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When Evil Owns A Gun


Another act of evil upon our young. Guns kill things, animals, humans, and all in between; it matters not but the person that chooses to use them for evil. Children are lost to the devil that possesses humans. Now we learn the shooter is a woman but identifies as a man; could this be a factor? Confused identitity or mental illness, is it one in the same? I’m a big boy and old, so come at me as you will. Words will not harm me, I am beyond that weakness.

Our news media will not speak the truth any more than they do of anything of importance. In his expensive suits, Old Lester Holt spits out the bullshit he is told; he has no balls or guts to speak the words the country wants to hear; he is a puppet, as our president is. If one is bullied, pushed, slighted, or looked upon hard, that is the reason to kill everyone that you feel has done you wrong. It is the new American way of repentance and evening the playing field. The perputraitors must pay with their lives. It’s fairness from the middle ages. An eye for a word.

In my youth, a lifetime ago, we threw a few punches, a wrestle or two in the dirt of the playground, shook hands, still remained friends, and moved on with our childhood and our lives. What changed, and when did it? I’m old, and now more confused than I was as a child.

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The Call Of The Wild


A few days ago, in the waning moments of the afternoon light, MoMo and I were sitting on our patio having a cocktail, as we often do these days. We both heard the sound at the same time. “What was that she asked?” I replied, ” that, my dear is a Thomas Turkey calling for his flock.” Gobble..gobble…gobble. What the hell? We have lived in our rural community for four years and have never heard of or seen a wild Turkey, so this was a shocker. This was turning out to be a week of discovery. That morning, a squirrel attacked the bird feeder and dispersed the pushy Doves away. He or she was a welcomed site since we have not seen a wee nut breath since we built our home here. I love the little bandits and had one as a pet some years ago; she bit me only once and never again after I gave her a goodly chastising. Daisy was her given name. Now we have a Wild Turkey and perhaps a flock of hens and youthlings. I am happy that nature has returned to our semi-wild community. This morning, MoMo stepped onto the patio, and the large brazen Turkey flew from our backyard, barely clearing the fence and onto the wilds of the woods across the street. She thought it to be a giant Vulture, or perhaps Mothra, or Birdzilla, but it was the Tom Turkey we heard the night before. Thank Davy Crockett, it’s not a cocaine Bear.

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As The Bird Feeder Goes, So Does The Country


My sixteen-year-old granddaughter visited us last week for her spring break. She flew in on a steel silver bird from Tulsa on Monday, and we met her at DFW. I hadn’t seen her in a few years, except in pictures on Facebook and text, but there she was, pulling her rolling suitcase, wearing the obligatory backpack, holding her iPhone, and wearing a pair of Doc Marten boots. She was quite a beautiful sight to behold. I ask my wife to tell me that a sixteen-year-old would rather spend a week with their grandfather than go to South Padre or Corpus and whoop it up on the beach? She assures me she is not a mirage, and some grandchildren are geared that way. I must be a lucky old guy to garner such love and respect from one so young.

Her brother, my oldest grandson, came over from that fancy eastern city, Dallas, and had Mexican food with us. Once back at home, we played loud rock guitars for a while, and I was shocked that he might be the next young Eric Clapton or at least Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page. His sister plays a different guitar style and declines to join the loud fracas; Joni Mitchell and classical finger-picking are more to her styling. As loud as it was, having my two oldest grandchildren together for a while was an unexpected joy. I’ve learned, at my age, to take moments as they unfold. The loud music from my Fender amp loosened a dental filling or two, but I survived it without more hearing loss than usual. I will ask my grandson If I might accompany him on his first tour as a roadie or guitar tuner. If CDs or vinyl albums are there, I can sell them at a table near the venue entrance.

They both lead busy lives, as all young folks do these days. Their social life on the cell phone takes up much of their time, but that is the norm now. I told the two that I would be a better person and much more relaxed if I didn’t own one of the foul little machines. How ancient I must seem to them; going to bed at 9 PM and arising at 6 AM, unheard of in their universe.

Retiring requires searching for tasks to keep your mind sharp and your body supple. My wife and I have a shared morning routine, feeding our visiting hordes of wild birds each morning after our cup of java. We have three feeders and a bird bath, and it didn’t take long for the word to get out that our side yard is the happening place in our rural community. Starting with one feeder last year and a bag of seed every month, we are now up to two bags a week and sometimes more. I feel that there is a sign written in bird language somewhere in a tree that gives directions to our yard. I fear the little invaders have trained us well.

My granddaughter was amused by the antics of the little Avians. Their busy stage is close to our bay window, so we have front-row seats all day. She pointed out that the drama around the feeders is akin to the survival programs on television, or perhaps like our government dimwits in Washington. Big birds always win out over the little birds; it’s the natural pecking order in their world; and ours. I think she is onto something, and how weird that a teenager should recognize the similarities. Still, she is bordering on Oppenheimer’s intelligence and is into more things at school than I can remember. Ahhhh- to be young again, and not in the ancient 1960s.

Brown and black Sparrows are the small fries, so they get to the feeders early before the chaos ensues; Finches, Buntings, Juncos, and Titmouse come in next, then the pushy Cardinals arrive and start throwing their weight around. The Wood Pecker and Blue jays sneak in for a peanut, then depart. The few White Wing Dove that came last year has now grown into a flock of twenty or more, and they move in and take over the show. Feathers and seed fly, and the little birds retreat to the ground to grab what they can. It’s pretty chaotic. A feral cat or two tried to move in for a few easy kills, but my accurate rock-chunking abilities dispersed them in a few days. No cats were harmed, but the small stones gave their buttocks an ouchy or two just to let them know they were not welcome to kill my small feathered friends. These days, the escalating war between the birds is becoming worrisome. Perhaps I can draw on my inner Henry Kissinger spirit and negotiate a truce, but I doubt any of the small Avians will be interested in listening to my gobbly-goop. So be it; let the battles continue.

I sat down to my coffee a few mornings after she arrived, and my perch is also by the bay window where the bird’s antics occur. I found a note from my granddaughter written on post-it paper that summed it up quite well. It read, “The Doves are the supreme consumer of the seed. Much like the British and tea, the Doves do not play. Birds are under Dove dictatorship.”

That sums it up quite nicely. Unfortunately, as the bird feeder goes, so does the country.

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Weekends Are Meant To Be Relaxing. Right?


Weekends are made for chilling out, napping, reading, yard work, gardening, listening to vinyl records, and other mundane pursuits. To start off a lovely sunny Saturday, I find banks are failing in California and other branches across the US and Europe.

Tech upstarts and shady banking boardroom skullduggery are the culprits, and they remind me of the classic movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life.” The banking boys in California are like the greedy Mr. Potter and his henchmen. After the run on the banks, George Baily’s Building and Loan may still be open for business, but that one dollar in his safe will not save him. Potter will, in the end, own Bedford Falls, even though the movie doesn’t show that. There should have been a sequel, but Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewert weren’t up to it. Finding out how Clarence the Angel made out after he received his wings would have been nice.

Is my IRA and retirement safe? Not in the least. Our current administration wants to add a higher tax, steal more from Social Security, and in general, cause the economy to implode and make life miserable for us seniors. I don’t care to live on the streets in a tent under a bridge, smoking crack and pissing on the sidewalk. Seniors now were the 60s generation of protesters, so why can’t we organize, protest in DC and facilitate change to save our own butts and those of our children and grandchildren. I, for one, would be willing to risk a bit of teargas and hard rubber bullets. I would use my sturdy aluminum Walmart cane as my weapon of dissent, burn my Cigna Plan D prescription card on the steps of the White House and chain myself and my personal scooter to a light pole. I can recruit my friend Mooch and his pals, the Granbury “Plowboy’s,” to come along. They’re continually pissed off at everything, so this would be a nice excursion for them, as long as a Waffle House is within walking distance of the march.

I read this morning that the American Red Cross organization, the ones that are there when tornadoes and floods hit the south, is distributing leaflets, maps, cash, credit cards, and investment advice to illegal immigrants in Central America and Mexico, showing how to cross the border in style and obtain free services once they break into our country. Come on in, free stuff for everyone, except American senior citizens, and our homeless. You might as well put Biden on the international bridge with a bullhorn shouting directions and other demented nonsense. No more donations from me and the missus to this traitorous group of wokies. I would say they are now more “Red” than “Cross.”

I am considering withdrawing and depositing my legal tender in the Bank Of Sterns and Foster.

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“Influence-inza,” Making Folks Sick, One Video At A Time


I am not easily influenced by anyone or anything. Putting a pretty gal with Kardashian eyebrows, trout lips, and a big butt on social media is not going to make me buy any product or service she is pushing. I am immune to such nonsense. Please excuse the first word in the title; I made that up and happen to think it’s appropriate.

Apparently, the younger folks latch onto these women known as “influencers” like they are their long-lost-fairy godmothers. How can a young woman, or someone pretending to be a woman, it’s difficult to tell these days, tell anyone to stick their head in a freezer for an hour, and it will take away their facial wrinkles? Oh my, but it may also give you frostbite, and you might lose your nose, ear, or even eyesight. Who are you gonna call ( my apology to Ghostbusters), the “influencer” chick or 911?

“Like wow Doc, like I tried really-really hard to call the influencer girl to help me, but her Tik Tok number is not listed, I can’t find my phone…have you seen my phone….oh no…I’m going into withdrawl.” says the dumbass teenager to the emergency room doctor.

Who are these people on social media, Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube, and all the other platforms? Has our society gone so low as to believe what a “faked-out” extraterrestrial-looking person/thing says or, worse yet, instructs you to do? I have read articles from good and reasonable professional sources that the majority of these young women/things are as stupid as pasta noodles but not so stupid as to make millions of dollars in the process. Who watches this drool? Would you believe our children, pre-teens, and teenagers, even college-educated, supposedly intelligent twenty-somethings, with or without a paying job? That is their core audience. I’ve watched a few of them on Youtube to see what the fuss is about. There is no fuss, only stupidity, narcissism, and worshiping at the “church of social media,” Pastor Zuckerberg officiating and leading the service.

It came to me in the middle of the night. The Kardashian women are responsible for this scourge on society. They have turned American teens into a warped, weird version of themselves while making gazillions in cash and influencing our young. Look at the women on television. Our local news outlets have female presenters who look strangely like a Kardashian; big butts, swollen lips, and large, clownish eyebrows. I can’t get through the five-o’clock newscast without turning my television off. It makes me yearn for the 1980s newscasters, as bad as that was.

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Ramble On


Remember the “good old days?” I do, and they weren’t all that good. Like most folks in Fort Worth in 1956, no one had air conditioning in their homes. At best, a few folks had a “swamp cooler” that might fill a room with coolish-wet air. It was a miserable existence, but everyone was miserable, so we didn’t know of anything better.

From May until October, I can’t remember sleeping under anything but a sheet, if that. It was too darn hot. My mother would spray water on me with a squirt bottle, but that didn’t put a dent in my suffering. Bless its heart, the old attic fan pulled in what air it could through the open windows, but there was little more than a slight breeze flowing over me. Like most in our neighborhood, our family accepted that we would be hot for five months of the year. That all changed in June of 1956.

I bicycled home from a day of playing pick-up baseball at the Forest Park diamonds and found a grey, pink, and white Nash Rambler station wagon in our driveway. My father, the professional skinflint, had finally had enough of used cars and repair bills and bought the family a “brand new car.”

He was the proud Papa and eagerly gave us a tour of our newest member of the family. He spoke as if the machine was birthed that morning and possessed human characteristics. At any moment, I thought he was going to pass out cigars. He referred to it as “she.” My mother said it looked more like a “Mr. Fred” to her and didn’t care much for the tri-tone paint, which was Dove grey with pink sides and a white top sporting a massive chrome luggage rack. Mother overlooked the colors because “Fred” had factory “air conditioning” and a fold-down back seat that turned into a bed, perfect for my sister and me for traveling. A large metal dashboard, with numerous instruments, a radio, and a clock, was guaranteed to smash your face flat and remove your teeth if a sudden stop was required, and not a seat belt one. The automatic transmission, roll-down back window, and genuine imported naugahyde upholstery gave it that touch of elegance and convenience everyone in the 50s wished for. I soon found out that summer sun-heated naugahyde could easily burn, blister and remove the skin from my legs and butt.

I must admit, it was a pleasure riding around town in an air-conditioned car. Regular folks, baking to a crisp in their Chevy or Ford, would stare at us as if we were royalty. The car windows rolled up, ice-cold air blowing our hair and swirling the heavy cloud of cigarette smoke through the car; it was heaven. At that point, I was impressed with my station in life, all because of air-conditioning.

On a hot July night designed by the devil, my father woke the family, and we all marched to “Mr. Fred.” The engine was running, the backseat bed was made up, and the car was like a meat locker inside. My parents slept in the fold-back front seat, and my sister and I were in the back. We all slept like a dream, and for many nights thereafter, if the heat was unbearable, we took cooling refuge in that Nash Rambler. Life was good, all because of an air-conditioned car.

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The Easter Chickens of Brown County


“Western history is bizarre because of the nature of what it has got. Historians and other writers do what men have always done in the desert. They make the best of what little they do have. Westerners have developed a talent for taking something small and blowing it up to a giant size like a photographer blows up a photograph. They write of cowboys as if they were noble knights and cowmen, kings. They do biographies of bad men, Billy the Kid, The Plummer gang, and Sam Bass, of bad women like Calamity Jane, of gunmen like Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickock. They blow the abandoned saloon up into an art museum and Boot Hill into a shrine for pilgrims. In Montana, Charlie Russel is better than Titian, and in the Black Hills, Fredrick Remington is greater than Michelangelo. Custer, who blundered to his death and took better men with him, found a place in every saloon not already preempted to that travesty on decency and justice, Judge Roy Bean.”  As quoted by J. Frank Dobie, Texas Author, and Historian

I have no qualms or embarrassment about growing up in Texas. I am a native son and proud of it. If the Alamo needed defending again, I would fight the attackers on top of its wall with a yard hoe and my typewriter as weapons. At times, my unchecked pride borders on braggart, but I don’t interact with many folks that are not Texans, so it’s a moot point.

 Storytelling and tall tales run in my family. Uncles, grandfathers, and sometimes grandmothers filled my head with tales I remember today. I’m writing as fast as I can before I forget them. My son and grandchildren will be better educated once they have them in print. No one in my family wrote down what was told around the supper table or the front porch. I can assume that they figured the spoken version was good enough, and for decades, it has been, but now it’s my quest to put them to paper and pass them on. It doesn’t matter that many of them are about half true and could be considered a “tall tale.”  

The revered Texas author, historian, and master of tales, J. Frank Dobie understood the flow of Texas and its people. He told of the hardscrabble farming of the hill country, horse and cow trading, lost gold mines and Indian fighting, and of the Texas Rangers and their heroic and often ghastly behavior because he had lived and seen it as a child and young man and procured the tales, though many tall by nature, from cowboys and characters around campfires or leaning on the bar-rail of a saloon. He himself was considered a character, but with a top-notch university education. Spoken tales, true or not, are as much a part of Texas as our majestic bovine, the Longhorn.  

