Bob's Blog

One of my first priorities when I retired from my day job
Was to lose some weight, and get in shape.
So Sweet Marie and I started walking; & we added it to our long list of other chore files.
We walked slowly at first, then added more minutes to our route,
Until we were pretty soon walking two miles;
Felt like my body understood; starting losing weight and feeling pretty good.

Thus we doubled our route, & I felt like maybe my fifty-nine year old body could really do this,
When suddenly in our 3rd week, like an old car motor that suddenly felt amiss,
One knee started hurting bad; and I thought, oh no, was I headed into a deep abyss?
I gave it a good shot but after a good week of walking in pain,
Like the fighter, Roberto Duran, I said “No mas!”,  and feeling pretty much like a complete lame brain,
I headed to my orthopedic, with my head down, pretty sure I was at the bottom of my food chain.

My orthopedic doctor said that actually my left knee looked worse than my right one.
So why did the right one feel like it been shot with a gun?
That nature and arthritis had taken a toll on both knees from his view of the x-rays.
So with a shot to the right knee that felt all ablaze,
I counted my many blessings for God has never given me too hard a fight,
Soon I would get over this just like all my other long hard roads in life, and it would be all right.

Robert Collazo, 3/19/11

Spent the last 13 days in Laredo, caring for Mother-in-law, who had a minor accident and had to have surgery.   She is doing fine now.  So due to this, have been real busy lately and haven’t had a chance to even realize that I am retired now.

Just got back home on Sunday, and now will start in earnest to get the house ready to put it up for sale, so to be able to move to the Texas coast!  Wish us luck!

Azenette survived delicate heart surgery as a baby, a born fighter,
She is quite a survivor.
Raised by her Grandpa before she was three,
He taught her to be a good, to be gentle and kind, we surely agree.

Now Azenette has two great kids and a man who loves her.
But since her Grandpa taught her to be strong, she won’t deter;
And will make it just fine, that we can commend.
Living life to the fullest, to the very end.

Robert Collazo, 2/3/11

It seems like only yesteryear
When Jess, Adrian, George, and I would ride
Jess’s red ’63 Chevy, very dear.
Four Collazo cousins at the opening gate of life,
Riding the streets of Laredo, and feeling no fear.

Searching for life’s new-found treats,
With not a care in the world,
Anxious for the smell of flowers and the moist kiss of life so sweet;
In Laredo, in the Chevy, on the street,
Unaware of the danger we might meet.

It seems like only yesteryear
When the road of life was freshly clean and new;
The springtime of my youth, so dear.
When life held secrets and promises yet to come;
So long ago when we were all so young.

Robert Collazo, 1/22/11

Even though he lives in another State away from me
There has never been anyone so close to me like he.
I have not been able to put a finger on just why
But like a trusted friend or even sometimes like a big fruit fly,
He keeps hanging around, and never seems too far away.

Funny in all our years together and all our shared experiences and jokes;
Frank has been my rock, my Oak
My Brother, in good times and in bad; for no one could quite provoke
When I needed a laugh, or a even a big music hall.
He’s been my truest friend, apparently in it for the long haul.

I miss you Frank!

Robert Collazo, 1/14/11

It’s only now that I can write about this
For the pain was too great.
We all know we can stop the hate
Yet we keep doing away with ourselves at such a high rate.

We all know we are better than this.
So why must there be horrible tragedies for us to come together?
Did those folks realize it was their last day?
And will this pain that we feel ever go away?

Let us pray for those families that lost loved ones.

Robert Collazo, 1/12/11

I had just bought a new vehicle six months before, and never gave it a second thought that it would go out on me in the middle of a cold Friday night in West Texas on the way to San Antonio. But there I was, stuck on the side of that dark, lonely highway, and my new truck wouldn’t start. Well, I couldn’t just sit there and freeze all night. So, I got off my truck, and when that cold wind hit me, I thought what did I get into now?

A few miles before, it had begun to sleet, and though it was not coming down too hard, the road was beginning to take on that icy, sheen look. I thought about which way I should start walking.  In one direction, the closest town south was about 9 miles away, and the other way, I knew it was more than twenty.

My walk south hadn’t been more than 10-15 minutes, when a loud, souped up truck was coming up the road. The surprise was when that stranger stopped and asked me if that pickup truck down the road was mine, and if so, gestured me to climb in. I thought it odd that the stranger looked about in his late 70s or 80s.

