John Harley

Harley's Country Store and Beer Garden was opened in 2004 and we started coming to enjoy the music, and the BBQ. We got to know the man that started it all, known to all as John Harley.  John died in 2014.  In 2016 we commissioned a painting to be done in his memory. 

It arrived!  We were so excited to see it.It was well packaged. We had it delivered to our friends, Bob and Mary,  who arrived in Texas before us; it had waited here a few months until we arrived..It was the painting of John Harley done by the renowned Nova Scotian painter, David MacIntosh.  As we unrolled the canvas and saw, for the first time, the painting of our friend, John Harley.Johnny Paul Nolan was the mastermind behind Harley's Country Store and Beer Garden located in Bayview Texas.We found the place shortly after it opened in 2004 and have spent our winters parked here ever since. We got to know this man over the years.  He was indeed a character! We loved his music, his wit, his vision for this Honkey Tonk in south Texas, and his good nature. He and Will were often referred to as brothers and both played along with that story so that many believed it to be true.  In their hearts, they were.  Will bought stretcher boards and stretched the canvas.IHe had to touch up the edges as our stretchers were a little larger than the originals, but it all worked out.What a masterpiece.  David had captures the spirit of John, the twinkle of his eyes, the grin.  It was perfect. Sylvia, John's wife, thought it was very real looking.Calida, his daughter noticed that even his scar was there. We sat in Calida's office and talked about where to hang it and about Calida making a frame for it.Looks like that will be a good spot; John will always have Sylvia's back.  Calida used the cherry wood John had hauled all the way down here years ago.The painting fit just right.Yep looks great!The presentation photo.Time to hang it up in the bar. Gary handed it up to Jim.And Jim got it positioned just right.Willie Nelson is looking up at John!Will steadied the ladder as Jim climbed down; the painting is now where it belongs.









.This small plaque will be mounted in the bar.







Kathy Martinelli-Zaun
William G Bradley, JR


Today is a good day to drive!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Houston Fest Galax, VA

Image
We arrived in Galax, VA and stopped at our friend, Harold's. He was just putting the finishing touches on a cake he made for his nephew.  Harold is great in the kitchen! Brenda arrived!  We had a nice meet and greet. We went to the school across the street with Brenda and Harold and met Linda who likes hugs. Each day the three of them and others from the community volunteer to prepare backpacks of food items for children who otherwise would good the weekend hungry. They have fund raisers to get money and purchase food items that children can manage for breakfast and lunch.  They also get donations.  There is a man in Florida that heard about their need for food so ships items from Amazon.com for them to distribute. They get everything organized then run an assembly line to package items. The bags are then sent to the classrooms where the teachers put them in the children's backpacks so that no one is called to any attention. Time to head to Houston Fest whose missio...
Read more

Navy Buddies

Image
Today is a good day to drive! We drove across Amarillo, TX to visit with Will's Navy buddy, Ron.  We found him in the same park we had met him in about ten years ago. These two men met fifty years ago aboard The USS Platte.  ( Platte  made almost yearly deployments to the western  Pacific Ocean  from 1960 to 1968, including extensive operations in  Vietnamese  waters and refueling the  USS  Enterprise  (CVN-65)  task group off Korea during the  Pueblo incident . Platte served with the Pacific Fleet into 1970. She was sold for scrapping on 14 May 1971.)   Ron suggested La Fiesta Grande for an early dinner, a great Mexican place.  It was fun listening to the stories all starting with, "Do you remember...." We dropped Ron back off at home and met Don, a neighbor. See you again somewhere sometime, Ron. Okay, so check out these drinks that were delivered to the next table!
Read more

Our Own Palm Tree

Image
December 15, 2007 We woke parked at the Walmart; we have a nice spot we like way off to one side where we face a little lawn and have our own palm tree. Not many people park in this area because it is farther to walk into the store; at night a few other overnighters park in the lot, but they park up with the trucks so we pretty much have this area to ourselves. From there we drove to Victor Park, a community park with tennis courts, picnic area and fields for sports. The restrooms were locked, but no biggie as we have our own facilities. Will started up the generator and worked on a letter to the Chevy Guy in New Brunswick he has been formulating in his mind ever since we left Canada. The Roadtrek just stopped one day and we had to have it towed and lucky for us it was to a Chevy repair garage. We had our fuel tank fixed and they cut the fill tube. Roadtrek had designed a specialty one they didn’t have so they just jury rigged one. Fixed they said; we paid the bill of over a thousand d...
Read more