From my two late uncles, who were brothers Bill and Jay Manley, I heard stories that, on some nights, made sleep impossible, either from fear or captivation. They were the two best liars and storytellers I have met. Often, there would be a discussion and a following challenge to witness something they had heard about at the feed store or domino hall. They thirsted for the unordinary and would drive fifty miles or more to view a three-legged chicken or a pig that saved a farmer’s family from a house fire; things that sane and educated people would pshaw. My cousin Jerry and I were backseat passengers on many of these excursions.

Their preferred stage was summer nights on the farmhouse front porch. My grandparents had no air conditioning or television, and the radio only sometimes worked, so listening to their stories and trying to catch a cooling breeze was the only entertainment. The occasional yip of the Coyote added flavor to the moment. A Coleman cooler of iced Pearl Beer sat between the two orators, and the cold beverage allowed the tales to spill from them, most times like Will Rogers, other times like Saturday nights inebriated cowboy. I am a lucky man to have retained them for all these years. I credit my grandfathers’ advice to “keep your mouth shut and listen.” I was a good listener when I wasn’t yammering on to hear myself talk.

In the summer of 1957, my cousin Jerry and me were sitting with some of the family on the front porch of my grandparent’s farmhouse when my two uncles argued about something they had heard at the domino hall. A lady in Bangs, a small village about eleven miles away, is said to have a flock of hens that lays colored eggs. She calls them her “Easter Chickens.” Uncle Bill, ever the pragmatic questioner but still a believer in the oddities and unexplained, stated that “it was impossible for chickens to lay colored eggs” Jay, his brother, heard from three farmers playing dominos that it is the by-God truth. The argument concluded with the promise of a trip to Bangs in the morning to investigate. As usual in these challenges, a wager of five dollars was attached.

After directions from the local feed store, the source of all directions in Texas, our party proceeded to our destination. Detailed directions said to go five miles on the second dirt road out of town, turn left at the “Jesus Saves” sign on the tree trunk, and go about a hundred yards or so, and you’ll see the farm, a white house with red shutters, and lots of Holstein cows wandering around.

The lady that answered the door, Thalia McMurtry, figured we were there to purchase her “Easter Chicken” eggs. She wasn’t amused that all my uncles wanted to do was confirm if it were true; still, she led them back to the hen house. Her husband, Sonny, joined us. Around a dozen speckled hens were inside a cute little hen house, sitting on their box nest. Thalia stepped inside and retrieved a few eggs, placing them in her apron pocket. Two were bright red, one yellow, and one a deep blue. Uncle Bill sighed; he knew he had lost the wager. The eggs were beautiful; it was as if she had dropped them into a boiling stove pot of egg dye. She told Jerry and me, “go ahead and peel one; they’re ready to eat just as they are, already hard-boiled and everything.” Uncle Bill called BS; no chicken in this world lays hard-boiled eggs, and he accused Thalia and Sonny McMurtry of fakery to the highest degree and to explain how they did it.

Thalia, not a bit rebuffed, said, “I started mixing my own mash feed using different stuff from the kitchen cabinet with the regular store-bought mash, and the hens started laying yellow eggs, so I tinkered around a little more, and they started laying blue eggs, then a bit more, and red ones appeared. We’re not sure why they are hard-boiled, but maybe it’s caused by the heat lamps we use to keep my little beauties warm has something to do with it.” My two uncles, feeling like the village idiots, purchased a few dozen mixed colors and took them back to the farm. My grandmother, faking surprise at their discovery, had eaten a few of them some months back, given to her by a friend, but she didn’t tell her sons. Once again, another adventure of the absurd to remember.

Years later, I read a blurb in the Texas Farm Almanac about a lady in Bangs, Texas, who ran a farm called “Easter Chicken Acres.” Her hens laid hard-boiled multi-colored eggs just in time for Easter. She was also mentioned in the famous book “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” and made Bangs a place to visit. They came really close to putting the Easter Bunny out of business.

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Thoughts On Being A Texas Writer


In the past, I have considered myself a writer…not an accomplished one, but a pearl in the making. I’ve been at it since I was ten, using No. 2 pencils and a Big Chief tablet. At that time, I seriously considered becoming the next Mark Twain if I could somehow channel his spirit and process his talent.

I soon gave up on that dream and changed course to become the next John Steinbeck, although he was still alive and writing at that time. I read his novel, “The Grapes of Wrath,” which was a daunting feat at the age of ten, but I made it through the book in a few months, understanding about a third of it, and when finished, considered myself a literary genius. My mother politely busted my bubble, reminding me I was still a kid with a Big Chief tablet that was a pretty good reader that wrote cute little stories about my friends and animals. I did send a rousing story about our neighborhood idiot to our local newspaper, the Fort Worth Press, but never received a return comment. I watched the paper daily for months, expecting my story, written on tablet paper, to be published. I likely offended someone in the guest editorial section.   

     My late aunt Norma introduced me to the alien world of books. She and my mother taught me to read at six years old. Until then, my childhood was watching cartoons, producing elaborate play battles of World War 2 and the Alamo with my neighborhood friends, and dealing with the bad boys across the tracks, “the hard guys.” My next-door neighbor, Mr. Mister, an Air Force veteran and an aircraft designer at Chance Vaught, was our neighborhood mentor…his wife, Mrs. Mister, was our second-in-command mentor. She was also a rabid reader of books and a devoted disciple of American literature. Although from California, she loved our revered Texas authors, J. Frank Dobie and Walter Prescott Webb. Larry McMurtry hadn’t come along yet, or she would have followed him to his Archer City home and camped on his porch.

     The reality of my situation is such that I may never get a book written and published. I have started on one but am stuck and can only go as far as the few chapters I have produced; I’m not sure if the world is ready for a Horned Lizard ( a Texas Horney Toad ) that turns the tide in the battle of the Alamo. It’s a tale for children, but some adults might find it amusing after a few drinks. My wife believes I still have it in me, and she may be right. There are days when I feel the spirit and will churn out a short story about my childhood experiences or what happens in my small town and the state of Texas. Sometimes I write about politics, which I shouldn’t do, as anyone wanting to write serious stories, poisons himself when he enters that gladiator’s arena.

     Recently finishing one of J. Frank Dobies books, and in the middle of another, and once again, I feel the spirit and yearn to write again. Short stories, anecdotes, and tall tales are well and good, and I grew up reading and listening to them as told by my uncles and grandfather, but my gut tells me to write “the book.”

     Below is a quote from one of our famous Texas authors, Walter Prescott Webb. His quotes and campfire tales alone are enough for their own book. He is right, of course, about writers and authors, himself being one. I am guilty of all the below.  

A quote from Walter Prescott Webb, a famous Texas writer, and historian.

           ” It takes a good deal of ego to write a book. All authors have an ego; most try to conceal it under a cloak of assumed modesty which they put on with unbecoming immodesty. This ego manifests in the following ways: 1. The author believes he has something to say. 2. He believes it is worth saying. 3. He believes he can say it better than anyone else. If he stops doubting any of these three beliefs, he immediately loses that self-confidence and self-deception. That ego, if you please, is so essential to authorship. In effect, the author to write a book spins out of his own mind a cocoon, goes mentally into it, seals it up, and only comes out once the job is done. That explains why authors hide out, hole up in hotel rooms, and neglect their friends, family, and creditors….they may even neglect their students. They neglect everything that may tend to destroy their grand illusion.”

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OCD, OCD, Life Goes On, Brah, La, La, How The Life Goes On


At my age, I admit that a tidy home is a pleasure. I grew up in one, and can’t imagine having to live in a house that is only cleaned once a week.

My mother was a fanatic when it came to keeping things in their proper place. Her kitchen was a work of wonder; disinfected floors and counters, dishes aligned perfectly, glasses were arranged in order by size and color, and food items were alphabetized and stacked perfectly in the cabinets. We had more Tupperware than the stockyards had cattle. The rest of our home was as clean as her kitchen. I didn’t appreciate her obsession then; I was six years old and didn’t know an obsessed person from a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Everything was fine until she started messing with the few toys I owned. My plastic army men were off-limits to everyone.

Attempting to recreate the Battle of the Bulge, pitting the US Army against the Nazis, I had spent hours arranging my tiny army on my bedroom floor. Plastic soldiers with carbines, tanks, half-tracks, and jeeps were all in place, awaiting my signal to begin the battle. I needed a bathroom break, so off I went. I wasn’t gone more than three minutes, tops, and when I returned to my bedroom, the battlefield was gone. Both armies were packed into their box and placed on my twin bed. My mother was there running the vacuum over the former field of honor.

“Oh, I thought you were done, so I picked everything up for you,” she said.

Hours of work, kaput. That was my first real experience with what we now know as OCD, “Obsessive Cleaning Disorder.” This was the mid-1950s, so new disorders and mental conditions were discovered daily. Housewives seemed to suffer from almost all of them. Family physicians were prescribing pills like candy.

My father got it; he would leave a sock on the dining room floor or move a few books around, and on one occasion, he re-arranged the plates and saucers. My mother came close to a nervous breakdown, so he backed off a bit. I admit that my sister and I got a small dose of her affliction because it appears to be transferred through genetics. There is no escape. My poor friends had to live in their “pig-pen” of a home while my sister and I lounged in our sanitized and orderly dwelling.

I have accurately diagnosed my wife MoMo with a version of the OCD. No doctor was consulted or needed; I have, as a child, suffered through years of the affliction. I know it well. MoMo has a whopper of a case of it. There are no germs in our home. She seeks them out and destroys them by the millions. Vaccumes, mops, sprays, and dust collecters are her armaments. The 2-second rule is not needed in our kitchen. I can drop a sandwich or a pork rib on the floor and place it back on my plate, knowing that it is germ-free and delightfully edible. When it comes to germs and filth, she is a downright serial killer.

I hate to end this story, but I need to re-wash my hands and roll a lint collector on my black tee-shirt.

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Rantings and Observations From The Cactus Patch


Our illustrious president, ‘ol’e shuffling Joe,’ made a surprise secret squirrel visit to Ukraine by plane, first in the dead of night, then taking the Orient Express to Kyiv. It’s unknown why he chose to visit the war- engulfed country. Political speculators on both sides of the aisle of crooks suspect he will ship another C130 cargo plane full of taxpayer dollar bills to rebuild every demolished structure in the country. Zelensky is so excited he is dancing the Ukranian “spring maiden shuffle” as he saunters alongside our demented leader. Back in Moscow, Puti-Putte is getting ready to ramp things up; maybe send in a missile or two to scare ol’e Joe and Ukrains favorite funny man, Zelensky.

Meanwhile, back home in “our country,” Mayor Butterboy and his crew have yet to make it to East Palestine, Ohio, to witness the eco-tragedy caused by the derailing of multiple freight cars full of toxic chemicals. FEMA and the “suddenly uninterested” EPA, the guys that think every puddle of rainwater and stock tank belongs to them, says the town is “on your own; We must in all haste now go to Africa for a 7-day conference on why the constantly poor Africans have no food, water, or money.” A good rock to look under for spiders and snakes would be those countries’ leaders who take the money the US gives them and live like king Faruk or a Saudi Prince. We can assume that as soon as Mayor Butterboy pumps enough breast milk for his kids to survive for a few days, he will do a “drive-by” on his new mountain bike and then release his standard word salad statement full of wilted contents and no meat. Wildlife and domestic animals are dying, creeks and soil are ruined, groundwater will be affected, and humans are getting sick. “Nothing to see here, folks; move along, please.” Why isn’t good old NBC Lester Holt reporting from the scene with his sleeves rolled up and a shovel in his hand; wrong kind of tragedy, the wrong state, a conservative town, and low-income country folk; not his bag. He’s also sure that no soul in that town watches his newscast. Former President Trump will visit the town on Wednesday. Not certain what he can or will do, but at least the man is doing what a president should in a crisis.

Those pesky young liberal college and high school students in Austin are at it again. Street racing, rioting in a mass gathering of youngsters throwing things that explode at Police cars, and breaking into and destroying a private home for a ‘mansion party. Fellow Texans, these are young high school, mostly white kids doing this, not Black Lives Matter hoodlums running through the streets of Portland. We should ask ourselves, “what in the hell has happened to the young people of our country?” Social Media, bad parenting, and liberal schooling take a large piece of this society’s poison pie. The “everybody gets a trophy” generation grew up and became these little devils. I never cared much for Austin, not even in my long-haired fake hippie days. Since my once favorite magazine, Texas Monthly, has gone to hell in a wokie handbasket,’ I don’t see myself ever visiting that crime-ridden forsaken city again. I know folks that live there and wonder why they stay? It’s not the Austin I knew in the 70s. Maybe because they can swim topless in Barton Springs during the summer or attend the SXSW music festival and smoke a lot of righteous weed.

Did I say too much? Probably so.

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Nothing To See Here..Next Question?


Where are Mayor Buttercup, President Biden, Speaker McCarthy, Jim Jordon, AOC, Crosby Stills and Nash and Young ( the song Ohio), Madonna, and all the other mouthpieces for environmental warfare? Ohio has a major environmental disaster ongoing, and the mainstream media and the administration are silent. Where are the dozens of environmental groups that rag-ass every industry in our country to the point of extremism? This disaster in Ohio is akin to a nuke set off in a small town of 5000 residents. Animals are dying as far as ten miles from the town, and who knows what future effects it will have on humans. East Palestine, Ohio, is now a toxic wasteland that may or may not be habitable.

From ABC News; State health officials were initially concerned about the presence of vinyl chloride, a highly volatile colorless gas produced for commercial uses, which spilled after about 50 cars on a Norfolk Southern Railroad train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 3 while traveling from Illinois to Pennsylvania. Other toxins, like phosgene and hydrogen chloride, were emitted in large plumes of smoke during a controlled release and burn, prompting officials to issue mandatory evacuation orders in a one-mile radius of the crash site.

Butterboy sits in Washington doing and saying nothing. Where are the Republicans on this? Everyone is quiet. They would rather concentrate on Chinese spy balloons and UFOs, which our government has denied existed for years. Now ET will be pissed, and who knows what will happen. He definitely will be phoning home for reinforcements.

Maya Sharona, head reporter for NPR News, says that Mayor Pete and a small contingent plan to ride their new mountain bikes to Ohio to review the disaster. Now that should make everyone feel better.

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Take Me To Your Leader?…Well maybe Not


As usual, once confronted and exposed, our government overreacts. Shooting down balloons is easy-peasy; send in a jet or two, a troop of Cub Scouts with Daisy BB guns, or a redneck hunter with a 50-caliber rifle, and it’s not a big deal.

Now we have to worry about next Thanksgiving’s Macy Parade? Can you imagine a Cruise Missle or two screaming through the skyscrapers and taking out Tiki-Mon, My Kitty, Micky Mouse, or maybe even Snoopy? Good Lord, not even children’s birthday balloons are safe. It’s going to happen; hide and watch.

So what are the UFOs we have shot down? If it’s Aliens, then we are in deep trouble. Many times, I’ve been to Roswell, NM, and “I do believe.” Little Aliens are walking around the town, hanging out at Mcdonald’s and the UFO museum, signing autographs, and taking cell phone pictures with tourists. Have you seen the movie “Independence Day?” Those creatures have serious weapons and could turn New York and Washington DC into a crisp piece of bacon fat, which would take care of many, if not all, of our problems.

