Day of the Dazzling Daffodil

I heard of a farm in East Texas that was a flowing golden landscape of daffodils.

I checked on the internet - the source of all truth, and verified that Helen Lee's Daffodil Paradise in Gladewater, Texas had millions of daffodils scattered over 28 acres and was open to the public, as long as the roads were not muddy and impassable.

Donna McCord, our dear friend who lives in East Texas says, 'Daffodils are the happiest of flowers'.  
I say, we go visit Donna and Kirby, and take them out to see millions of daffodils.  
Sue says, that's a good idea.
I say, Let's roll!

There is a daffodil hotline to check on the progress of the blooms.  I check, and for a couple of weeks through February, I get the recorded message, "Due to the lingering cold weather this winter, that daffodils are late to bloom.  Please call back to check for updates."  It has been a noticeably colder winter 2013-2014.  But you know in Texas, summer is going to jump on top of us before we know it.  These frequent arctic cold fronts that keep crossing the Red River and hitting North Texas with another freezing wallop have got to back off eventually and let the daffodils bloom.  An so it did come to pass; the Helen Lee Daffodil Paradise recorded message was updated, and the bold and frilly yellow blooms where now beginning to show themselves.  Y'all come on out to see fer yourselves.

We booked a room at the McCord's "Blue House" for a Friday, cooked our hosts some dinner and left Saturday mid-morning for Gladewater to a million Daffodils.

We gawked and walked among the daffodils in 72 degree sunshine.  Helen Lee and her husband made a bunch of money in the East Texas oil fields, and so with all of that money, she literally bought a boxcar filled with daffodil bulbs and had them planted on the hillsides of her 436 acre property.  Glad she did.  It was a happy day with 'happiest of flowers'.  Then we had chicken-fried steak and pie in Gladewater.  Now it was a really happy day.

Alas, the next evening yet another arctic blast rushed into Texas with 17 degree temperatures and destroyed acres of happy flowers.  We caught them at their peak, for we must recognize that the grass withers and the flower fades - until next year.  Timing is everything.

Thanks to the Nazi's

We don't really get out all that much.  Just a few movies a year.  But once we did get out to see the flicks, I noticed a theme that has spanned nearly 70 years.  I think Hollywood owes a lot to Adolph Hitler and the Nazi's.  Let me explain:

We joined the throngs at the downtown Plaza Theater for the free screening of Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious, starring Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant.  The suspenseful plot focused on the infiltration of a remnant Nazi organization relocated to South America trying to build an atomic bomb in 1946.  Miss Bergman's cover is blown and she nearly dies, but the American agent manages to rescue her at the last moment while foiling the Nazi sympathizer's diabolical plot.



The following week we pay real money to go see George Clooney's  The Monuments Men, a Hollywood rendition of a US Army unit composed of art historians, architects and archivists assigned to save the great works of art from theft and destruction by the Nazis in the closing days of World War II - a true story (mostly). 



Notorious was released in 1946, The Monuments Men was released in 2013. As a critic, I'd say Mr. Hitchcock did a better job that Mr. Clooney.  But what I realy find somewhat fascinating is that 69 years after the surrender of Germany, Hollywood is still finding plenty of material from the Nazi's brief reign of terror to make movies (and profits) all thanks to Adolph Hitler.  I got to wondering, and I have really no way of calculating it - but how many movies has Nazi Germany (and the war it started) inspired to be made and released by Hollywood?  Just for starters we have everything from Casa Blanca to The Sound of Music, from The Great Escape to the Guns of Navarone.  Not to mention Saving Private Ryan or Von Ryan's Express.

It just seems kind of amazing to me that so much cinematic drama came from the Nazis.  I think it would be interesting to figure out how much money was made from all of the Nazi-themed films.  I have to believe the Nazi party has done much to tangentially support the American movie industry.  Weird but true.