(photos from Caddo Lake Institute)Since this is east Texas week, I was thinking about Hoss, Don Henley, Caddo Lake, and of course politics and music.
Not too long ago, an unexpected opportunity arose where I was able to attend a very small fundraising concert by Don Henley. His performance was incredible and his voice was as strong and crystal clear as ever.
Don Henley was born in Gilmer, grew up in Linden and hung out at Caddo Lake. He and Dan Blocker are two of the more famous people from east Texas that I can think of at the moment that I have met. I usually don't care if someone is famous or not, but it is true that they can make things happen maybe faster than those of us not so famous, and it can be for good or bad.
(I still can't understand why people would give up their own values for anyone else to be associated with someone just because they are popular or famous. I have seen people do some very despicable things to be popular. I have seen some people who didn't care about popularity do things that should have made them heroes, but since they didn't go around announcing it or since they didn't look hawt or go around constantly buttering people up, they didn't get much attention. I have also seen good people who have done good work have politicians try to exploit them and their name by giving them an "award" and trying to associate their good works with their own political trickery and take advantage of the unsuspecting. Some are so slick, they praise someone when they think the person's friends are around all the while shoving the knife further into the person's back.
I like the in between celebrities and politicians, if we have them. Those who get good things done but aren't all "now about me" types, yet are willing to speak out about something they feel is important.)
I have a signed 8 x 10 glossy of Dan Blocker from when he came to town and my awesome Mom took me to see him because I asked her to. I was a little curious to see if he would be nice in person and to see if he was as big as he looked and would Little Joe, Pa, Adam and Hop Sing come with him. He was. And, he was. And no, they didn't, but it was cool. He shook my hand and smiled at me and it was the giantist grin and cushiony hand ever. He had real nice eyes and a deep voice, as expected. And he had fur on his chest like Daddy, I could see it peeking above his shirt collar.
He did charity work while he was in town. I think he was probably underrated as an actor. Dan Blocker's most well known role was of course the character Hoss on the television show Bonanza. He might have been the first "famous" person I saw, in person. I saw Miss Nancy all the time and I was on Romper Room for two weeks on her local local television show, and we had a local newstation where we thought everyone on there regularly was "famous," but that's about it until later on. I was real sad when Dan Blocker died just a few months later. He was born in De Kalb but raised in west Texas, but he is buried in De Kalb (east Texas). I didn't really know until this year that he was a very political guy too, like Don Henley.
I haven't studied what they did (and do) enough to know the full scope of it, but my initial opinion is that they both did good charitable work and it is true I am biased because they were very cordial and did/do some work that I know about.
As it relates to east Texas, Don Henley has done a lot of work toward preserving Caddo Lake (and a couple of other places). See Caddo Lake Institute. If you have never been to Caddo Lake, I highly recommend it. Check out the Caddo Lake Ramsar Wetlands Center that opened in September in conjunction with the opening of the National Wildilfe Refuge there (see Friends of Caddo Lake).
The lake scenes in his music video Taking You Home were filmed at gorgeous Caddo Lake. I didn't know anything about him or the lake (outside of that he was in The Eagles and was with Stevie Nicks a lot and Caddo Lake was "over there") until I started writing about it almost twenty years ago because Caddo Lake became a character in my story-- The first time I went there, it took my breath away. It is a magnificent place. I really couldn't believe it was tucked away, hidden there. It is called Texas' only natural lake (not dug and made).
Below is Don Henley on Caddo Lake talking about the lake. It is pretty neat.
And a birthday tribute to Dan Blocker, who unfortunately died at the young age of 42. (song by Alison Krauss, Baby, Now That I've Found You. I did not put the video together, someone else did).
And, Don Henley's video Taking You Home with scenes from Caddo Lake.
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This was a video for the New Morning show on the Hallmark Channel.
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