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It’s A Philly Thing


“The thing is, win or lose… philly still gonna be philly bc ITS A PHILLY THING,” Twitter user @Annie_Wu_22 wrote, sharing footage of a crowd yelling, “F— the Chiefs.” Words of wisdom from the city of brotherly love and high-cholesterol steak and cheese sandwiches. Ben Franklin is begging God to send him back down to earth, like Clarence the Angel, so old Ben can kick some ass, ring a bell and get his wings. While here, he should spray a large can of kick-ass on that devil dog-worshiping Illuminati princes Rihanna and her little demon children. Up there on stage, strutting around in her rubber red devil attire, surrounded by dancers in hazmat suits. It’s a wonder she didn’t go into labor on live television; it would have increased the ratings.

What’s so special about the Super Bowl? Why is the winner called world champions when the United States is the only country in the league, and they compete against themselves? The rest of the civilized and uncivilized parts of the globe play “football,” also known as soccer. I am unimpressed with the “big game” and have been for decades. But that’s only my opinion, which doesn’t count for Jack Shit, who I met back in the 70s. Come to think of it, no opinions from senior citizens count for anything. All we are good for is keeping big pharma in business. I take so many pills I forget what they are for.

I used to be a Dallas Cowboys fan, but I overcame that communicable disease a few years back. My son had it bad, but he’s slowly recovering, like a Catholic that escaped from the church but can’t stop eating fish sticks on Friday. It’s a slow process. Now, it’s 28 years since a super bowl appearance, and if Jerry Jones doesn’t check out soon, it will be 30-plus years. Please, Elon Musk, make Jones an offer he can’t refuse; we saw you on the television, sitting there in your expensive seat drinking a can of beer, so we know you like American football. Sir Paul McCartney was also in attendance and could afford to buy the team, but he would have to play every half-time show, and he’s about done with music because he sounds like Carol Channing when he sings. Lennon and Harrison are up in the clouds looking down and saying, ” hey mate, give it up and come for a visit?” Of course, the downside of a celebrity buying a team like the Cowboys would be if Adele purchased the franchise. She is caught in a continuous state of mental breakdowns, and her auto-tune machine is unrepairable. Besides, she cries too much.

I likely said too much because my filters are gone, and my opinions don’t count.

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Buying Ammunition at The Walmart


I detest shopping at Walmart. It’s not that I feel I’m better than the folks that go there; it’s more of a sadness that washes over me when I enter the door and am greeted by an elderly person who is drawing social security and can’t make ends meet and has to stand and speak to strangers the entire day. Most of the strangers don’t reply when the greeter says,” hi there, welcome to Walmart.” It makes me want to cry at times-being old. I sympathize with the elderly, and even though I don’t consider myself in their league, people say I am elderly. At times, it’s tough to accept, but I knew it would eventually happen, and most of it would not be pretty and wrapped with a red ribbon and constant travel like the pharmaceutical commercials promise.

Another thing that bothers me about Walmart is the trickery pulled on the shoppers. I can go to the H.E.B. and get more food for my money than at Walmart. It’s all a marketing ploy pulled on the folks that can least afford it. I don’t blame Sam Walton for any of the shenanigans in his formally buy American store. His family and their families and cousins and uncles and such have turned the place into a shrine for Chinese marketing. I tried once to find anything made in America. I walked the isles for hours, picking up random objects; made in China, Taiwan, Mexico, Philipines, and on and on, but most of it was from China. The only items found to be made in the US are the produce. If the Chinese grow celery, tomatoes, and lettuce, they must keep them for themselves.

Walmart used to sell guns. They still have a few shotguns locked in cases, and you can buy a nice Daisy Red Ryder BB gun or a pellet rifle, but no rifles or pistola’s, only limited ammo for such armaments. That’s where I ran into my old buddy Mooch.

It was yesterday, and MoMo and I were at Walmart picking up our medicinal prescriptions since our Medicare plan says we must use Walmart Pharmacy and no other. I saw him turning the corner from the garden section, which was now full of Valentine’s and Easter crap. I caught up with him in the sporting goods, standing at the ammo counter in deep conversation with a young man with wooden blocks in his ear lobes and piercings in his nose. Besides those additions, he looked like a normal Walmart employee; his nametag read Edwin B. He and Mooch were discussing ammunition.

I sided up to Mooch and cleared my throat. He acknowledged my presence but kept his rapport with the pierced boy.

” You’re sure these 50 caliber bullets will go at least 40 thousand feet and will bring down what I’m going to shoot at ?” The pierced boy said, “yep.”

The box of shells was as big as a loaf of Mrs. Bairds bread, and the price tag said they cost $300 dollars. I think Mooch will kill a Dinosaur or Bigfoot with ammo like that. He paid the boy with his debit card, and we walked away.

I’ve known Mooch for twenty-plus years, and it’s sometimes better not to know his plans. The suspense was killing me, so I broke my own rule and inquired, “Mooch, what are you going to shoot that would take a 50-caliber armor-piercing bullet?”

Without missing a step or turning his head, he said, “Me and the wife are leaving for Montana in the morning, going to shoot down some of them Chinese balloons and take the solar panels and all that spy stuff back home.” I wished him a safe trip and good hunting; wasn’t much more I could add to that.

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The Days of The Big-Haired Gals


Folks in the southeastern part of the states don’t consider Texas part of the south; it’s too far west, too close to New Mexico and Mexico, and too many cowboy types. Well, we tended to ride horses to work and school and live on ranches, but somebody had to do it.

The southeastern folks are dead wrong about this south thing; Texas is as much the south as Mississippi and Louisiana. We have deserts, mountains, miles of cactus, and even the Gulf of Mexico, but we don’t drink mint juleps for every meal and have black gardeners and maids. Our claim to fame is we were the first state to have what the southeast loves; big-ass hair. The bigger and taller, the better.

My uncle Jay was a hairdresser in Fort Worth; that’s what we called them back in the 1950s. He was a World War 2 veteran that shot down Jap planes from the deck of a destroyer and loved every second of it. Yet, he was an artist when it came to teasing, combing, and coaxing women’s hair into things of beauty. There wasn’t a fairy bone in his body, and he could have killed you with one hand and no weapon when he was drinking. He was a by-god legend because he was the man who invented “big hair.” It was purely accidental, but it made him as famous as Rock Hudson’s wedding album.

Up until 1956 or so, women in Texas wore their hair down straight, rolled a bit on spools, or a flippy-do at the ends.

Jay was working hard on an old lady who didn’t have much hair left on top, and she was ragging his butt about why he couldn’t do something about it. He started combing, teasing, spraying, and sculpting until she had a bubble of hair a foot high sitting on top of her head. He didn’t know it, but a monster had been birthed.

Women came to his shop wanting their hair styled in “one of them big bubbles.” The word was out. the cutting and curling days were gone; now, everyone wanted their hair puffed out like a cotton ball or a fluffy poodle and piled as high as the sky on top of their head. He would use two cans of hair spray on every hair-du. The gals couldn’t replicate the hairstyle themselves, so they had to return to the shop, which caused him to work more hours, but make more money too. He was soon driving a new Caddy convertible and wearing Brooks Brothers shirts. My grandmother said he was “shittin’ in high cotton,” and she knew all about cotton.

I came home from school one day, and this giant mass of hair with a small framed woman underneath was standing in the kitchen; it was my mother. She had gone to the dark side and got her brother to give her the full treatment. She dared not stand too close to the gas stove burner in fear of igniting the Spray-Net that held the mess together, but she cooked supper without burning up or falling over. I have no idea how she slept on a pillow with that mass of hair attached to her small head. My father didn’t have enough room in the bed, so he moved onto the couch.

At about the same time, women in Texas started talking strangely. The accent was still there, but the big hair made them articulate differently.

I was with my mother at the Piggly Wiggly on Berry Street. Most of the women in the store had the now obligatory “big hair.” One of her friends she hadn’t seen in a while came up to her and said, ” well lookit yeeeew, is that a new dresses? hows your momma and them? I just love your hair-du.” It sounded like Martian to me. My mother returned the greeting in the same manner. A new language had been born because of the big hair. Pretty soon, all the aunts and neighborhood ladies were talking that way. It was as if Texas had been styled out of us with a can of hair spray and a teasing comb. My uncle Jay didn’t seem to notice the cultural shift he had caused. He was making more money than he could spend, and man, could he spend it like a big boy. The trend spread to Houston, Lake Charles, New Orleans, and on east until it hit Florida and then up the east coast.

In the mid-sixties, thanks to the hippie chic movement, the young girls went back to wearing it long and straight, and so did their mothers, and the bubble head died out. Uncle Jay made a nice chunk of change from his invention, and to this day, in parts of the south, you can see old women with that “big hair” piled on top of their heads.

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My Big Day At The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show


The legendary Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo ended today. Once again, we didn’t make it to the grand celebration of Texas. Dallas, that eastern wannabe city, has the State Fair, but we have the stock show and the best damn rodeo in the nation. I’ve been going there since I was a small child, and my sister did the same. Since it’s always been in February, we never knew what the weather would be; sunny and warm or an ice storm like last week here in Texas.

Back in the 1950s, the western swing band, my father played fiddle with opened the Stock Show every year with a breakfast concert in one of the exposition barns. The famous Light Crust Doughboys were about to be on the air. They were and are a legend in Texas and country music. I was just a kid along for the ride and didn’t realize how good that ride was.

My father had bought me a fringed leather jacket, a pearl Roy Rogers cowboy hat, and a new pair of Justin boots from the outlet store next door to the Dickies factory. These new duds were just for the show that year. I think it was 1955 or 56, and I was as puffed up as a poisoned pup, and everything on me shined like a new dime. I wore my grandfather’s Bollo string tie with the silver state of Texas clasp and saw my smiling reflection in my polished boots. I was a kid to be reckoned with.

The band was set up on a low stage with a small split rail fence separating them from the onlookers. The local television station, WBAP, was there for a live broadcast that morning. They always put on a big deal for the first day. The news lady thought I looked like a little buckaroo and asked my father if I could sit on the fence next to her while she did her opening broadcast, which would be shown all over Fort Worth, Dallas, and points west and east. In those days, it was a big deal to be on television, and here I was, a kid getting ready to be famous. I knew some of my classmates would recognize me. My head growing too fat for my hat by the minute.

The nice TV lady helped me climb onto the fence, scootched me over a bit closer to her, and the broadcast started. It was my first brush with fame and live television, and I stared at the camera like a deer in headlights. She asked me a few questions, which I don’t remember, and I answered with a croak and a whimper, then fell backward from the fence onto the dirt floor. I got up, all covered in a mixture of fifty-year-old dirt and manure. The new cowboy hat was all bent in, and my fringed jacket was all whacky and filthy, so I dejectedly walked over behind the bandstand and started to cry. I had ruined my one chance at being a television personality. Mortified would be a good description, then maybe add humiliation to that, and you would have the gest of it.

After the Doughboys started playing, the nice TV lady came over with a coke and a hot dog, gave me a mother-type hug, and said I did just fine. That made it all better.

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“The Legend of The Mountain Boomers of Santa Anna Texas”


My childhood vision of a Mountain Boomer

Every so often, I feel a story or a rousing recount should get a second visit and be shared again. I wrote this one a few years ago because it made it’s way back to me in a dream. I watched one of the Jurassic movies earlier in the week. I had a squirmy nightmare for a few nights in a row, which usually results in me making a hot cup of Ovaltine in the microwave and reading for an hour or so to quieten my brain a bit. The problem was, it wasn’t a nightmare; it was a true account from my childhood. I swear on a stack of good books, not the Bible, of course, but maybe a few by Hemingway and Steinbeck. My two long-deceased and loveable uncles were the best storytellers, beer drinkers, and liars I have known. I never knew where the realism ended, and the bullcrap started, but they both swore, in between gulps of cold Pearl beer, sitting there on top of their Coleman coolers out on my grandparent’s front porch, that this one was as real as a bad case of chickenpox.

At seven years old, I learned of my first, but far from the last Texas legend. One of the best storytellers and liars I ever knew, my uncle Bill told my cousins and me about Santa Anna’s “Mountain Boomers.”

Supposedly, man-size lizards that ran on two legs came down from the Santa Anna mountain searching for food. Anything would do, but they were partial to goats, chickens, and tiny humans. If you were caught outside in the wee morning hours, it was a sure bet a Mountain Boomer would get you. Us kids were scared shitless of even going out after dark.

With no air conditioning in the farmhouse, we were forced to sleep with the windows open and would lay in our beds shaking all night, waiting for the monsters to break through the window screen and carry us away. Our Granny was no help; her standard goodnight to us was ” sleep tight and don’t let the Mountain Boomers bite.”

Summer evenings on the farm were made for sitting on my grandparent’s covered porch, watching lightning bugs dance, listening to the crickets chirp, and catching the far away howels of an occasional Coyote pack running the pastures.

The sky was black as pitch, the Milky Way as white as talcum powder, and heat lighting in the West added to the drama of the evening. We kids were ripe for a big one, and my uncles never disappointed. First, homemade ice cream was eaten, then the cooler of Pearl Beer came out, and the stories commenced.

Already that June, my cousin Jerry and me had been to see the hero pig and the three-legged chickens, so we needed a new adventure. But, unfortunately, the hobos had left the railroad bridge down the road, and our summer was losing air like a punctured tire.

“Did you kids see that over there in the trees? I think that might have been one of them Mountain Boomers,” says uncle Bill, in between swigs of Pearl. Then, of course, we strained our eyes to see what he said he saw, but nothing. Then a few moments later, ” there it goes again, I tell you kids, that was one of them sumbitches running on two legs carrying a goat.”

He had us hooked and scared. Then he starts in on the story.

Uncle Bill took a swig of Pearl and says, ” Right down this road here, about twenty-years ago, a families car broke down. The daddy, a man I knew well, walked into town to find some help. He left his wife and small son in the car. It was late at night, so he figured they would sleep until he returned. The little boy, got out of the car to pee along side the road. His Momma heard him scream and came out of the car in a hurry, there was a 7 foot Mountain Boomer standing there with the little kid in it’s mouth. The poor boy was almost chewed in half already. His guts were hanging out and dragging on the ground. The big lizard took off running with the Momma chasing it. Another of them Boomers was hiding in the scrub brush and got her too. A few days later, the sheriff found their bloody remains up on the mountain. They knew a Mountain Boomer had got em because they found their tracks. That’s why we never go outside after midnight around here.” Jerry and I were almost pissing our pants.

When we stayed at the farm, I don’t believe either of us ever slept well again after that night. But, even after we were adults, my Uncle Bill swore the legend and the story was true. I still dream of them.

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Blueboy The Pigeon


My grandmother loved her critters. She shepherded about five-hundred chickens on her farm in Santa Anna, Texas. A scroungy stray cat or dog would show up, and she would feed it and give it a place in the smokehouse to stay. They usually were soon gone, thanks to Coyotes and Bobcats, but she wouldn’t let them go hungry.

She couldn’t place the day, month, or year the pigeon showed up. It flew down from a bright blue sky and commenced pecking at the chicken feed my granny had thrown on the ground for her hens. It was a beautiful bird, blue-grey with white markings; she called it Blueboy, not knowing if it was male or female, so to her, it was a boy pigeon.

