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On Halloween Joyce and I dressed up as a couple of old fogies and waited to see if we got any trick-or-treaters. There was only a pair of salty-looking pirates prowling around the neighborhood but that’s more than we usually get.
According to what I’ve read, Amarillo got its name from the yellow dirt in the area. I haven’t seen any dirt that I would call yellow. Maybe in Palo Duro Canyon there is some, but mostly I’ve just seen red. Now, the prairie turns a tawny color in winter so maybe that’s where the name came from. Most likely is was from the trees in the fall.
Yellow is the predominant color of fall foliage here if you don’t count brown. Cottonwoods, hackberries and chinaberries in particular turn a brilliant yellow and they can put on a pretty good show in the draws an washes around these parts. We do get other colors but that’s from imported trees that wouldn’t have been around when the town was named. Nope, I don’t think Amarillo was named for the color of the dirt. I’m going with the trees in October.
I took my number one wife to see a silent movie at WT last Sunday evening. It was a Charlie Chaplin film called “The Kid”, and it was pretty good. WT puts these on from time to time with the WT symphony orchestra playing the score. Being a silent movie, the score is pretty important. In his opening remarks the conductor made a point of telling us how many notes were in the score, which was written by Chaplin. I don’t remember how many he said but it was a lot. Here’s the thing: The symphony performed well, I’ll grant you. But the audience gave them a standing ovation just like everybody gets these days. A standing ‘O’ means nothing anymore. Practically any performance where the performer doesn’t wet himself or fall off the stage results in the audience leaping to their feet and whooping and hollering, demanding curtain calls and carrying on like Mozart or Shakespeare had graced them with their presence. I was in a rebellious mood and kept my seat when everyone else got up. I don’t think Joyce was pleased.