Travels with Howie

November 17 2014  8:30 pm cst 58 degrees

A collection of bedpans .......hows that for an opening eye catcher?
I went to the Harlingen Arts and Heritage museum this week but my timing was a little off as there were two big nearly-empty rooms being readied for their Christmas stuff.  Beginning Dec 11, those rooms will be filled with all sorts of Christmas trees decorated in themes.

This one is so cute I can't wait to see when the rooms are filled with decorated trees.

 Anyone....family, organizations, individuals, groups, etc can sign up to donate a tree and decorate it.

Sooo, I wandered around a bit outside where they have a few historic buildings.

This one is the original house of Lon C Hill ...town founder.  I didn't bother going inside but I did take notice that he named the town after his friend whose ancestral home was in Harlingen Holland.  Good thing because the town had previously been known by such distinguished names as Rattlesnake Junction and 6-shooter Junction.

I went into the hospital where this display gave me pause.  Those are awfully little shoes.

This test for color blindness was invented by a Dr. Thompson and was given to railway and  shipping employees.   The person being tested was asked to choose a match for a red  yarn  and if he chose purple or blue he was deemed red blind.  If he choose green or grey he was deemed green blind,
This was one of the first attempts to standardize color blind testing.

Apparently  the hospital was concerned about energy as you can see the energy-saving light bulb. 

 I didn't know they had them in 1927. (That was irony..  .I apologize.)

Maternity room.  Please, museum people, take that beautiful wedding ring quilt made in the early 1930s out of that bright sunny window! The colors are already very faded.

Well, now I had to just go talk to the lady at the desk.  

This sign says that this is the hide of an animal native to the King Ranch here in Texas.  It's a Nilgai , a member of the antelope family. 

 The King Ranch  released them on their land about 1930 so  probably the King Ranch was the first to offer them for hunting, but they are native to Asia.  The original population has exploded..I have read that there are  now 30,000 and in another place I read that there are 50,000 estimated population  in this area today.  Well, I don't know which is more correct, but there are a lot of them, I guess.

By the way, if you are interested in hunting Nilgai at the King Ranch today, the 2 day/2 night hunting package for a nilgai bull is $3000.00 per person.

So I asked Christian..or is it spelled Kristian....and we did some Googling but we got to talking about the Christmas tree opening day on  Dec 11 where they are having free food and wine.  Wine got my attention and we talked about other stuff and I still don't know why they offer nilgai as native animals.

It's been cold here in the valley as it has about everywhere, I guess.  These people are venders at the flea market.

Is this deep sea fishing?  I like that he still has his hat on when he is up to his neck in surf.

Silk floss tree..it has thorns all over the bark.  It also has beautiful big pink flowers in September and October, but they are too high to see  on this one.

This picture was displayed with several other serious religious pictures.  It is a joke, isn't it?