Blueboy took a liking to granny and followed her around the farm while she did her daily chores. He would walk a few feet behind her, even when she was in the barn or the smokehouse. He would perch on the front porch railing if she was sitting outside. He became her pet. After a while, she could reach down and pick him up, which for a wild pigeon, was something to see. She carried him around like a pet chicken and would feed him in his own dish by the giant oak tree that shaded their farmhouse. Blueboy slept in that tree most nights, but in the cold winter, she would crack the smokehouse door, so he could roost inside out of the weather. She and that pigeon understood each other. Farm people know critters and how to communicate with them. It’s a natural talent you are born with. The bird thought he was a dog, and she treated him as such.

Blueboy started following the cousins and me around the farm. Always a ways behind us, curious about what we were up to. We could never touch him or get too close; only granny had that honor. He was always there for years when I visited the farm in the summer and at Christmas or Easter. I guess that pigeon was a big part of the family as the grandchildren.

Just as he had shown up one day, he was gone. Granny figured he or she had met another pigeon and started a family, or at least that is what she told us. Years later, she said she found some of his feathers by the barn. Probably a Bobcat got him while he was strutting around instead of sitting in his tree. She never got over losing Blueboy and talked about him often in her old age. I saw a pigeon a few days ago, and it took me back there.

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Up Up And Away In My Beautiful Balloon


So now we have Chinese Spy balloons floating over the US. What the hell? The Japanese Imperial Army tried this in World War 2, sending weather balloons with bombs attached. Is this the best these guys can do? And they warn us not to shoot them down with planes, drones or rockets. Get a Cub Scout Troop armed with Winchester 22 rifles. Problem solved.

This is not my usual Tall Tale, folks; you can’t make this crap up. My apologies to The Fifth Dimension.

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They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To


Pictured above for your drooling pleasure ( if you are a musician ) is my “go-too” guitar, a 1980 Epiphone Casino with original P90 pickups, which I combine with a Fender Blues 1×12 tweed 100-watt amp. Years ago, when our band was going through our British invasion phase, we all tried Vox amps, but we couldn’t master the accent required to use them correctly. This is the same guitar the Beatles used for so many years because of its versatility and sound. It’s the Epiphone cousin to the Gibson 335, but much lighter and with a smoother playing neck. I played this baby for over 20 years in a few hundred gigs, and it never once let me down. My grandson has the blonde model of the same guitar, only a newer edition. And yes, Yoko did break up the band.

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Before They Was Fab


This post is for my musical buds, Max and Dave.

I own two of these sacred gems, released in July of 1963. The one pictured leaning against my laptop is in the best condition, and it appears the album photo was taken at a London Sears portrait studio or by Brian Epstein with his Brownie Box camera. I believe it has only been spun a few times by a little hippie grandma on Saturday nights after consuming a few glasses of French Chardonnay since English wines are notoriously inferior. The other disc is missing the album cover and has minor scratches, but it still plays well. This captures the boys as they may have sounded at the Cavern club. Raw, gritty, and bursting with talent.

The American version was released 10 days later on Capitol Records titled “Meet The Beatles.” I also have that one.

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Life At 33 1/3 RPM


Since my teenage years in the sixties, I have been a vinyl album collector. It was out of necessity; we didn’t have CDs, flash drives, and such, but we did have 8 track tapes, which I despised. I was a rock musician in those years, so I bought all the most popular records. I’ve long lost many to thievery, unreturned loans, and negligence. At last count, I still have about 125 albums, most in good to perfect condition. I lost a box of my most treasured ones when a moving company absconded with them during a move. It was clearly marked ” favorite 60s albums.” The culprit also relieved me of my coveted ” Ray Ban” classic sunglasses. I curse the man daily, although I shouldn’t carry a grudge. I hope his turntable broke.

Last week I made the plunge, purchasing a new Sony receiver, an Audio Technica turntable, and two Klipsch speakers. Now my wife and I can listen to our eclectic collection of albums by the likes of Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, Crosby Stills and Nash, Chicago, Buffalo Springfield, Hank Williams Jr., Billy Joe Shaver, Jerry Jeff Walker, and of course, the Beatles and everything in between. I even have a greatest hits album by Sonny and Cher, if you can picture that. I own two coveted albums of “Meet The Beatles,” on VeeJay records, the one released in the UK, not the states in 1963.

I have a nice collection of CDs, but they don’t count since everything is digitized and sanitized, and I own a nice collection of music on my computer.

Thanks to Apple, I lost around 350 songs off of my iPod Nano while trying to download them to my laptop. Steve Jobs be damned.

There is something magical and soothing about that slight hiss and skips of a classic vinyl disk recorded on analog equipment with a 4 track machine. I can picture Sir George Martin sitting in the control booth pushing knobs while the Fabs struggle to produce the perfect tune on ancient equipment. I am deaf in my left ear, thanks to standing in front of large amplifiers playing at level 11 for many years, so my right ear is my musical one. Like the RCA dog, I can trick myself into hearing stereo high-fidelity if I turn my head just so.

No need for that flat-screen television anymore. We plan to live our life at 33-1/3.

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Ice Storms and The Alamo


Texas is in the midst of a nasty ice storm. It started with sleet, then freezing rain, a dusting of snow, and now more freezing rain mixed with thunder, sleet, and lightning snow. I envy the folks up north; they get plain old snow. it may be five feet deep, but it’s not ice.

Ice storms are part of our history. Our great authors, Larry McMurtry and J. Frank Dobie often wrote of them in their novels. Hondo Crouch, the lord of Luckenbach, Texas, commented, “there is nothing as lovely as a good ice storm to make you stay inside to ponder and piddle.”

In 1836, when General Santa Anna marched his troops from Mexico to San Antonio to dispose of those pesky Texians who were having a barbeque cookout at the Alamo, his men were pelted with ice and sleet storms. Most of his soldiers came from warmer parts of Mexico and died in the scrub brush of south Texas, frozen solid while standing upright or in mid-stride. Santa Anna lost his personal wagon full of Tequila; the bottles froze.

Here in Granbury, the most historical small Town in Texas, the day before “Icemegedon” hit, my wife and I went to our local H.E.B. for a few items. We know how to “hunker down,” so we don’t require much.

Good God, it was as if the world was ending. Masses of shoppers grabbed everything they could from the almost bare shelves. One lady had a basket full of Mrs. Baird’s bread and twenty-six packs of Dr. Pepper and Big Red. I ran into Mooch and Mrs. Mooch, and he had a basket full of Red Baron Pizzas and Pork Rinds, which is actually survival food here in Texas. I saw two older women in a tug-of-war over the last pack of pork ribs, and the bakery ladies were smacking shoppers with loaves of French bread as they came over the counter. It was pandemonium at its finest. The wine shelves were empty, as well as the beer coolers. If you have enough booze, food is not required to sustain life.

Back to the Alamo, if I may. It’s a good comparison to the state of our country today, and we are fighting a similar battle, destined to lose. The defenders, which would be the citizens of Texas, are sheltered in the mission and are attempting to hold off the invading hordes, which would be Mexico and the rest of South America. By letter, Travis, now Governor Abbot, begged for reinforcements, which never came. Thus, the mission was breached, and the defenders slaughtered. President Biden is now playing the part of General Santa Anna, and Senorita Kamala is his muse.

All of this happened because of an ice storm. I think Hondo was right. It’s a good day to ponder and piddle.

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“Down On The Corner, Out In The Street”


At 73 years of age, I still have all my hair. Not only is it all in place, but it’s also solid white, luxurious, and flowing. I use a secret shampoo from ” Dr. Squatch,” a medicinal shaman that lives in a remote mountain cabin above Colorado Springs. I have men, women, and barbers stop me on the street and comment on my massive amount of follicles. My wife says I have ” TV Preacher Hiar,” which brings me to this idea.

Since my rock band disbanded in 2019, I have missed playing music. A few nights ago, at a birthday party for our former drummer, Jordan, who turned 75, I approached the idea of making music again with him and our former bass player and singer, Danny, who is 77. Our good friend and guitar player, John, passed away a few years ago, but I’m confident he would be all in if he were with us.

They were mildly interested until I told them my idea involved playing on the sidewalks around our historic Granbury town square. The proper English term is “Busking,” which consists in playing and singing for money thrown into a jar, a bucket, or an open guitar case. They looked at me as if a third eye was growing in my forehead. I then dropped the bomb on them; I am becoming a man of the cloth, a pastor, a preacher, a sidewalk hawker for the almighty. It’s so easy; I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. My quirky sense of humor, skill as an orator, and perfect hair assure success in this endeavor.

Go online, send in your nominal fee, and receive a certified, stamped, and legal document, suitable for framing, that says you can perform weddings, funerals, and divorces, bless barroom fights, bless meals for family and strangers in restaurants, give pastorly advice, and heal people’s medical maladies. I am awaiting my credentials which should arrive any day now. My two friends and former bandmates have not returned my calls, but then at their age, they may have forgotten the conversation. I will send them a text and an email as a reminder.

Combine my TV preacher hair and my pastorly presence with our three-piece musical trio, and we should be able to draw a sizable crowd and make some nice donations for my mobile church, which I plan to christen; “The Church of The What’s Happening Now.” All proceeds will go to the “Mission Granbury” food bank and “Friends of Animals.”

Being a Christian, which I am, is advisable. But, if you’re going to spread the word of God, you had better believe what you are spouting. Atheists, Agnostics, and liberals would never make a good street preacher; they would be struck by a bolt of lightning from above and charred to a crisp right there on the sidewalk. God doesn’t watch CNN or The View.

I have better hair than any of those preachers on the TV set, so I should do quite well if my wife lets me out of the house and I can find my car keys and guitar, which I suspect she has hidden with relatives.

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Memories At 4: 00 AM


My father, Port Aransas, Texas, 1957

     My father didn’t own a beach chair, nor did he want one. He preferred to sit on his haunches or stand when he fished. My grandfather, the old salt of the clan, felt the same; real men took their fishing seriously in 1957 and didn’t need such things. They smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes and carried a Zippo lighter and Barlow pocketknife in their pant pocket. If it was summer, my dad waded into the surf, sometimes up to his waist, which worried my mother; she feared a sand shark or a giant octopus would drag him beneath the waves and leave my sister and me fatherless. She fretted about the monsters in the ocean and would have a panic attack if she got more than knee-deep in the surf. She couldn’t swim a lick, thanks to her mother’s lifelong fear of water which she instilled in her children. However, my baby sister was fearless and would keep plodding headlong into the surf until one of my parents or I rescued her.

     My family lived inland, four hundred miles to the northern part of Texas. The journey from Fort Worth to Port Aransas took eight, sometimes nine hours, but we could have made it in six if not for my mother wanting to stop for lunch at Franks restaurant in Schulenberg and a potty break every hour. The women in her family were cursed with an uncooperative bladder.

     We were city folks, but our hearts and souls were one with the Gulf of Mexico and that small island village. I never considered myself a city boy; Fort Worth was where we stayed until our next trip to our natural home, the ocean. Home to me was Gibbs Cottages or the Rock Cottages on G street. Bilmore and Son’s Hardware sold tackle, bait, and gas, and the Island Grocery had the best baloney and rat cheese sandwiches in Texas. The only church in town kept everyone saved and signed up for heaven, and Shorty’s was the most popular beer joint in town and served ice-cold Pearl beer in dark glass bottles.

     The magic was always there, winter or summer; it never changed. The ever-shifting dunes and beach grass waved like grain fields in the southern breeze. The sea birds ran along the shoreline, paying no attention to us interlopers. The gulls would assault me if I had a sandwich or a bag of potato chips, and the brown Pelicans glided above the water like a formation of B-24 bombers. There were rattlesnakes in the dunes, but I never ran across one. I once disturbed a napping Coyote; it snorted and trotted off into the grasslands behind the dunes.

     Memories come to me at inconvenient times. This one woke me up at 4:00 am, so I figured I had better write it down. Who knows what memory tomorrow may bring?

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“A Small Rant From A Half-Assed Invalid”


I haven’t ranted on anything of value lately, but the news on that flat-screen thing is driving me to something, and I don’t thinks it’s good.

Classified files at Trump’s art deco digs, Biden’s Deleware home, and now they think at his beach house and his “so called” private office. Now we have ex-VP Pence with papers at his house. To be fair, is anyone looking at Hillary’s, Obama’s, and Bush’s? Hell, my house could be next. The witch trials are on, and the minions are building the log fire and cross. Someone is going to burn for this one. Who will it be? Perhaps all of the above if justice is blind, which we know it is not.

I walk with a cane now. It’s not a fancy one like a proper southern gentleman would possess; it’s a shiny aluminum job from the Walmart. I used a few beautiful wooden canes that belonged to my wife’s late father, but I broke one and severely injured another. She has one left, and I won’t touch it since it’s an heirloom.

Since my back operation in August caused the drop foot and the unruly right leg, the cane is my savior. I’ve found it helpful on my shopping trips to H.E.B. with my wife. I’m not allowed to go on my own since I can’t drive with a bum foot, and she doesn’t believe me when I tell her that my cane acts as a good pusher for the accelerator. So, we go as a team. With my gimp foot and leg, I clumsily push the cart, and she grabs the stuff and fills the cart. I am also there as a moderator, keeping her from purchasing too many expensive goodies. Beef is $ 15.00 per pound, and Chicken is $16.00 per pound, so we eat pork or no meat at all. She slipped some New York steaks in the basket last week; hid them under some other items. I’m slipping.

Back to the cane, it’s also useful as a weapon. Any unruly shopper that bumps into me, or my cart, gets a whack from my righteous staff, with me yelling, ” I’m walking here,” the cane, and seeing I am a half-assed invalid, adds to the drama, which usually scares the poor offender into retreat. My poor wife has nothing to say; it would do no good anyway.

“I yam, what I yam,” as Popeye would say.

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I Am A Texan


In honor of Texas Independence Day and the fall of The Alamo, I am bringing this post back to life. If I had a recent picture of myself in a Stetson or a nice straw hat, I would include it, but sadly, this picture is it. I don’t take selfies, only a few since the invention of such a silly thing. I looked for my coonskin Davy Crockett cap, which would have added to the story, but I believe my mother tossed it sometime in my twenties. God Bless Texas.

I am, and always will be, a stubborn, self-righteous, braggart, and proud son of Texas. If there was a lodge called ” Sons of The Alamo,” I would be a member. I bleed red, white, and blue with a lone big star. My battle flag is the ” Come And Take It,” from the skirmish with the Mexican army in Gonzalez, Texas, that sparked the Texas Revolution.

In my dreams, I carried Davy Crockett’s old Betsy from Tennessee and sharpened Jim Bowie’s knife so slick he could shave with it. I helped Colonel Travis write his famous pleading letter for more troops to defend the Alamo, and I was with the defenders on the narrow pulpits of that old fort when it fell after thirteen days of defiance. I fanned the horse flies away from a wounded Sam Houston as he lay underneath a shade tree along the banks of a bend in a creek called Texas on the Brazos. I was with the Texian army as they rousted and defeated General Santa Anna’s troops on the battlefield of San Jacinto.

I sat on the commander’s deck with Texan Admiral Chester Nimitz during the battle of the Coral Sea as the Japs relentlessly attacked our armada. I rode with the Texas Rangers as they fought the Comanches and Pancho Villa. I was but a boy with a dog-eared history book, but in my dreams, I was a part of the glorious history of my home state. I will always be eternally grateful for being born a son of Texas.

