malouf Abraham who remodeled the structure into their unique dream home. They raised their 3 sons there and assembled an outstanding personal art collection.

A couple of years ago, they decided to establish a foundation and give the Mansion to the public in order to share their collection and their home. We visited the Citadelle last Sunday with El Jefe's cousins, Robin and Mary.

The Mansion tour was just as unique as the building and grounds. Malouf and Theresa had recorded the tour personally and gave many interesting family anecdotes.

My favorite one involves the 14 paintings of the Stations of The Cross. Malouf was in an antique shop in Salt Lake City and spotted two of the paintings. Being a devout Catholic, he asked the proprietor if he had the other 12 paintings that should go with it. The guy rummaged around in back and produced them. He said the paintings had been brought back from Germany after WWII by an American GI.

Malouf then hired a French cabinetmaker to design something to display them with around the wall of the old choir balcony. The cabinetmaker came back to him saying that it was too difficult to work out something for 14 paintings and why not just display 12 in that location, putting the other 2 elsewhere.

Malouf says he told him: "You lapsed Catholic! Atheist! They must all go together." And go together they did. I don't know about you, but I think I would have found it difficult to enjoy my living room with the 14 stations of the cross looking down on me from the balcony! But the Abrahams loved it.

The website I linked to above is really outstanding and includes pages with pictures of the art collection and the beautiful gardens. The new gallery that has been built is where the Mary Cassat exhibit is and it will house future traveling art exhibits.

Truly the Citadelle is the jewel of the Texas Panhandle. The Abraham family immigrated from Lebanon to Texas. Malouf's grandparents ran a general store and bought land in the area. Oil and gas finds on that land provided the family's fortune. Malouf and Theresa's sons and grandchildren still live in Canadian, while they have retired to NYC and Florida after donating the Mansion and grounds to the Citadelle.

The Antelope Are Still Playing

This is a photo of the old trestle suspension bridge at Canadian, Texas. It is the longest bridge of its kind still standing west of the Mississippi.

El Jefe and I spent the Sunday after his high school reunion with his cousins exploring Canadian, which also has a beautiful little art museum with a good collection and a traveling exhibit of Mary Cassat pastels. (More about The Citadelle tomorrow.)

The QG Award for Most Honest Civic Motto goes to Canadian for its motto: Where the wheat grows, the oil flows and the wind blows!

You know you are back in West Texas when you turn on the radio in your rent car as you leave the Amarillo airport and immediately are treated to the farm commodities report. There's muchmore interest in pig, wheat and gas futures up here than in the stock market, I guess.

We really did see antelopes running by the side of the highway as we drove north. No tumbleweeds this time though! I think the ground wasn't yet dry enough for them.

And here are two words that I never thought I would see put together:
COWBOY GELATO. Really.

Finally, the best quip of the reunion came from one of El Jefe's friends who is a professor at Abilene Christian University:

Old age is responsible for most of what
Christianity gets the credit for.

Discuss among yourselves.

Cloud of Witnesses

This weekend El Jefe and I went to his hometown in West Texas for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the church he grew up in, Wesley UMC.

A few weeks ago my SIL found a baptismal certificate that seems to indicate that she, El Jefe and their father were the first baptisms in that church. Their parents were charter members of the church and although my father-in-law Dutch was not very active, El Jefe and SIL say that their mother poured her heart and soul into this church.

Looking at the displays of old photos and bulletins, it's clear that she was a very important leader of the congregation, serving on the building and finance committees during the construction of the first building. Later she spent years as the Sunday School superintendent and teacher. We bought a DVD that had transferred some old 8 mm movies of the first building going up and El Jefe was thrilled to see an image of his mother on the camera for a few brief moments.

The congregation has dwindled due to age and the decrease in the population of this small town since the 1950's. A few vigorous saints in their late 80's and early 90's who knew my husband's family back in the day were clearly still actively participating in the life of the church. But it now has lay pastor (what we PCUSA'ers what call a Commissioned Lay Pastor) and its future as an independent congregation is questionable. The pastor's wife lamented the deaths of 11 members in the past year and the mother of one of El Jefe's Sunday School buddies told us they are lucky these days to see 50 in attendance in worship.

None of that affects the lasting legacy of those, like my MIL, who established the church and raised their families in it, though. This trip reminded me once again how we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us and that we are truly surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses."

Houston and Borger Update

We returned from our trip to the Texas Panhandle to find things returning to normal chez QG. Our niece and family got power Saturday evening and gratefully scrambled home to sleep in their own little beds! There are still about 150,000 people without power in Houston and broken traffic lights scattered around the area.

