Last Day of Caching Around Austin, Groceries, Laundry 5/13/2010

This morning was to be our last day of caching in Austin but we had some other errands to do so we didn't take to many caches as we needed to be done early. None of the caches were particularly exciting as they were in a mailbox at a surf shop, a park in the woods, at a Goodwill Store, along a trail in the woods and in a bird house at a local business. There were 3 caches located at the Austin Memorial Park Cemetery with one in the woods and the other 2 were virtuals. The first virtual was concerning Zachary Scott an old time Western star who was born in Austin and the other was James Albert Michener (February 3, 1907 – October 16, 1997) who was an American author of more than 40 titles, the majority of which are novels of sweeping sagas, covering the lives of many generations in a particular geographic locale and incorporating historical facts into the story as well. Michener was known for the meticulous research behind his work.
Michener's major books include Tales of the South Pacific (for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948), Hawaii, The Drifters, Centennial, The Source, The Fires of Spring, Chesapeake, Caribbean, Caravans, Alaska, Texas, and Poland. His nonfiction works include his 1968 Iberia about his travels in Spain and Portugal, his 1992 memoir The World Is My Home, and Sports in America. The book Return to Paradise combines fictional short stories with Michener's factual descriptions of the Pacific areas where they take place.
Michener wrote that he did not know who his parents were or exactly when or where he was born. He was raised a Quaker by an adoptive mother, Mabel Michener, in Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
After graduating Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude in 1929 from Swarthmore College in English and psychology, he traveled and studied in Europe for two years. Michener then took a job as a high school English teacher at Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He later taught English at George School, in Newtown, Pennsylvania, 1933–36, then attended Colorado State Teachers College (now named the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado), earned his master's degree, and taught there for several years. The library at the University of Northern Colorado is named for him. In 1935 Michener married Patti Koon. He went to Harvard for a one-year teaching stint from 1939–40 and left teaching to join Macmillan Publishers as their social studies education editor.
Michener was called to active duty during World War II in the United States Navy. He traveled throughout the South Pacific on various missions that were assigned to him because his base commanders thought he was the son of Admiral Marc Mitscher. His travels became the setting for his breakout work Tales of the South Pacific.
In 1960, Michener was chairman of the Bucks County committee to elect John F. Kennedy. In 1962, he unsuccessfully ran as Democrat candidate for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, a decision he later considered a misstep. "My mistake was to run in 1962 as a Democrat candidate for Congress. [My wife] kept saying, "Don't do it, don't do it." I lost and went back to writing books." Michener was later Secretary for the 1967–68 Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention.
Michener graduated from Doylestown High School in 1925. He attended Swarthmore College, where he played basketball, and joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He graduated with highest honors. He attended Colorado State Teachers College (now named the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado), and earned his master's degree.
He was married three times. In 1935 Michener married Patti Koon. His second wife was Vange Nord (married in 1948). Michener met his third wife Mari Yoriko Sabusawa at a luncheon in Chicago and they were married in 1955 (the same year as his divorce from Nord). His novel Sayonara is quasi-autobiographical.
Michener gave away a great deal of the money he earned, contributing more than $100 million to universities, libraries, museums, and other charitable causes.
In 1989, Michener donated the royalty earnings from the Canadian edition of his novel Journey, published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart, to create the Journey Prize, an annual Canadian literary prize worth $10,000 that is awarded for the year's best short story published by an emerging Canadian writer.
In his final years, he lived in Austin, Texas, and, aside from being a prominent celebrity fan of the Texas Longhorns women's basketball team, he founded an MFA program now named the Michener Center for Writers.
In October 1997, Michener ended the daily dialysis treatment that had kept him alive for four years. He soon died of kidney failure at the age of 90.
He was buried in Austin, Texas, and is honored by a monument at the Texas State Cemetery.
Michener left his entire $10 million estate (including the copyrights to his works) to Swarthmore College. We really aren't sure why he was buried in Texas but each to his own.

After finishing the caches we stopped at Wal Mart to stock up on groceries and then it was back to the coach for lunch. After we got groceries on the way back to the coach we stopped to look at a housing development near the campgrounds we had seen earlier in the week. It was called Agave Austin and the homes were way out modern homes from $200,000-$300,000. The concept was to build a modern, attainable neighborhood close to downtown Austin and make sure that the groove factor was cranked all the way up to 11. Driving through Agave (now awkwardly billed as Nine Sixty Nine) is like driving through what you would imagine driving through Palms Springs in 1955 was like if you were also tripping and doing a cameo for a Jetson's episode. Needless to say that living at Agave in Austin is a unique way of life, relegated to those who need more than a hip downtown condo but can't deal with a typical new home suburbia neighborhood. After lunch Mom did our laundry and our caches. Well that's about it from Austin so until tomorrow we love and miss you all. Mom & Dad Dori & Dick