WEEKEND OF BANK ROBBERS, CIA SPIES AND KITS
Mark and Mary Kathryn came out Friday night and we went to the opening night of the Big Country Dinner Theater production of The Santa Claus Bank Robbery in Cisco. The composer, writer, director and banjo and guitar player is Billy Smith who grew up with Mark in Bryan from grade school to high school. Billy's wife has a PhD in dance and choregraphs the production. She is also the President of Cisco College. The performers are recruited at auditions in St. Louis and screened from 600 down to 160 from which the about one dozen are brought to Cisco for a couple of months to rehearse and perform from the last week in June through July.
It is an audience participation with the performers coming into the audience several times and during the bank robbery the audience are given plastic machine guns firing small ping pong balls and everyone gets to shoot at the bank robbers as they run out. During the original Cisco bank robbery they counted over 100 bullet holes in the bank. The food was great with dessert served during the intermission.
I am glad that I went with Mark because Billy invited us out to his Lake Cisco home after the performance. He has a beautiful home that he bought when he saw them putting up the for sale sign, drove in looked at the house and said he would buy it. It is located on the north end of the dam. He has a great deck that looks on the lake. Has a boat dock that he says goes up and down with the lake. They have lived there for three years. He also bought160 acres near by where he runs a herd of cattle. They moved from their other house south of Cisco where he started his cattle herd and they were baling hay when Mark drove by in the morning. We talked about the recruiting operation and got home at midnight.
Saturday Mark K. cooked a great meal and invited Ike and Sue to share. They all left at 2 so that I could get ready for my new guests, two retired CIA spies. James and Meredith Olson were both spies for 30 years stationed in Paris, Moscow, Vienna and Mexico City where they had a lot of hair-raising experiences. James told about one difficult dangerous assignment in Moscow that used all of his skills of disguise and hiding secrets for an entire day. He was wired with radio to listen the the KGB agents trying to find him and had recording equipment to record his meeting with the Russian defector who delivered a box of films taken of their secret crypto files by the Russian who hated communism and wanted them to get him, his wife and daughter out of Russia which they were able to do under very difficult circumstances. James didn't tell the rest of the story about the KGB catching him on his way home and beating him to a pulp breaking his jaw and knocking out a tooth.
We had a sell-out crowd of 140 at $10 for the fund raiser and got another $380 from the money voting for one of the three local spies. Their talk was great and enjoyed by all. A lot of people talked to them after. Judy Killgo's daughter-in-law from Albuquerque is an Aggie and had heard Olson speak at their Muster. Our pastor's oldest son had heard Olson speak at some meeting so they renewed acquaintance. The son is planning to enter A&M next fall after completing his work at Weatherford College. After the meeting I found out that the Library had gotten their furniture Friday and moved the children's books into our new Children's Resource Center so I took the Olsons for a tour. Meredith hadn't seen the Library. They had been given a tour of the Robert E. Howard house by Arlene and Tom on their way in.
This morning I made French toast for them and they got to see the two kits that the fox brought out from under the play house. They are always cute little puppies and put on a show. They left at nine and I got to teach SS class covering the Noah flood this morning. At church we had new visitors who just moved to a place near Burkett after he retired from the Army at Fort Hood. They had a son who just finished high school and is enrolled at Angelo State for the Fall. After church the Administrative Council approved hiring the pastor's wife as musical director. She directed the choir this morning and with his voice added it was great. We have been praying for a choir director and the Lord has provided.
I ate lunch with the Methodists at Jean's after church. After my nap I wrote a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal replying to an op-ed about scientists having to be atheists because they can't assume God will interfere with their experiments. I also got my Livestock Weekly column in and instant messaged with Ken Davis who is still having heart problems and may get a pace maker. It has been an eventful weekend.
Mark and Mary Kathryn came out Friday night and we went to the opening night of the Big Country Dinner Theater production of The Santa Claus Bank Robbery in Cisco. The composer, writer, director and banjo and guitar player is Billy Smith who grew up with Mark in Bryan from grade school to high school. Billy's wife has a PhD in dance and choregraphs the production. She is also the President of Cisco College. The performers are recruited at auditions in St. Louis and screened from 600 down to 160 from which the about one dozen are brought to Cisco for a couple of months to rehearse and perform from the last week in June through July.
It is an audience participation with the performers coming into the audience several times and during the bank robbery the audience are given plastic machine guns firing small ping pong balls and everyone gets to shoot at the bank robbers as they run out. During the original Cisco bank robbery they counted over 100 bullet holes in the bank. The food was great with dessert served during the intermission.
I am glad that I went with Mark because Billy invited us out to his Lake Cisco home after the performance. He has a beautiful home that he bought when he saw them putting up the for sale sign, drove in looked at the house and said he would buy it. It is located on the north end of the dam. He has a great deck that looks on the lake. Has a boat dock that he says goes up and down with the lake. They have lived there for three years. He also bought160 acres near by where he runs a herd of cattle. They moved from their other house south of Cisco where he started his cattle herd and they were baling hay when Mark drove by in the morning. We talked about the recruiting operation and got home at midnight.
Saturday Mark K. cooked a great meal and invited Ike and Sue to share. They all left at 2 so that I could get ready for my new guests, two retired CIA spies. James and Meredith Olson were both spies for 30 years stationed in Paris, Moscow, Vienna and Mexico City where they had a lot of hair-raising experiences. James told about one difficult dangerous assignment in Moscow that used all of his skills of disguise and hiding secrets for an entire day. He was wired with radio to listen the the KGB agents trying to find him and had recording equipment to record his meeting with the Russian defector who delivered a box of films taken of their secret crypto files by the Russian who hated communism and wanted them to get him, his wife and daughter out of Russia which they were able to do under very difficult circumstances. James didn't tell the rest of the story about the KGB catching him on his way home and beating him to a pulp breaking his jaw and knocking out a tooth.
We had a sell-out crowd of 140 at $10 for the fund raiser and got another $380 from the money voting for one of the three local spies. Their talk was great and enjoyed by all. A lot of people talked to them after. Judy Killgo's daughter-in-law from Albuquerque is an Aggie and had heard Olson speak at their Muster. Our pastor's oldest son had heard Olson speak at some meeting so they renewed acquaintance. The son is planning to enter A&M next fall after completing his work at Weatherford College. After the meeting I found out that the Library had gotten their furniture Friday and moved the children's books into our new Children's Resource Center so I took the Olsons for a tour. Meredith hadn't seen the Library. They had been given a tour of the Robert E. Howard house by Arlene and Tom on their way in.
This morning I made French toast for them and they got to see the two kits that the fox brought out from under the play house. They are always cute little puppies and put on a show. They left at nine and I got to teach SS class covering the Noah flood this morning. At church we had new visitors who just moved to a place near Burkett after he retired from the Army at Fort Hood. They had a son who just finished high school and is enrolled at Angelo State for the Fall. After church the Administrative Council approved hiring the pastor's wife as musical director. She directed the choir this morning and with his voice added it was great. We have been praying for a choir director and the Lord has provided.
I ate lunch with the Methodists at Jean's after church. After my nap I wrote a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal replying to an op-ed about scientists having to be atheists because they can't assume God will interfere with their experiments. I also got my Livestock Weekly column in and instant messaged with Ken Davis who is still having heart problems and may get a pace maker. It has been an eventful weekend.
posted by Dr. Rodenberger at 7:24 PM
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