The paper noted this morning that the one Jewish bakery was severely damaged by Ike and can't make the challah for Rosh Hashana this year so some small local delis are trying to step into the breach, causing people to line up early in the morning to get this traditional holiday bread.

It was really good to get out of town for a few days. It was the first visit for El Jefe back to his home town since his father died in July, which made it particularly poignant. His two cousins and their wives also attended the reunion in support of him and we all had a wonderful visit. How great is it to stay up late laughing uproariously with members of the family?

Cousin Mary took me to a spa in Amarillo which was truly fabulous, and so much better than spending the day listening to our hubbies reminisce about every dang football game ever played on the High Plains. Everyone was happy, and Mary and I were the best Arm Candy at the dinner!

The MC at the reunion was a former football player whose exploits in high school were related in El Jefe's book. He choked up and cried when he was presenting El Jefe with his letter jacket. All the books we brought with us were sold and there were requests. A big surprise was a nice note from El Jefe's friend and former Yale classmate Mike Medved (now a radio talk-show host) on the occasion which one of the classmates had gone to some trouble to get.

We didn't get a T-bird at Hertz. Instead we got a white Crown Victoria, which made us look like the old folks who frequent the early bird special at Luby's Cafeteria! Next time, I want that T-Bird.

Here's our photo, courtesy of Cousin Buddy:

Outta Here

We're leaving on a jet plane to the Panhandle for the weekend, where El Jefe has been invited to be the special guest of the Borger High School class of '63 at their reunion. His book about their football team (see sidebar) will be sold and he will be awarded an honorary letter jacket. He played basketball, not football, back in the day.

I'm going along as Publicist and Arm Candy. Where's the T-bird???

We hope our neice and her family enjoy having a house to themselves for the first time since Ike struck. They are praying for power by Sunday. Lord, hear their prayers!

Gifts of Memory

It's been more than 40 years since the scrappy Borger High Bulldogs proudly represented their little West Texas oilfield town in the Texas high school football playoffs.

Since then, their trophies have been lost and their legacy forgotten by the town that has never had another team go that far. Their beloved coach was named to the Texas high school hall of fame in honor of his outstanding career a couple of years ago, but recent attempts to name the Bulldog stadium or playing field in his honor were rebuffed by the school board.

El Jefe grew up during that era and was inspired to write a book for himself and his classmates that would keep the memory of those days alive for the future. A couple of months ago, I posted about our trip to Borger where he spent a couple of days researching old newspapers to complete the project. My role was to publish this little opus, which thanks to my experience with the RevGals Advent and Ordinary Time devotional books, I did using the Lulu print-on-demand service. Thanks, RevGals!
Now it is finished! The new link on the sidebar takes you the website where it can be ordered. Mayfield's Borger Bulldogs may never make the New York Times Best-seller list, but the emails and phone calls El Jefe has been receiving confirm that the book has touched the hearts of many of his classmates and members of the teams of that day.

Fond memories are one of God' great gifts, and it is the first part of gift El Jefe has given to those who share his experiences growing up in his old hometown this Christmas season as they get a chance to relive their days of glory on the gridiron and share them with children and grandchildren.

The second part of the gift is that all profits from the sale of the books will be given to a scholarship for the Borger High School honoring the top scholar-athlete of each graduating class--a scholarship El Jefe established a number of years ago in memory of one of his good friend, a football star on the Bulldog team who graduated from Rice and became an attorney before his untimely death from cancer.

Sales so far: 53, but who's counting?

Friday Borger Blogging

Here's the last of my pump jack pictures from our trip to El Jefe's hometown of Borger, Texas.

Fittingly, this is the patriotic-themed pump jack in Huber Park. There is a lot of support for the military in Borger, as there is in most of the state. A few years ago the town erected a tribute to those who had served in the armed services. El Jefe's father (WWII) and his cousins (Viet Nam) are among those honored on that monument.

Friday Borger Blogging

Here's another of Borger's decorated pump jacks. This one stands proudly in front of the town high school. The school's mascot is the Bulldog, so you see the row of little bulldogs climbing up the pump. The red and black paint represents the school colors. I wonder if the school cheer was changed to "Pump 'Em, Dogs"?

Friday Borger Blogging

Here's Borger's (El Jefe's hometown in the Texas Panhandle) answer to Amarillo's Horses (see previous post) and the Cow Parade. The city is encouraging businesses to display decorated oil pump-jacks in front of their establishments to boost civic pride.

This photo is the one advertising "Nana's Gifts." Because nothing quite reminds you of your Grandmother's presents like a pump-jack painted with stars!