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You’re Only As Young As You Look


My granny, a Cherokee woman from another century, used to tell me, and anyone else that would listen, ” you’re only as old as you feel.” She had a good point. She lived into her 90s and seemed to feel good most of her life, even though every meal she cooked was in bacon grease and hog fat. She would take-back those wise words if she could see her oldest grandson now.

I stared at the reflection in my bathroom mirror this morning and said, “Dad, is that you?” Who is this old guy? My grandmothers’ words came back to me, but in this case, she is dead damn wrong.

I guess 73 years old is a milestone of sorts. I have already outlived my father, that passed at 72, so I got a year up on him. The odd thing is that I, or so folks tell me, don’t look 73. “Oh, look at yeeew, I swear yeeew could pass for 55 if not a day older; bless your heart.” Words like that make an old guy feel proud for a few minutes, nothing more.

My grandfather, my dad’s pop, passed on when I was ten years old. Born in 1891, he looked as old when I was a wee-one as he did when he left us. Early pictures from the 1930s showed him with white hair and wrinkly skin. The man was born old but never aged after that. Maybe that’s the gene I inherited. He came out of the womb with whiskers, white hair, and a Daniel Boone pocket knife used for whittling and sharpening pencils. Strange things like this happen in the south, especially in Texas. Our state is shrouded in mystery and could be a part of the Twilight Zone.

My wife, a few years younger than me, is of good German and Irish stock from the hills of Pennsylvania. She wasn’t born in Texas but got here as quick as she could via her wandering parents. She has but a little gray hair and very few wrinkles, and her eyes are bright, and her nose is cold. We’ve both had our medical maladies lately, each suffering through major back operations, cleaned-out knee joints, and other minor nuisances.

Speaking for myself, I may hold the family record if one exists; my sister is checking the family bible just to be sure. A case of prostate cancer back in 2019, and I thought it was clear sailing after that. No such luck. Now, the good stuff; three ear surgeries on both ears, a cute little prostate operation, as if the cancer didn’t do enough damage, major back surgery that included a lot of stainless steel parts, and next week major nerve and leg surgery to correct drop foot caused by the back surgery with all the parts. All of this is within a twelve-month period. Now, I will kiss your hiney and buy you a Whataburger if that ain’t a record of some kind; and I’m still ambulating, but with a fancy cane from the Walmart.

Sympathy or donations via the mail is not the goal of this story but letting other readers know what the future holds if you’re a young whipper snapper. Better start saving your cash, suck it up and get ready for the big show. The good news is; I still have all my luxurious white hair, which makes me look like a TV preacher. Amen, brother.

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De-Ja-Vu Old Hippie Dude


He wasn’t the best guitar player in the band, nor the best singer, but added into the mix, he was a part of the Byrds that made them. The band gave Pete Seeger a stroke, turned Joanie Baez gay, and gave Dylan the courage to pick up a Fender Strat and plug into a twin reverb amplifier. The world of folkie music would never be the same.

Crosby was too outspoken, prideful, and an asshole rich kid who pissed off everyone he interacted with. Canadian Mockingbird Joni Mitchell wanted to kill him with her delicate hands for ruining her first album. But, despite his misgivings, the man was one hell of a part of the sixties music movement.

David Crosby has gone to the great Woodstock in the sky. When Bob Dylan rang a doorbell today, Crosby got a pair of angel wings. They were tarnished and likely secondhand, but he can now fly around the clouds flipping off everyone on earth. Joni is sick and too old to do nothing more than guide her electric wheelchair around these days, but she would still kick his smug ass if she could muster the strength. He damn near ruined her career before it started. All he wanted was to marry her, but she was already hitched to her Martin guitar with those quirky tunings. Crosby could barely tune his Gretsch.

I saw them back in 1999 at an outdoor venue in Dallas Fair Park. Crosby, Stills, and Nash, the once young gods of Woodstock. David soooo endeared himself to the audience by saying, “Dallas, the fucking city that killed Kennedy.” He was spot on, but he didn’t need to say it. The man had no control over his mouth or life and couldn’t separate reality from a good high. What was that lesbo singer Ethridge thinking about having him as a sperm donor for her kids? Drug addiction and craziness are inherited via the genes, and I don’t mean bell-bottom Levis, or did she bother to read up on it?

I loved the Byrds in 1965 and forward. I loved CSN even more, and coke loved David more than anyone in the biz. He was a powder hound deluxe, made for drug abuse and bat-shit crazy behavior. Stills tried to put out a Mafia hit on him, and Nash attempted to poison his Oatmeal after he completely destroyed CS&N. He was loved by many but hated by many more. Why are the tortured souls the ones to drip with talent? Maybe Morrison can fill him in on it this evening if the two are in the same place. The poor man was a train wreck and a screw-up, but tomorrow, I will listen to my two CS&N albums and The Byrd’s greatest hits and remember one of the shining talents from when I was a 60s teenager banging on an electric guitar and wishing I was him. RIP, you old hippie dude.

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Washington Is Screwed


Things in Washington are screwed to the max. Old man Biden is being eaten alive by the press that ran interference for him all of his 40 years in office. Secret documents stashed next to his hipster Corvette. Home Depot boxes are full of “for your eyes only” secret squirrel shit. Was it Dementia or everyday stupidity? The newsboys smell blood in the dirty Potomac. The low tide stinks of scandal, and Watergate boys are considering coming out of retirement for one last show. Old NBC Lester sees his chance to win a Pulitzer, that’s if he can beat out that green-eyed devil bitch on CBS news, and that metro-sexual chap on ABC. With some form of grace, the only way out for Biden is to politely expire at the podium; at least then, he would get somber news coverage and a state funeral, and his son would take the rap for the corrupt family. That smiling Chinese dictator devil would send a lovely flower arrangement and a few million bucks to his widow, Not A Doctor, Jill. He will be elevated to sainthood if the old Italian deviant in red shoes approves the anointment. It’s about time we get fed the real deal.

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Resolutions Are Made To Be Broken


The night of January 2, 2023, I resolved not to write about politics. It was 2 am in the morning, and I was lying in bed fretting about the news I had watched earlier in the day. There is no “good news”; it’s all bad, given to use in small doses by people on my television screen that couldn’t talk their way out of a robbery without a teleprompter.

I vow to take immediate action to mend my mind and soul from the poison I am fed daily at 5:30 pm. I fought the compulsion to limp to my recliner and write a scathing blog post about the current suicidal condition of our country, but I stayed in my warm bed. Sarcasm can wait until breakfast.

Goodbye, old Lester Holt. Your suits are lovely and fit you well, but you are a liar, and I would readily join you for ten million dollars a year. You have no backbone or conscience as you continue spitting bullshit into the camera. I’m done with you and the others. You know, the nice-looking news anchor women with perfect hair, white teeth, and store-bought breast. I will give them one compliment: they don’t resemble a Kardashian woman.

I began to read The Fort Worth Press when I was a child, 9 years old, to be exact. Reading books came to me naturally, and so the newspaper was also. Starting with the comics, then sports, and from there, real news, the front page. Bad news makes for a good readership. The writers at the Press understood this. The front page was their “kill shot.”

I wanted to be a writer like the men in the newsroom, typing on their Underwood machine while smoking an unfiltered Camel and downing lousy coffee with a shot of Old Crow added for flavor. My earlier quest to be Mark Twain didn’t work out, so this would be the next best thing. I let my father know of my intentions, which led him to remind me that last year I had wanted to be a Good Humor man with my own ice cream truck. He was right, but a kid can change professions daily. I was years away from holding a job.

My mothers’ ancient typewriter weighed at least a hundred pounds. It had belonged to her sister, that once had aspirations of being the next Ayn Rand but lost interest in becoming an author when she married a college professor that was an author. It gave me a hernia around my young groin when I heaved it onto the kitchen table. I rolled a sheet of paper from my Big Cheif tablet into the machine, ready to start my first article that will be mailed to the Press.

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Grandfathers Magic Watch


The makeshift sunblock my father had fashioned from a tarp and four cane fishing poles wasn’t beautiful, but it worked fine. Sitting under the contraption was me, my little sister, my mother, and my grandmother. I was eight years old. He and my grandfather were not far away, holding their fishing rods after casting into the rough surf. Whatever they caught would be our supper that evening. I wasn’t invited to fish with them; I was too young, and the surf too dangerous. Besides, my small Zebco rod was only strong enough to catch a passing perch.


The visit was our annual summer fishing trip to Port Aransas, Texas, a small fishing village on the northern tip of Mustang Island. I don’t remember my first visit, but my mother said I was barely one year old. After that, the Gulf of Mexico, the beach, and that island became part of my DNA.


I’m an old man now, but I can recall every street, building, and sand dune of that small village. Over the decades, it became a tourist mecca for the wealthy, destroying the innocent and unpretentious charm of the town. Gone are the clapboard rental cottages with crushed seashell paving and fish-cleaning shacks. Instead, gaudy stores selling tee shirts made in China sit between the ostentatious condominiums, restaurants, and hotels. I prefer to remember it as it was in the 1950s when families came to fish, and the children explored the untamed beaches and sand dunes.


Born in 1891, my grandfather was an old man by the time I was eight. Tall and lanky, with white hair and skin like saddle leather. He was a proud veteran of World War 1 and as tough as the longhorn steers he herded as a boy. He lost part of his left butt cheek from shrapnel and was gassed twice while fighting in France. Nevertheless, he harbored no ill feelings toward the Germans, even though he killed and wounded many of them.


On the contrary, he disliked the French because they refused to show proper gratitude for the doughboys saving their butts from the Krauts. As a result, he wouldn’t allow French wine in his home. He preferred Kentucky bourbon with a splash of branch water or an ice-cold Pearl beer. His hard-drinking days, he left in Fort Worth’s Hell’s Half Acre decades ago. He told a few stories about the infamous place, but he was careful to scrub them clean for us youngsters.


His one great joy in life was saltwater fishing with my father, playing his fiddle, and telling stories to whoever would listen. The recounting of his early childhood and life in Texas captivated my sister, cousins, and me for as long as the old man could keep talking. He told about being in France but never about the horrors of the war. He lived a colorful childhood and, for a while, was a true Texas cowboy. Half of it may have been ripping yarns, but he could tell some good ones. My mother said I inherited his talent for recounting and spinning yarns. If that’s true, I’m proud to have it.


He could have been in a Norman Rockwell painting while standing in the surf, with khaki pants rolled to his knees, a white t-shirt, and a duck-billed cap. I was in awe of the old man but too young to know how to tell him. My grandmother said he was crazy for wearing his gold watch while fishing.


The timepiece was a gift of gratitude from his employer when he worked in California during the depression years. A simple gold-plated 1930s-style Boluva. It was an inexpensive watch, but he treated it like the king’s crown, having it cleaned yearly and the crystal replaced if scratched. He called that watch his good luck charm and wore it when fishing for good juju. It was a risk that the salt water might ruin it, but he took it. He caught five speckled sand trout and half a dozen Golden Croaker that day, so the charm worked. Add the three specs my father snagged, joined with the cornbread and pinto beans my mother and grandmother cooked, and we dined like the Rockefellers that night.


The next few days were a repeat. I rode my blow-up air mattress in the shore break and caught myself a whopper of a sunburn on my back. The jellyfish sting added to my discomfort. I was miserable and well-toasted, but I kept going, determined to enjoy every second of beach time.
We returned to Fort Worth as a spent and happy bunch. The family would give it another go the following year.


Two years passed. One day, my father told me my grandfather was sick and would be in the veteran hospital in Dallas for a while. He mentioned cancer. I was young and didn’t understand this disease, so I looked it up in our encyclopedia; “An illness that attacks the body’s cells with over ten strains, some are incurable and deadly. One week he seemed fine, sitting in his rocking chair playing his fiddle and telling stories, and the next week, he was in a hospital fighting for his life. His doctor said being gassed in the war was the cause of his cancer. It was not treatable and would be fatal.


Near a month later, he was not the same man when he came home. His face was gaunt, his body, lean and meatless before, now was skin and bone. The treatments the doctors ordered had ravaged him as much as the disease. My grandmothers’ facial expressions told it all. There was no need to explain; I knew he would soon be gone. My father was stoic, if only for his mother’s benefit. His father, my grandfather, was fading away before our eyes, and we couldn’t do a thing to change the outcome.


A week after returning home, grandfather found his strength, walked to their living room, and sat in his rocking chair. He asked me for his fiddle, which I fetched. He played half of one tune and handed it back to me. I cased it and returned it to the bedroom closet; he was too weak for a second tune. His voice was raspy and weak when he spoke, but he had something to say, so I took my position on my low stool, as I often did when he recounted his tales. I noticed his gold watch was loose and had moved close to his elbow. His attachment to the timepiece would not allow removal. It was a part of him. He spoke a few words, but It was a painful effort to continue. My grandmother helped him to his bed. He removed his watch, placed it on the nightstand, and then lay down. He was asleep within minutes. From that day on, he would sleep most of the time, waking only to be helped to the bathroom or to sip a few spoonfuls of hot soup. I would visit after school, sitting next to him while he slept, cleaning his watch with a soft cloth, winding it, and ensuring the time was correct. I felt he knew I was caring for this treasured talisman.


I came home from school on a Friday, and my grandfather was gone. I could see the imprint in the bed where he had laid, and his medication bottles and watch were missing from the nightstand. Mother said he took a turn for the worse, and my father took him back to the veteran’s hospital.


The following day, my father came home and told us my grandfather had passed away during the night. I noticed he was wearing his gold watch. I thought if the timepiece was such a lucky charm, as I had been told all these years, why had it not saved my grandfather?


Life continued on Jennings Street; for me, some of it was good, a little of it not. Father wore grandfather’s watch in remembrance and respect. He waited for the magic to come. He gave me his worn-out Timex, which was too big for my wrist, but I wore it proudly.


The magic of the watch began to work for my father. He acquired two four-unit apartment houses near downtown, fixed them up a bit, rented them out, and sold them. We then moved to Wichita Falls, where he started building new homes. A year later, we moved to Plano, Texas, where he continued to build houses. It appeared the good luck of the watch was working overtime. I became a believer in this talisman. The hard days in Fort Worth were well behind us now. The future for our family was filled with promise.


On a day in 1968, riding with my father to lock his homes for the night, we had a long overdue father-to-son talk. I rarely saw him because of his work, so I welcomed the time. Had I thought about college? What was going on in my life? I played in a popular rock band, so that was a point we touched on. He didn’t want me to become a professional musician as he had been. I assured him this phase would end soon. He and my mother were worried I would be drafted and sent to Vietnam. We talked for two hours. He remarked that as long as he wore his father’s watch, everything he touched turned to gold. Father was successful, so how could I doubt his belief?

In the summer of 1969, the band on the old watch broke while we were fishing for Kingfish in the gulf. While gaffing a Kingfish, my father bumped his wrist against the side of our boat. The watch fell into the water, and in a flash, it was gone. He said that if he had to lose it, this was a fitting end; lost to the water that his father loved so much.

