July 11, 2021 A trip to Amarillo for Andy Person’s Memorial Service

 July 11, 2021 A trip to Amarillo for Andy Person’s Memorial Service

We had planned to leave by 8:00.  When I awakened at 6:30 Suzette was still sleeping so I did not disturb her.  I went to the kitchen and toasted four slices of Bosque Bakery baguette and spread goat cheese on each slice and a thin slice of onion and thin slices of Gravad lax and made two sandwiches with the Gravad lax in the middle and the toasted bread slices on the outside. I wrapped each sandwich in Saran and put both in a plastic sandwich bag.

I then removed the outer rind from the remaining 1/2 of the Tuscan melon and cubed the melon into 1 inch cubes and put them into a gallon freezer bag.

Suzette awakened around 7:30 and we each took showers and dressed and packed our change of clothes for the memorial service and our toiletries and pillows into my suitcase.  Suzette filled the ice chest with four Model Negras, a bottle of Rodney Strong Rose, and the sandwiches, the melon cubes, the wedge of Brie Willy gave me for my birthday and a container of Boursin, and a bag of bing cherries.  She also packed the picnic basket with the rest of the Bosque Bakery baguette and the canister of peanuts.

We loaded the ice chest, the picnic basket, and the suitcase into the mini and left Albuquerque by 8:45.

We ran into several traffic jams and extremely heavy traffic on I-40 that frustrated us as we crawled along in jams of over two miles several times and delayed our arrival in Amarillo by at least an hour.

When we finally arrived in Amarillo at 3:00 we drove directly to the Amarillo Museum of Art on the campus of Amarillo College.  It was a small museum but with several interesting collections.  There was a bunch of Buddhas and celestial beings in a collection of Oriental art that filled the third floor,  the second floor was mostly Texas artists including several Dallas Nine artists like Jerry Bywaters and several paintings by Julien Ondrrdonk, including one of his iconic bluebonnet paintings. 

   

                                 

                                           

                                             

                                               

We then went down to the first floor, which included several galleries of contemporary Texas artists’ works and a magnificent mural by Martin Hennings of a cowboy herding a herd of white faced Herefords that was painted as a commission for Clyde Littlefield for his bank building in Austin.  It confirms to me that Hennings was a master painter who could paint anything in a compelling composition. 

At 3:45 we drove the Relic Air BNB which turned out to be the most creatively conceived and decorated BNB guest housed we have stayed in.

It is a spacious studio apartment with a kitchen, bedroom and sitting room in one room with a bathroom partitioned into a separate room that may have once been a double garage or mother-in-law’s casita with a captivating Alice in Wonderland mural all along the fence leading to the casita.

We loved it.

We had agreed to pick Harold up at 5:30.  Since it was 4:00 we snacked on Brie cheese and toasted baguette slices, melon, and cherries with a glass of Rodney Strong rose’ to make up for the lack of lunch and then dressed and left at 5:15.

We picked Harold and drove out to a resort on Lake Tanglewood south of town where over 150 of Andy’s large family and friends had gathered for his memorial. There were kids running and playing by the lake.

Harold was close to Judy and Andy and knew everyone of the children in their blended family and many of their grandchildren.  There were three generations of two families and it was evident from the testimonials that Andy was a loving brother, parent and grand parent and friend to many.

After the homilies dinner was served.  I at first saw it as less than wonderful but after I considered the logistics and menu decided it was quite creative. The dish was a construct your own nachos.  There were six  steam table containers with corn chips, taco meat, diced chicken fajitas, nacho queso sauce, Refried beans, and Mexican rice. Then there were cold trays of pickled jalapeños, salsa, sour cream, lettuce, diced tomatoes.  Everything you could reasonably want on a nacho.

As you went down the line the servers served the corn chips and then spooned beef or chicken or both onto the chips and then a third server ladled spoonfuls of queso cheese sauce over the meat and chips to create the nachos.  Then each person served themselves the rice, beans and other cold accompaniments.

Here is a photo of my plate.

                                          

I liked the dish a lot especially with a Dos Equis Amber ale after two of Andy’s famous margaritas made from frozen limeade, tequila, some vodka and Orange liquor and after I thought about the several occasions of mass food poisoning from catered Mexican dinners that had not been properly cared for cooked enchilada dinners.

Suzette and Harold, who were married to each other for ten years and I who knew them for three or four of those years had great fun reminiscing until the staff started dimming the lights, clearing the tables, and stacking chairs. 

                                 

It took about half hour to say goodbye to Judy and several other of Andy’s  family and we finally drove Harold back to his BNB and returned to our Alice in Wonderland Hobbit house and went to bed around 10:30.

Bon Appetit