The stranger told me that a new pickup truck in his neck of the woods wouldn’t last long out on the highway without being stolen, and said we’d better hurry to go it before it disappeared. In the time the stranger picked me up to the time we got to my truck, the man had told his whole life story. That he was a retired mechanic, all his kids were dead, and he had outlived all his other relatives.

We arrived at my truck’s location and the stranger stated that all he had was ten foot chain that he pull me with, and I exclaimed that the chain wasn’t long enough! All the stranger said, was not to worry since he just lived up the road “a bit”, and wouldn’t be driving too fast anyway. Yeah, right!

You can imagine my surprise when we got on that highway and the speed at which he pulled me was somewhere around 80-85 mph! The only thing that stranger didn’t lie about was that he did live relatively close by and ten minutes later we were driving into his driveway.  The stranger told me that I could use the pay phone at the corner store, and have someone pick me up.  He also told me that I should give him my truck keys and to come back on Sunday, and my truck would be ready to go.  I thought to myself, can I trust this stranger?  He already had saved me, and kept me off that cold highway, so why shouldn’t I?  So, I gave him my keys and I thanked him.  I then walked as he suggested to the pay phone, to call my Brother Frank.

A couple of hours later when Frank had picked me up, he couldn’t believe I had “given my keys” to a stranger, and then felt like a fool since I had not even got his name!  Somehow, like I explained to my brother, it all felt “right”.  He called me a fool (very eloquently in the Spanish language), and as he kept chewing on me.  Anyway, I pretended to be asleep on the way to San Antonio to keep my brother from chewing me out again.  For those of you that know my Brother Frank, surely you understand how I felt, right?

That following Sunday, I took a Greyhound bus back to the Stranger’s house in Mason, Texas.  I walked from the station, to the Stranger’s house, and found a note from him on his front door.  The note stated that he had worked on my truck and all that was needed was a timing chain adjustment, and my truck was good “as new”.   So, I knocked on his door, and when he didn’t answer, looked around for him, and realized that the house looked totally abandoned.  In fact, it looked like no one had lived in it for years!

My thought then was that the stranger had just gone to the store or something.  So, I waited awhile for him.  After an hour or so, and feeling impatient, and thinking and feeling just about what my Brother had called me, I looked down his long driveway, saw my truck, and didn’t quite feel like a fool any longer!   Then I saw another vehicle behind my truck under a very dusty tarp. I pulled the tarp off and found what appeared to be that souped-up truck. However, this time, the motor looked like it was in the middle of an overhaul. That couldn’t be right. For the other night, it had been running great!

My mind was surely playing games, I thought. So, I got in my truck and found that it started right up as the Stranger had noted.  I then drove to the nearest ranch house, about a mile away. When I asked the gentleman that greeted me there if he had seen the neighbor lately, his faced got grim. It seemed that his neighbor had had a heart attack and died about 6 months back, he said.

How can that be, I thought?

Robert Collazo, originally posted on 10/20/08, and reposted on 1/5/11.

It was very cold that morning many years ago.  I was shivering to the point where I actually caught myself shaking.  Smelling wood smoke from somebody’s fireplace somewhere far away surely didn’t help either, and I imagined whoever it was around that fire were all nice, warm and cuddly.  It was December in Texas, and it was deer hunting season.  My baby brother Eddie and I were up in a tree deer blind in what we called my Dad’s “Ranch”, even though it was just a few acres in Medina County, Texas.  My brother was sound asleep in a warm sleeping bag next to me, and I was jealous of him because I was so very cold.

Looking out that deer blind, which was really only a wooden plank atop a tree with no protection from the wind, I had a great view.  From there I could see a wide panorama of that whole side of that hill, and it was beautiful.  The oak, mixed in with some maple trees, all were ablaze with red and burnt orange.  However, along with all the beauty I also recall the cedar trees biting into my nose, letting me know that they were also there, and it made my nose run.  The wind was blowing probably around 15 to 20 and I assumed that was the reason I was so cold.

My four brothers, and I used to call this a “mountain” when we were kids.  It was way up in the central Hill Country of Texas.  To get there from San Antonio, where we lived, we took Highway 36 North; through Bandera, and once you passed through the little town of Medina towards Kerville, it was just a few more miles to “Mesa Verde”, which was the name of the land around there.

I recall when my Dad, brothers, and I would go there, it was a adventure in itself.  A small, winding gravel road would take you up the mountain where getting there meant you sometimes saw the bottom of ravines or gullies on either side of the narrow road.  Driving up I always thought or imagined I was going up a mountain pass in Colorado looking for gold, and blazing a trail in the 1800′s with a horse and a couple of mules tagging behind through a rugged mountain pass somewhere.