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“A Fort Worth, Texas Kind of Christmas”


When I first published this story, readers asked me if the characters were real or did any of it actually happen. Our neighbors, the Misters, were real folks and became our neighborhood mentors. Leonards’s Department Store Toyland in downtown Fort Worth was a sight to behold, and the attempted flocking and ruination of our Christmas tree is true. My father was able to negotiate peace with my mother, and my uncle delivered a new tree, so Christmas was saved. A flocked tree never adorned our living room, but we did buy an aluminum tree with a rotating color wheel. Years later, in the early sixties, I used that rotating wheel as part of a hokey light show for our rock band.

A personal recount of my childhood Christmas memories.

Photo by: Leonard’s Museum and Ansel Adams
Photo by: Elf -O-Mat Studios

Riding a ceiling-mounted “Rocket Train” to nowhere around the basement of a department store doesn’t seem like a Christmas thing, but that’s what thousands of other Texas kids and I did every year in the 1950s.

Leonard Brothers Department Store occupied two square blocks of downtown Fort Worth real estate and was known as the Southwest’s Macy’s. They offered everything the big shot stores in the East carried, hundreds of items no retailer in their right mind would consider.

If you had a mind to, one could purchase a full-length mink coat with optional mink mittens, the latest women’s high-fashion clothing line from Paris France, an Italian cut-crystal vile of Elizabeth Taylors spit, James Dean’s signature hair tonic, Rock Hudson’s autographed wedding photos, a housebroken Llama, an aluminum fishing boat and motor, a new car, a pole barn, a nice two-story craftsman home “build it yourself kit” delivered to your lot, chickens, barb wire, hay, horses and cows, a 30-30 Winchester rifle, a 40 caliber autographed General George Custer Colt pistol, a bottle of good hootch and a Ford tractor. That’s about as Texas as it gets.

The Christmas season in downtown Fort Worth was internationally recognized for its innovative and wonderful decorations. The righteous city fathers figured the best way to outdo Dallas, a full-time effort, was to line every building with white lights from top to bottom and install large glowing decorations on every lamp pole, street light, and building façade available. If that didn’t make you “ooooh and ahhhh,” then you needed to go home and hide in a closet.

A week or so after Thanksgiving, my parents would take my sister and me downtown to see the decorations and visit the Leonard Brothers Department Store. Santa just happened to be in their basement, taking advanced verbal orders from every crumb cruncher that could climb the stairs and plop on his lap.

My sister always asked for the latest doll in between screams and crying fits. She was scared senseless of “HO-HO,” but she somehow managed to spit out her order. Like clockwork, every year, I asked for a Daisy BB Gun with a year’s supply of stainless silver ammo ( for killing werewolves), a full-size Elliot Ness operable Thompson Sub Machine Gun, or an Army surplus Bazooka with real rockets and a long, razor-sharp Bowie knife encased in a fringed leather holster. It was a 1950s boy thing; weapons were what we longed for. How else could we defeat Santa Anna at the Alamo or win World War II, again? Our neighborhood may have sported the best-supplied “kid army” on the planet, and jolly old Santa was our secret arms dealer; parents non-the wiser. I finally got the BB Gun, but Santy was wise enough to not bring the other request.

Walking down the stairs to the store’s basement was the thrill I had waited for all year. There, hanging above my head, was the beautiful red and silver tinseled sign, “Toy Land,” kid nirvana, and the Holy Grail all in one room. The smell of burned popcorn and stale chocolate candy wafted up the stairs, and I could hear the cheesy Christmas choir music and the sound the Rocket Train made as it glided along the ceiling-mounted rails. I almost pissed off my jeans.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of parents jostled down isles of toys, pushing, grabbing, and snarling like a pack of wild dogs fighting for that last toy; the holiday spirit and common courtesy were alive and well. The queue of kids for the Rocket Train snaked through the basement like a soup line.

Sitting on his mini-mountain top perch, sat old red-suited Santa Claus and his elfin apprentices, herding kids to his lap at break-neck speed. Each child got about fifteen seconds, a black and white photograph, and then it was off the lap and down the steps. Kids were fast in those days; we memorized and practiced our list weeks before our visit for maximum impact. “Ho-Ho” had better be writing this stuff down. Kids, don’t forget squat.

After two Santa visits, four Rocket Train rides, and three popcorn bags later, our family unit departed Leonard’s for the new and improved “Leonard’s Christmas Tree Land,” located across the street from the main building. Thanks to the demolition of several winos-infested abandoned buildings, the new lot was now the size of Rhode Island and held enough trees for every person and their dog in Texas.

Thousands, if not millions, of fresh-cut trees awaited our choosing. Father, always the cheapskate, chose a sensible tree; not too big, not too small, yet full and fluffy with a lovely piney aroma. My sister and I pointed and danced like fools for the “pink flocked” tree in the tent, which cost the equivalent of a week’s salary. My parents enjoyed our cute antics. The sensible tree was secured to the top of our Nash Rambler station wagon, and we were homeward bound.

Pulling into our driveway, it was impossible to miss our neighbor’s extravagant holiday display. We had been away from home for 6 hours and returned to a full-blown holiday extravaganza that made our modest home look like a tobacco road sharecroppers shack.

Our next-door neighbors, Mr. Mister and Mrs. Mister, were the neighborhood gossip fodder. The couple moved from Southern California for his job. He, an aircraft-design engineer, and she, a former gopher girl at Paramount Studios. The Misters reeked new-found money and didn’t mind flaunting it. They drove tiny Italian sports cars and hired a guy to mow their lawn. His wife, Mrs. Mister, always had a Pall Mall ciggie in one hand and a frosty cocktail in the other. Father said she looked like a pretty Hollywood lady named Jane Mansfield, but Mother said she resembled a “gimlet-assed dime-store chippy.” I got the impression that the Misters were quite popular in the neighborhood.

Mrs. Mister on her fancy sofa
Mr. Mister contemplating his next invention

Their Christmas display was pure Cecil B. DeMille. A life-size plywood sleigh, with Santa and his reindeer, covered the Mister’s roof, and 20 or more automated Elves and various holiday characters greeted passersby. Twinkling lights covered every bush and plant in the yard, and a large machine spat out thousands of bubbles that floated through the neighborhood. This was far more than Fort Worth was ready for.

The kill shot was their enormous picture window that showcased a ceiling-high blue flocked tree bathed in color-changing lights. There, framed in the glow of their yuletide decor, sat Mr. and Mrs. Mister with their two poodles, Fred and Ginger, perched on their expensive modern sofa, sipping vermouth martinis like Hollywood royalty. This display of pompacious decadence didn’t go unnoticed by my parents.

Father hauled our puny tree into the living room and began unpacking lights for the decorating that would happen tomorrow evening. Mother hurried my sister and me off to bed. Visions of spying Elves, sugar plum pudding, and dangerous weapons danced in my head; Christmas was upon us.

Sometime after 10 PM, Father got hungry. Searching for sandwich fixings in the kitchen, he found a bottle of Jim Beam bourbon. Then he found a fresh half gallon of Egg-Nog, which he enjoyed with the bourbon. While searching for bread to make the ham sandwich, he found two “Lux Laundry Soap Flake” boxes with a dish towel in each one. Then by chance, he discovered the food coloring. This gave him an idea for our sad little tree.

I awoke with a start. The sun was shining on my face, which meant I was late for school. I ran into the living room and was stopped in my tracks.

Our formally green tree was now flocked in thick pink snow, as were the curtains, the fireplace mantel, two chairs, the coffee table, and my father, who lay on the couch, passed out, with a half-eaten ham sandwich on his chest. My Mother sat a few feet away, sipping her coffee and smoking a Winston; my Louisville slugger lay on her lap. I was reluctant to approach her, but I had to know.

I timidly put my hand on her shoulder and asked, “Mom, is Dad going to be alright?” She took a sip of coffee and a drag from her ciggie and said, “well, for right now, he will be, but after he wakes up, who knows.”

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This Will Be A Little Uncomfortable


The latest in the battery of tests after my spine surgery is called EMG or Electromyography, as it’s known in medical circles. My surgeon said there may be a few more, but he didn’t want to worry me because everything involves needles and pain.

After the surgery on August 31st, I’ve been dragging my right leg and foot around like the Frankenstein monster, an after-effect that may or may not cure itself. However, my wife said I had it down pat if I wanted to try out for any film parts.

The walker from the hospital was a cheap affair with the tennis balls that kept getting in the way; it was so 1980s, so I purchased one of the new walkers with four wheels, a seat, and hand brakes like the old English bicycles from the 1940s. Now I could obtain a speed of at least 5 mph, and dragging the leg and foot didn’t matter.

The older people on the square seemed impressed and gave me a thumbs up when I whizzed by. Next, I challenged an old lady with a motorized electric scooter to a race and beat her to the stop sign. She was reluctant to part with the $20 bet, so I let it slide and bought her a gin and tonic.

While lying on the exam table, I noticed the medical gown had a pleasant aroma of lavender which helped soothe my nerves.

The young technician said the electrodes might hurt a smidgen and make my muscles react involuntarily. Unfortunately, she was correct; as the electricity increased, I jumped around like a frog in a 7th-grade science class hooked up to a 24-volt battery. However, the pain wasn’t too bad because I had taken a 50 mg tablet of Tramadol before the visit, so I was a bit loopy and perhaps more compliant than I should have been.

After twenty minutes of shocking me into submission, she unhooked me and said the Doctor would be in shortly to administer the needle test.

” He’s going to stick needles into me?” I asked.

No one said anything about needles; by now, after 3 years of operations and cancer, I should be used to needles; but I am not.

The young Doctor came in, asked me a series of questions about my spine surgery, then said, ” well, let’s get this over with.” How comforting.

I looked him dead in his highly educated eyes and asked, ” is this going to be a bit uncomfortable,, or will it hurt like Hell?” “Oh, it’s going to hurt like Hell,” he said. At least he was honest.

The first needle was about 6 inches long and went into my calf. It didn’t hurt too bad; the second hurt like hell, the third even worse, and by the time he stuck me with the last one in my lower back, I was telling him I would give him a hundred bucks to stop. Obviously, he doesn’t need the money.

He called my wife Maureen into the exam room and told her everything because she is a nurse and won’t forget. They did their “secret medical handshake,” and we went home.

I got a message from the surgeon’s office this morning that I need to come in next week for some more tests that involve needles and other machines.

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Who You Gonna Call?


When the juvenile name-calling has stopped, and the fossilized Republicans gather in their lyre to consider their candidate, who do they have? Trump or DeSantis? That’s it, kiddies. No one left with enough charisma to hold up to being a candidate. Biden can’t run because of a brain malfunction, and Hillary is so damn evil not even a Democrat would vote for her. So, Mr. Hollywood, Gavin Newsome is their only hope.

Trump’s already declared his intentions with a great speech. Instead, whether we like him or not, DeSantis will most likely issue a statement within a few days.

Trump has the bulldog tenacity and sharpest teeth, but DeSantis has the second coming of the “ghostly Kennedy family” working for him, even though he is a conservative. It’s damn right scary. The only thing missing is the compound at Hyannisport and loading up the Mafia with cash.

McConnell is a disgrace, and McCarthy is likely to bumble-dumble all he attempts, even though he has a very nice haircut. Let us hope he has the balls to have Pelosi removed from the building by the Capitol Police. She deserves no better.

I’m going to Half Price Books and Barnes and Noble and load up. At least reading good books will keep my mind off of this clown show.

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Camelot 2.0


As a kid, I remember reading Life and Look Magazine about the new Camelot and the youthful president and his family that occupied that white castle. Every woman on the street wore her hair like Jackie.

The Kennedy family was the national portrait of the nation; the youngest man ever to serve as president, rich and with a beautiful wife, and kids, it was almost like a Norman Rockwell painting. Life, Look and Newsweek magazines could report on nothing else.

Gone was the old bald-headed soldier and frumpy wife, FDR, and Trueman was but a memory, and the world had changed in the blink of an eye. The Cold War with Russia was running full speed as was the race for dominance of outer space. We were headed for the moon within the decade; and by damn he kept his word, even though he was not there to share the jubilance. The world was eaten up with The Kennedy family.

Enter 44-year-old Ron and Casey DeSantis and their three beautiful children. You could say “Camelot 2.0” has arrived, but DeSantis is a Republican, as Kennedy probably would have been if he were governing today. I wonder if DeSantis has checked on the availability of the old Kenndey family yacht.?

The Republicans need to huddle and consider this one. Lightning can strike twice and Camelot 2.0 might not be a bad idea.

The current president will soon be cabbage soup and Trump will turn eighty in office, so old does not make one the best candidate. Pelosi will be president within a year, and that was the plan from the get-go.

The poor Republicans are stuck in political Hell and can’t find the ladder.

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“Remember The Good old Days?”


Now I’m sounding like my grandfather ” remember the good ole day’s” for whatever point he was trying to make. Now I am him.

Remember the good old days when people actually took the time to set before a keyboard and answer your emails instead of using one word or a stupid little picture of a beer or a heart or some other useless bullshit like that.

I send a lengthy email to a few friends of mine. Nothing that was a novella or a short story, just some questions, and recollections. What did I receive, ” an emoji and “sent on my iPhone” I almost had a stroke. I spent thirty minutes composing an easily readable, edited, and entertaining email, and I get a thumbs-up crap from a smart-ass phone.

No more; I will send one word or a cute little picture and let them figure it out.

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When Baseball Was A Kids Game


The padlock on the gate to the baseball diamond would have taken a welding torch to remove, and the metal sign attached to the fence above spelled doom for our summer of pickup baseball games. The sign read, “The Forest Park Baseball Facility is closed to public play. Only organized teams will have use of the diamonds. Call for times and additional rules. JE-74428

 What is this? Our neighborhood team has been playing on these two fields since we were six, roughly 1956 until now. This dirt and grass are hallowed ground, and we had laid claim to it years ago. This was our land and we will fight for it. Damn the Parks and Recreation Department; a bunch of fat old men sitting behind desks.

After a brief discussion, we agreed on, and did what any nine or ten-year-old pack of boys would do; we climbed the fence and started our game.

 Thirty minutes into our play, two Parks and Recreation men chased us off the field. We didn’t take them seriously until a Police car showed up. The officer was friendly but told us if we did this again, he would haul us downtown, fingerprint us and take a nice picture for the newspaper; we were gone in a flash.

My mother, upon hearing my sad story, which included real tears and wailing, and the possibility that I would be under her feet every day for three months, drove to the Parks and Recreation building and came home with their list of rules. We were desperate, but not as much as she and the other mothers in our neighborhood.

To play baseball, now known as Little League, we need an organized team, a coach, an assistant coach, proper uniforms, and certified safety equipment. The baseball committee will schedule all practices and games with no exceptions. Unfortunately, our neighborhood band of brothers was screwed. Our dad’s worked, and our mothers weren’t about to coach a baseball team, so we went to our mentor and Svengali for guidance, my neighbor, Mr. Mister. He had all the answers.

Mr. Mister read the document and winced, “Looks like they got you by the gonads, boys. We had Little League in California. It wasn’t bad because it evened out the teams by age. I coached a few of the units myself.” Ha! Our problem was solved. Mr. Mister could be our coach. He told us to sit under the Mimosa tree and disappeared into his house. Ten minutes later, he and Mrs. Mister came out with a pitcher of Kool-Aid and a large plate of cookies.

