THE SECOND ROCK AT ALICE KECK

"The Second Rock At Alice Keck"

In the current dry conditions of our early summer (little rain since last spring) our Ventura River has gone to the look of a desolated white stone skeleton of it's previous self.  I miss it so much that today I painted a reminder of a painting that went to a lady doctor many years ago

When the doctor visited my El Paseo Studio in Santa Barbara, many years ago, she was on her journey to a field assignment in the Sudan, as I recall, and was unable to take a large painting along.  She promised to call upon her return.  I was impressed.

About three and a half years later, she called, asking whether the painting was still available... and she said "I am on a gurney in preparation to deliver my first baby and my husband said I could have anything.  I want my "Rock" painting".

We were both pleased.  Elbert

painting by Elbert Price

THE ROCK AT ALICE KECK

HOCUS POCUS

"Hocus Pocus"

When I was six, I was still living with the three widows in Joy, in the sharecropper's shack.  We knew that Aunt Vera and Uncle Hub were coming for me in August to put me in school in Georgetown.  We decided on a last visit to Aunt Belma and her kids was in order before I left.

When any sort of storm threatened, the three women that I lived with, would go into fits of anguish and I too, became upset.  Kids were always saying "Hocus Pocus is gonna get you".  This scared hell out of me.  I became fearful anytime I saw clouds of any sort.  I suffered often from this acquired fear of "Hocus Pocus". 

At Aunt Belmas one day near noon, I was asked to go and take Uncle Harvey's lunch, in a distant field just as a spring thunder storm was gathering and Aunt Belma had no other family member to do it.  My grandmother told her that I was afraid of storms but Belma would insist.  So off I went with lunch pail in hand.

When I neared the patch where Uncle Harvey was plowing, the storm got nearer and so did the thunder and lighting.  I cringed, but Uncle Harvey was watching.  I stood up and flung my fist upward and shouted "Hocus Pocus can kiss my ass".

I've never feared thunderstorms since.  Elbert     

sketch by Elbert Price

DEAR JULIA,

Thanks for the very thoughtful and original Father's Day card.  I really enjoyed being your dad.  I never knew what you'd do next.  I still brag about your ability to climb fences.  I, like you, when little, would escape and wander about, exploring and self entertaining.

I feel so lucky to have lived to see the internet and the cloud.  Self entertaining types, like us, feel we have found the true "Golconda".

When I was struggling to get the first publicly supported Educational T V
Station, Channel 10, launched in Memphis, Tennessee, I thought that getting important informant information from TV would be a miracle.  I never dreamed of the Internet, little alone The Cloud.  But now we have it.

I know many wonders come next and I know I will have to miss them but as you marvel at it all, remember that you got here at a fabulous time to be alive and that I assisted, peripherally in that achievement.
                                                                   
Love you, Elbert (Dad)

DREAM

I dreamed that I had a tiny helicopter controlled by mashing on it's base with my fingers and by turning my wrist and hand in any direction that I wished it to go.  I, of course, was its passenger and went flitting about wherever I wished.  Elbert  

QUINCE

QUINCE

Some, there may be, who consider the knowledge of where to find Quinces a picayune possession...

but if one has a lust for quince jam on morning toast, it's priceless knowing.

                                                                                            Elbert

OZZIE'S GARDEN

The Garden

Sometimes when I was a five year old kid, I'd sit on Ozzie Wilson's shady back porch and look out upon the sun flooded back vegetable kitchen garden. There was a martin house about midway and humming birds, wrens and mocking birds were everywhere. The fencing was fronted with a type of domestic blackberry and a fruit orchard was beyond. Nothing spectacular was going on. One could tell life was happening.

This is a warm spot on my mind that I often go back to.  The Ranchera garden reminded me.                                                          
                                                                                           Elbert