Now I heard my brother stirring, telling me that he was quite hungry.  I told him to hush.  After a little while, I heard him say again, “I’m hungry!” over and over.  I kept telling him that it was too windy to start a fire for breakfast and to go back to sleep.  However, after more than a hundred times of hearing his requests, I relented and told him okay, and to get his stuff so that we could get down from the blind.

I knew better.  I knew I should not have started a camp fire that morning.  While cooking breakfast for Eddie, all of a sudden, a big gust of wind came into our small camp fire area, and the small fire we started for breakfast had literally jumped and had turned into a line of fire about a hundred yards long down the side of our gravel road!  Never in my 23 years of life had I seen anything like this!  All the dry grass around our small camp house was also on fire and Eddie and I, along with our other brother Frank, who of was pretty upset, and our friend Rick were trying to stomp it out with whatever coats or jackets we had on hand.  However, we didn’t seem to be making any headway, and a decision was made among the four of us, to get help (because this was long ago in a time where no one had cellphones).  So, I ran down the gravel road to our nearest neighbor, who had a phone, so they could call the fire department.

When I got back to our camp site, most of the fire was out except for a few spots that were still smoldering, and we quickly got them out.  By the time the fire department came up the mountain from the town of Medina, every bit of the fire was out.  It was a good thing that the wind was blowing up towards our road or else that whole mountain would have started on fire, I later thought.  The only thing hanging around after the fire was out was our embarrassment and dignity over the whole matter.  How could you have started a fire with this wind, the fire captain said?  Leave it to a foolish one, and a hungry baby brother.

My only other regret that morning was that all throughout my time spent in the military, I never used my good Army jacket and I was always had it clean and pressed in a closet somewhere looking really nice.  I always thought after getting out of the Army I could proudly wear it.  Well, looking around that morning after the fire, I spotted my once pristine military jacket all full of holes from the fire.  After so much caring I did for that jacket throughout my career, there it was on the still smoldering ground half-way burnt up and all holey now.  No matter, I thought because my brothers and I and friend were all alive and safe.

To this day, I don’t recall if we ever did make breakfast for Eddie that morning.

My first day retired started with a “to-do” list, of what I had planned to do;
From going to the groceries to cleaning the garage, and other stuff just so;
Still no one watching or caring what got done, so felt like I had no woe, you know.
Oh, I mustn’t forget to cook my stew and make my bread dough, though.

Now it seems pretty clear, even with all the stuff I planned around the house,
That retiring, after all these years, was the right thing to do.
For to have no stress; no daily grind with a hundred calls to check into
Is really good; and I’m really imagining all sorts of good things will now ensue.

So now if you ask my point of view,
I will tell you clearly. with no hullabaloo,
And, please don’t misconstrue
That retiring, for me, was way overdue!

Robert Collazo, 1/3/11

As I have mentioned countless times, I am very blessed to have many true friends.  Well, on Wednesday, of this week, one of my dear friends left me a poem on my desk that he had written for me.  I was very moved by it; and I consider it a real honor for me to share it here on my site.

To my author friend, Joe Alcazar – first of all, I didn’t know you were a poet; secondly, I thank-you so much for thinking so highly of me. – Robert Collazo, 12/31/10

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A TRAVELER

The sun shines its warmth everyone knows
And oh how refreshing a cool breeze will feel
Some days are so gloomy, so cold and so hard
And life’s many maladies will make us ask why?
On the voyage of life many roads are traversed.

I don’t know the answer to all of life’s woes
But I know there’s a key that satisfies most of all
If all would just learn it, what a life it could be
Alas not all travelers have been able to see
All the beauty and splendor there is to enjoy
Life is a wonder; isn’t it so?

But the greatest of gifts from the Almighty above
Is not the beauty in nature that expresses His love
For like the clouds that form figures or a mist in the night
So many pass by without leaving a mark
Once in a while, so rare I’m afraid
Comes a traveler that reaches right into your heart.

This impression stays with you even though they depart
For such is the character of one called a friend
A companion that only sees what’s your very best
A friend that is born for a time when there’s need
Such a gift I have been blessed to know
The friendship of Robert will continue to grow.

Though with sadness to many, Collazo will go
The voyage of life will march on without fail
The twilight of life brings these changes I know
But reflecting on friends brings a smile and a glow
It’s not goodbye forever just a farewell for now
For the sun shines all days wherever he goes.

Your Friend,
Joe Alcazar, 12/29/10