“Here are the rules, fellas,” he said between bites of an oatmeal cookie. “I work at Carswell and don’t get off until 3:00. Mrs. Mister will be your assistant coach and run the show until I get to the ball diamonds. Fred and Ginger, our two Poodles, will be your mascots; no wiggle room on that one.”

He saw the shock on our faces. “Don’t worry, boys; she played in the Air Force women’s league during the war and coached her team to win two championships. She can out-run, out-pitch, and out-hit any of you and has forgotten more about baseball than you mound rats will ever know. Take it or leave it.” We took it.

Mr. Mister found a gold mine of baseball equipment stored on the base. Five years ago, the officers had tried to start a league for their kids, but the brats lost interest. So, as usual with the government, they ordered triple what was needed. Multiple boxes of Rawlings baseballs, shoes with metal cleats, uniforms, caps, and a box of assorted gloves. It was a treasure trove from baseball heaven. The uniforms had the name “Jets” across the front, and the caps sported a USAF insignia. We were hot crap on a china plate. The Air Force was our sponsor, which kept us at arm’s length for their protection.

Our first practice was a rousing success. Mrs. Mister had us shagging balls from every part of the outfield. Holding the bat with one hand, she could put a ball anywhere she wanted with pinpoint accuracy. She corrected some of the boys batting stance and grip and taught Freckled Face Bean how to catch a fly ball like a pro. The team on the adjoining diamond looked like idiots compared to us.

Mr. Mister showed up and immediately took our two pitchers, Skipper and Georgie, to a corner of the outfield and started reworking their pitching technique.

This was the big league, and we became rather full of ourselves within an hour. Mrs. Mister sensed our overstuffed self-evaluation and made us run 20 laps around the field to bring us back to reality. She advised us as we lay on the grass, wheezing and on the verge of death. “This is Little League baseball, and you are nine -year old boys; this isn’t the big leagues, so get over yourselves” She knew how to bust our bubble.   

In June, we won all but two games and were at the top of the heap. Mr. Mister had turned Skipper and Georgie into pitching machines.

Mrs. Mister let it slip one day that her husband used to throw for UCLA back in his college days, something he had failed to tell us, boys.

The gang of hoodlum players from Poly grade school gave us the most trouble. “The Pirates,” and the skull and crossbones were sewn into their jersey. They looked and carried themselves as a group of hard-assed boys from the bowery; their name was a perfect fit. More than a few of the 10-year-old boys smoked ciggies and a few carried switchblades.

Their coach was a chubby sleazy guy that constantly had a cigar in his mouth. He also processed the vocabulary of a one-eyed rummy Pirate. The only thing missing was the peg leg and the Parrot on his shoulder. The boys had been taught the fine arts of cheating and could pull it off because we had one referee, and he was behind home plate.

The first time we played the Pirates, the referee ejected their leading pitcher because of a layer of vaseline under the visor of his cap. The second pitcher had 3-in-1 motor oil on his rag in his back pocket. The third was because the bats they were using had been drilled and filled with pine tar, and the infielders had filed their metal spiked to needles, guaranteed to give any of our boys a nasty injury. Nine and ten-year-old kids don’t think this stuff up. Their coach was a world-class mobster, making the entire team an accomplice. We felt terrible for most of the boys; all they wanted was to play ball, and they got stuck with a little Al Capone for a manager because of their school district. The team was banished from playing for 3 games.

Mr. Mister, our coach, was also an inventor and a world-class engineer that designed jet fighters. He also sent his wife’s two poodles, Fred and Ginger, into the stratosphere with a homemade backyard rocket, so he knew his groceries. He noticed our bats were too long, too heavy, and out of balance for our size. We carried an assortment of old bats from Rawlings, Wilson, and Louisville Sluggers. So he set to work on building the better little league bat.

The folks at Louisville Slugger said he could change the balance, handle and head weight as long as the bat didn’t exceed the approved lengths or carried inserts of any kind to change the weighting.

Mr. Mister sent a redesign for approval and a fat check for $50 per bat. Five bats would arrive if Louisville Sluggers could have them within a week. Finally, we all agreed “The Jets” were about to change little-league baseball.

The new bats arrived the day before our big game with our new nemesis, the “Aces,” the second group of ‘hard guys’ from the Crozier tech area. They were supposed to be nine and ten-year-olds, but a few of them were already shaving and sporting tattoos.

The “Jets” could feel the difference in their new bat’s balance and swings. So Mr. Mister said to line up the wood-burned star towards the top of the bat facing the pitcher; that sweet spot would send that white ball screaming.

The first three batters for the Jets struck out. After that, Ace’s pitcher threw hard and used a slider and a mean curve. He was a long tall knuckle dragging kid.

When the Jets took the field,  Georgie let the Aces get three men on base, two walks, and a bounced line drive off the second baseman. A kid named “Brutus” drilled one over left field and emptied the bases. So the Aces are up by 4. The jets came into the dugout hangdog and hopeless. Freckled Face Bean, in center field, had dropped the ball and then kicked it another 30 feet, trying to retrieve it. Mrs. Mister let him have it with both guns, which were big ones. She was pissed.  

I got a base hit to second. Willy got one to second, which advanced me to third. “Brutus” walked Georgie; the bases were total, and the game was tied. Now the dilemma. Our worst batter, Freckled Face Bean, was next in the rotation. Mrs. Mister pulled him aside for a heart-to-heart and a big hug. He was going for it. The last thing she told him was, “use the sweet spot.”

First pitch and Freckled hit the sweet spot sending the ball over the fence, bouncing onto the street and into the woods. The game was now tied.

Bottom of the ninth, one Jet is on base, and Skipper steps up to the plate. Second swing, the ball soars over the fence into the woods. The ‘Jets win.

We finished the season by playing the ‘Aces’ for the city championship. By that time, the boys in the league were afraid of us. A newspaper clipping of our team and our small trophy is somewhere in a box I hope to find. It was the best year of baseball in my life.

Now we have high-living billionaires playing a kid’s game. It’s all for money and not an ounce for the fun of it.

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Happy Trails Till We Meet Again, But Only For A Little While


Photo by; Gabby Hayes

Tomorrow morning at approximately 7:15 AM, one of the two surgeons assigned to my medical predicament will be slicing into my stomach on his way to my spinal column. This has been a while coming, and alas, the highly anticipated moment has arrived. I have total faith in both surgeons since they are from foreign countries, attended multiple the bet medical schools, and are highly rated in their field.

The first surgeon, (the general surgeon,) and the stomach expert showed me a beautiful 4K video of the actual operation. Stunning color with sharp close-up photography of what one’s insides actually look like. They don’t use scalpels nowadays, but tiny light sabers similar to the ones used in Star Wars. Funny that his nurse is named Leia and the examination room I was in was labeled Exam R2.

Cutting through the viscera and old muscles, the soft pliable pinkish and rose-tinted innards, pulling back guts, tendons, and vital organs, blood veins pulsing with every beat of my 72-year-old heart, tons of escaping blood, and then driving a stainless steel wedge in between my L5 and S1 disk, that is no longer functional and are bone on bone and constantly fighting about who gets to cause me the most pain. He did mention, in passing, that if a blood vessel or artery burst he would be there to repair it, if possible. But, if I do pass on to the “other side” I wouldn’t feel a thing since I will already be halfway there. I told him “I would rather not wake up dead.” He thought that was witty, and giggled a bit.

He assured me the hardware and the tools are made by Craftsman and have a lifetime warranty from Lowes. I exhaled in comfort knowing that bit of information. He also adores Craftsman tools, so we talked a bit about home improvement. Seems he is remodeling his ranch house in Weatherford and forgot to support the main beam which allowed the den to collapse, resulting in the home being razed. Oops!

He congratulated me for not fainting since 99 percent of his patients do when viewing the film. I gave the presentation a 4 popcorn box rating and continued on to the next surgeon’s office.

My second surgeon, the spinal expert is rated so highly in his field, that he is considered a revered legend. The medical people don’t use his real name, but in the circle of surgeons, he’s called “The Spine Man.” It’s all rather James Bondish.

He’s repaired numerous high-profile and talented sports figures including Dac and Tony. It’s said that the first surgeon in his family tree corrected Qusimoto’s condition after the famous Notre Dame debacle, but that’s part of the legend I assume.

He also uses Craftsman tools and parts and showed me a brief presentation on how he will slice me in three or more places and install stainless plates, screws, rods, and spacers into my spinal column around the spacer wedge assisted by the spinal surgeon. They don’t use real bone for splicing anymore, but bone pieces are taken from recent and highly rated cadavers. He assured me not to worry, the cadaver looked a bit like me and didn’t object to the donation. That’s a good thing, I don’t want to wake up to ” It’s alive!” screaming in the operating room.

The question of years of practice came up and he told me he got his start at ten years old repairing mopeds and motors so he gained expertise early on with repositioning wiring harness, to accommodate nuts, bolts, and screws. Another good thing to know.

I will likely not be able to write on my blog since I will be as doped up as a San Francisco street person for a few days, then in excruciating pain which will require more drugs. I will not be in any state of mind to write about subjects that will surely offend every one of my readers and friends. My wife says I cannot have my laptop until I am reasonably sane again.

All kidding aside, I have complete faith in my surgeon’s skill and the care of the nurses and staff at Medical City Fort Worth. After all, it’s God’s gifted hands working through these two blessed surgeons.

Let’s hope all ends well and I’ll see you on down the trail in a short while. Happy Trails until we meet again.

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When Artist Interpretation Takes Over Real Life Events


Odd, yet typical, our sacred F.B.I., now fodder for the news sites, escorted one of their own out of their Washington Headquarters. The poor man is knee-deep in the cover-up of the Hunter laptop and thinks that by resigning, he will be above prosecution. He may be, but the agency and the D.O.J. are so marginalized they have to start leading people to the gallows, and he is a good one to begin the scheduled executions.

That darling little black, Lesbian, immigrant moron press reader, spouting from her prepared book of B.S., says Americans that support Trump, Christianity, Conservatism, or common sense, are Facisest? So the leftist has a new ” call to arms” just before the mid-term elections. ” Fires and Facisist and Riots. Oh My!” I doubt president Poopy-Pants remembers saying the same thing a few days ago. It’s her job to remind us.

A crazed, shaved head, hoodie-wearing mentally-addled radical is leading Dr. Oz in the polls? How can this be? Oz, a highly educated physician, and a conservative man, is the clear choice of reasonable voters, yet this freak of nature is likely to win. He is almost as bad as Biden in putting together two sentences that make sense.

Have we heard enough about J-Lo and her new husband Affleck yet? They are stealing the spotlight from the Kardashians. So look for an uptick in subversive sluttish behavior from the “Clan of Kardashian soon.” Young women all over the country are having withdrawal symptoms.

N.A.S.A. spends billions on a one-time use rocket, precisely as we did in 1968, to send an orbiter around the moon. I assume to see if it’s safe to land there again. The Aliens that the rock group “The Byrds” warned us of many decades ago actually told us not to come back. More than a few astronauts have attested to this confrontation at a campfire, along with some Vodka-laced Tang. The problem is that we must file the paperwork and close on the property before the Chinese beat us to the title company. The C.C.P. has a few robotic surveyors staking and subdividing the property. So why are Space X and its better quality reusable rockets not being used? N.A.S.A. has good friends in congress, and to Washington, Elon Musk is the most intelligent and dangerous man on the planet; what’s a few trillion here and a few more there? Soon, we’re talking “real money.”

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While New York Burns And Criminals Run Rampant, Migrants Get Free Phones, Food, Supplies, and Healthcare ( quote taken from the website American Greatness)


If you’re a Mexican or a Latin American from any country south of Mexico, and Gregg Abbott sends your worthless river-wading ass to New York on his new bus line, then you are in luck.

Line up at the nearest hospital, and tell them your name is Juan. You are here because of political persecution and that nasty old Texas governor.

He transported you here on a bus with no wi-fi and movies in Spanish. So now you tell them you are broke, have no place to stay, and are infected with diseases we don’t have in the United States.

Here is what will happen:

First, you will be treated for your medical conditions, Covid 19 through 55, tuberculosis, Cholera, AIDS, polio, Monkey Pox, Racoon Flu, the Wuhan plague, the south American running shits, and the list goes on. All of this will, of course, be free, then you will get a new iPhone with the best camera and face time so you can constantly show your friends back in south American hell that you have reached Nirvana. Then, there will be a visa card with who knows how much Biden money loaded, free food and daily supplies, and a room at the Waldorf Astoria hotel until your newly remodeled apartment can be completed.

It doesn’t matter that you are a criminal, a drug dealing mule, a rapist, or a serial killer; everybody gets the same stuff for free. 99 percent of the illegals are young males. All New York gangs will give a “job fair” at Madison Square Garden in a few days. Just imagine, within a week, you will be robbing and shooting people with your own 9 mm handgun, and no one will do a damn thing about it. You have landed your balloon in Oz.

The homeless veteran, recently unemployed, or mentally ill young person living under a tarp gets no medical treatment, no free food, no free money, no clean bathroom with toothpaste and toilet paper, and no room at the most excellent hotels in New York. He or she is expendable. An American citizen that at some time in their life had a job, a home, a family and paid thousands in taxes to our corrupt government. To the city of New York, you are as worthless as a street rat. The mayor of New York, a black man, and a former policeman may be as racist as any man in this country. His close second would be mayor Beatalguese in Chicago.

A moron with the brain power of a central park pigeon. How doe’s God Almighty let people like him into positions of power that have the potential to ruin an entire city? It has nothing to do with helping the poor people of South America; it has everything to do with future votes for the Demoncratic Party.

Governor Abbott is taking donations for bus trips to New York, Chicago, Deleware, and San Fransisco. So let’s keep them wagons rolling. Get along, Lil’ doggies.

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Itchy Spots and Hillary Clinton’s Demonic Shingles


Style my Coonskin Cap with “Dippity Do” and call me Davey Crockett. 2022 isn’t half over, and I get slapped with another surprise.

6 months ago, I had a growing itchy spot on my back. It looked like a spider bite or an irritated mole. My wife, being a senior nurse, said we should keep an eye on it. It grew larger and became a source of irritation. I begged her to cut it off with my razor-sharp Chef Ramsey Ginzu knife, but she is no surgeon and wouldn’t perform the deed.

Do you know how a bear or a Badger scratches against a tree when he has an itchy back? Well, that would be my mode of rubbing the pesky spot.

Door jambs, cedar trees, fence posts, metal displays at Home Depot, anything with a good edge would do. Then, of course, people would stare at me as if I was Autistic, but at 73 years old, who cares?

Yesterday, while working in the yard during a balmy 102 degrees, I had an itching attack and rubbed up against a fence post to relieve the pain. Seems I caused enough damage to form a significant bloody spot on the back of my tee-shirt. When my wife came home from H.E.B., where she attends a 12-step grocery shopping program, she almost fainted when she saw the growing blood spot, figuring I had been hit by a stray bullet being fired at a feral cat or an errant shot from a kid with a new 22 rifle. But, of course, we live in the country, so it’s expected out here. Cats don’t live too long, and kids shoot at anything.

She checked the spot and immediately got on the phone with a local Dermatologist.

Nurses are a secret society, much like the Free Masons. They use secretive trigger words, tattoos, unique jewelry, and intricate handshakes when needed. She got me in to see the Doctor this morning, no questions asked. The sisterhood is strong.

My Dermatologist was a young lady. Pretty as a town dog and full of piss and sterilized vinegar. She raised my shirt and exhaled a slight gasp. I heard it and caught the look between her and my wife; it was not good. I started sweating and palpating.

Her prognosis was a huge-ass mole or alien-induced object that had grown from my back and is now a thing of ugliness and probable impending death. What I didn’t expect was her diagnosis of a severe case of “Shingles” on my back.

“How can that be? I asked; I never had the Chicken Pox or the Monkey Pox.” She replied you don’t have to; it’s a communicable disease that can spread as quickly as Covid 25 or the Kardashians.”

She gave me a few deadening shots in the back with a syringe that looked like the ones we used to vaccinate cattle and cut off the offending growth for a trip to the lab. I almost passed out from the pain. She then took her iPad and dialed Father Frank, our local priest, at “Our Lady of Perpetual Repentance.” He looked at my shingles via the iPad camera and said I may need an immediate exorcism or a good hot bath in Holy Water scrubbed by Nuns using blessed holy soap direct from Italy. My shingles outbreak was an exact artist replica of a laughing “Hillary Clinton.” This Demonic force has a deranged sense of humor.

I told the doc that I was having spine surgery in two weeks, and she said no surgeon in their right mind would touch me because of the infection and the possible demonic possession that could infect the entire surgery staff. She said a prayer, crossed herself and left the room. I should hear back in a few days if I have more cancer or if the Hillary Shingles have taken possession of my deteriorating body. Avoid getting old if you can. At least no limbs or digits have fallen off yet. But there is always tomorrow.

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The Mullet Man Is Back


Mooch

I was shopping in H.E.B. grocery a few days back and ran into my old pal, Mooch. I was cruising over to the wine department via the frozen pizza aisle, Mooch’s favorite cuisine. There he was, pushing a basket full of Paul Newmans and Red Barron pies. The other half of the basket was full of Mountain Dew, Little Debbie snacks, and the family-size container of Metamucil.

I didn’t recognize him right off, the face seemed the same, the overalls, the black tee-shirt, and the white Rockports, but something was severely amiss. Then it hit me; Mooch had a mullet haircut. He looked like the grandfather of Joe Dirt. Where did all of this hair come from? Mooch has the condition that most men his age suffer from; thinning to no hair. I gotta admit, he looked pretty darn redneck, but in a cool way. His hair on top and the sides was stylish and curly, but the back flowed past his shoulders, giving a little flippy doo thing at the end. He looked like a shampoo ad.

” How ya like the haircut buddy” was the first thing out of his mouth. The only thing I could reply was ” you look like Joe Dirt, in that movie about the moron that drives a Dodge Hemi.”

” Yep, that’s me, little buddy,” he says. “Got a 1970 Charger out there in the parking lot. The bitch has a full-blown 440 Hemi, positive traction rear end, cheater slicks, Goodyear Red line tires, glass-pack mufflers, and a Hurst four speed stick shift with a skull shift knob; got a big box of 8-track tapes sitting in the back seat for tuneage. I got her up to 140 mph yesterday on the Chisolm Parkway over in Fort Worth. A fuzz tried to catch me but gave up.”

I wished him luck in his new lifestyle and continued on with my shopping. He exited the store in front of me and I watched him as he loaded his booty into the trunk of his bright red Dodge Hemi. As he bent over, his mullet wig fell off. He put it back on and burned rubber as he exited the parking lot.

The good old 70s. I don’t miss them as I got into my 2008 Honda CRV.

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A Monday Morning Rant From The Cactus Patch


Elon Musk admits to being on the high side of Autism. He also sees world situations in a way that 99 percent of us do not. So how is it that he is the wealthiest person on the planet? Not by accident or insider trading.

Yesterday, he remarked that the moronic Brittney Griner should serve her time in a Russian prison. She is known and praised as an American-hating, pot-smoking lesbian that makes millions playing basketball in Russia and owns a home on the outskirts of Moscow. She got her ass in a big crack, and now she wants Biden’s cavalry to ride in and whisk her home. Musk is right about one thing, if Biden makes the trade for some Russian criminal arms dealer to get her home, then every American locked up for the exact crime she committed should be released, and their charges dropped.

The likes of Fox News are hyping that the final and complete report on Hunter Biden’s salacious life as a traitor, drug abuser, con man, and pervert is due any minute. The blonde news girls, the ones with the dark stripe down the middle of their hairline, are standing by to give us the skinny on the corrupt first family. There will be nothing there. He will not be incriminated for fear that his father was knee-deep in the same muck his perv son was. The public will exhale and go on about their daily lives, just like we did in the 1950s when Rock Hudsons wedding pictures were plastered all over Hollywood news stands. Good ole Rock, what a man’s man he was; at least Doris Day thought so.

Governor Abbott’s Texas Express is dropping off illegals in New York faster than a shuttle bus at a Yankee’s game. The poor imbecilic mayor is begging Washington for intervention. “Send in the National Guard or the Marines,” we need help and some more Biden cash. Our homeless people have to share their cardboard boxes with these people from South Texas. The local criminals and BLM are up in arms because now the illegals are getting the free shit they’ve been getting. ” This ain’t fair, man, now we gotta start robbing more convenience stores, and I need a new iPhone and another Glock,” said one hoodlum to CBS news. he snatched the news girl’s purse and took off.

Chris Pratt, our favorite Velociraptor trainer, and T Rex killer, told Hollywood to buzz off regarding his new movie. He likes shooting large guns, killing terrorists and commies, and exposing the white underbelly of the CIA. Pratt has made a lot of dough from the Dino’s. It’s called “screw you” money. JK Rowling is another controversial and wealthier person than Pratt that has told the trans community to buzz off. But she has more money than Bubba Gump, so she uses more expletives. All that cash for writing children’s books, back when kids actually read real books printed on paper. She got in on the deal early on.

Now that the dorky Pete Davidson has escaped from Kim Kardashian, could he arrange for her and the entire Kardashian strain to be kidnapped and held on a hidden island for at least 30 years, so we don’t have to read about them or see their faces on television every day of our lives? He would be doing humanity a favor. He should probably include her ex-drug-dealing husband to join them in exile. With all this hoop-la about banning Pit Bulls, I say let’s start with the Kardashians.

Didn’t you love Nancy Pelosi’s little girlhood ditty about digging holes in beach sand to reach China? She was in Japan, a country so close to China that it could also be reached by a deep hole in the sand. The Japanese officials looked puzzled, if not offended, as she made another one of her flying hands word salad gibberish speeches. This is the “thing” that would become president if Biden bites it. Keep that in mind when you wish he would stay in his basement in Deleware watching Jill make her wardrobe out of curtain material from the local Walmart and helping Hunter design artistically beautiful crack pipes for distribution in the wokie cities. But, the obvious may not be the best solution.

So Ellen’s old squeeze, Ann Heche, drives around Los Angeles with a bottle of vodka in her cup holder, a bottle of Ripple in her lap, and crashes into a local citizen’s home, destroying the poor lady’s house and her meager belongings. Poor Ann is toasted up a bit and was most likely drunk as a wino on skid row. But she can’t seem to let that “Ellen” thing go. The old gunslinger, Alec Baldwin, is praising Ann for her courage when he should be organizing his buds to rebuild the poor lady’s burned-out home. A 12.5 earthquake in LA would be nice; any time now.

Mitch and his boys better get their country club asses in full war mode. The cheating for the mid-terms is in full swing. If the Repubs had run stronger candidates in Georgia, this entire collapse of Western civilization would not be happening. Someone slip this incompetent fossil a mickey in his scotch.

I probably have said too much and offended half the world, but it’s my blog, it’s Monday, it’s hot in Texas, and I am old and pissed off most of the time.

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John Steinbeck and His Eden


As a ten-year-old, I had no business reading “The Grapes of Wrath,” but my Aunt Norma thought I should discover more than Mark Twain. Her foresight gave me a vision beyond my years.

I learned to read between six and seven. I started school later because my birthday fell beyond the cut-off date. So my Mother and aunt ensured I would be ahead of my class when I entered first grade. I was at least two stages ahead in reading and writing but woefully ignorant of math, my most hated subject. Fun With Dick and Jane were books written for childish idiots. I yearned for more. My young brain was afire.

I’ve read all of John Steinbeck’s books except for ” East of Eden,” which I have almost completed. It’s supposedly autobiographical about his family, the Hamiltons, who were farmers outside of Salinas, California. There was a movie of the book made in the 1950s starring James Dean. It was a disastrous attempt, and Steinbeck deplored the film. I could hardly watch it.

I am a rabid reader and follower of Larry McMurtry, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, and Thomas Wolfe, but good Lord, this book, this blessed and talented man, John Steinbeck, may have written the best novel I have read to date. Its time is old and takes place in the late 1800s into the first world war, and if you know nothing of history, this book will teach you enough to not sound stupid at a cocktail party, which is now called a wine tasting or some other hip gathering. Most young folks nowadays don’t read, so you may be considered a god or a fumbling old fool. The young are not impressed easily.

If you have time, a rainy day brings boredom, or you may simply want to improve your life, read this book and learn from a master of American literature.

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Rocky Mountain High In Colorado Springs


Heading to the Market! Photo by Ken Kesey

This past Saturday, while visiting my wife’s lovely Daughter, husband, and her young family in Colorado Springs, we visited the Old Town Colorado Farmers Market in the original 1800s village of Colorado Springs. It is the happening place to be if you are an aficionado or an original member of the 1960s. My wife and I are both, so we were looking forward to taking a time machine back to the days of innocence and peace.

A beautiful day; the weather was in the low 70s, sunny and bright, and the scents of fresh organic produce, fragrant honey, extravagant lemonade, and Rocky Mountain High pot floated through the park. Sunshine was on our shoulders and flowers in our hair. I thought I spied John Denver strumming his Martin guitar, but then, remembered he has been dead for a while now, thanks to not checking his fuel gauge on his plane.

Young families with passels of little kids, every breed of dog imaginable, and I believe that every old hippie that came to Colorado Springs in the 60s never left. Grandmas with dreadlocks, granny dresses, and boobs hanging south to their knees were escorted by their husbands that resembled Rip Van Winkle more than a modern-era man. I thought we were at a “reproduction” of Woodstock. One cool guy may be the twin of the late Joe Cocker, down to the cowboy boots and the tye-dye tee shirt, while another was a ringer for Arlo Guthrie. It was a fantastic trip; my wife and I were stone-cold sober, so that made it even more surreal.

Tents with vendors selling “Colorado Eco Hip Friendly Bee Honey,” “Homemade and Cosmic Blessed Hemp Jelly,” “Granny Sunshines Fresh Baked Love Buns,” ” Hip Harry’s Secret Tomatoes,” and so on. A few booths were original and had quite a queue: “Madam Gina’s Personal Physcriatic Help-$20 for ten minutes.” Another was “Personal Weed Advice.” With all the different varieties, one could, if not careful, might choose a lousy bag and wake up in hell.

The only thing that did worry me was the number of young folks wearing backpacks. Men and women seemed to be carrying all their belongings in a variety of fashionable packs; maybe in case, they were called on a long-distance personal quest at the last minute.

What did those bags include? I am guessing they would be some “smart water,” “an Apple Laptop and iPhone ( required of the hipsters),” some high-quality weed, an extra pair of Doc Martin sandals, maybe a few organic pieces of fruit, and a flash drive containing the soundtrack from Woodstock or Dave Mathews. Of course, I could be wrong.

After the market, we went to the exquisite “Broadmoor Hotel.” This place has gardens equal to those of biblical Eden. Beautiful trees, flowers, and bushes that would never be found in Texas, and enough grounds staff to ensure it all stayed in perfect cosmic alignment.

Beautiful people strolling the sacred grounds with their Gucci sweaters tied around their shoulders and their Tacova boots shined to perfection. The reflection from their Rolex watches would have blinded me if not for my $10.00 pair of gas station sunglasses. This is how the other half of the country lives at a grand a night for a bed and bathroom. If I had a tin cup and a sign, I would have begged for enough money to pay for the trip.

The lobby reminded me of Fort Worth’s Amon Carter Museum. Fredrick Remmington’s famous oil paintings hung on every wall. There were easily ten million bucks in original western art in that lobby. I was in a trance.

It was a great trip to see the family, with good food, and perfect weather. We look forward to going back and having to wear a jacket.

It will be 104 degrees in Granbury today. I think God has a sense of humor and may have chosen Texas for his new “weather Hell” because of all the Californians moving here. Nothing looks funnier than a toasted Wokie.

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A Friday Rant From The Cactus Patch That is Visiting in Colorado for a few days !


Well oil my musket, wipe my ass and call me Davey Crockett. Things in the Cactus Patch are so off-kilter I can’t walk straight without a good shot of Jameson Irish Whiskey.

Now the whales are pissed off and jumping onto boats. The boat was owned by a Democrat Greenpeace Pot Smoking Transgendered Fishing Captain attempting to coax a throng of weekend mariners to join his cause. The whale was obviously a conservative and was enraged by the rainbow flag flown aftward and the “Little Mermaid” sticker on the hull. Let’s hope the Great White Sharks off Lon-gilend don’t catch on.

If Martha Stewert went to prison for insider trading, why isn’t Pelosi, her husband, and most of the congress receiving the same treatment? The only reason she is still alive is that she has enough money to buy black market spare organs to keep her going. If she farted, her face would explode.

Merrick Garland is going to prosecute Trump? WTF? How about he starts with Hunter Biden, his wife, his father, his hookers, and then all the Antifa and BLM trash that ruined Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, and other smaller cities? Garland is a worthless human unit that uses Dippity Do on his hair and hasn’t had a good bowel movement in years.

Biden releases another 20 million barrels of oil from our national reserve. Who is he selling it to this time? He will try and take a victory lap, but will likely be held up by Jill and the Secret Service. The corpse doesn’t know what planet he is on. This is the result of putting an old man that has shit for brains in office. Although Scarlett O’Hara wore her dress made from her curtains better than Jill does.

Biden’s machine is in full swing. The cute little Barbie black lesbian is now a historian. She and her lemmings now tout that he is the new Winston Churchill. At 79 years old, Mr. Churchhill knew his time was up. Health and mental issues had rendered him a shell of the ferocious lion-hearted warrior he was in the 1940s. Biden is only an 80-year-old feeble man with a small quadrant of his brain that occasionally functions. Don’t insult the world by comparing Biden to Churchill. It’s sacrilege.

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When Larry McMurtry Had Texas In His Back Pocket


Over the past few years, I’ve harbored two “bucket-list” items to fulfill before I reach room temperature. One was to visit Marfa, Texas, the self-proclaimed and pompous art nouveau hub of Texas and the holy ground where the movie “Giant” was filmed. I envisioned a hip desert town with fine food, good booze, and every inhabitant wearing Justin boots. I got a dusty, dirty, ugly little town with two nice hotels and no decent food.

My Marfa bubble was busted within thirty minutes of entering the town. I would have suffered a breakdown or a medical event, but my wife held me together until we made it back to Alpine, packed our gear, and headed back to Granbury.

The second and most anticipated bucket item was a visit to Archer City, Texas, the hometown of our revered Texas Nobel Laureate, Larry McMurtry. The small town boy knocked William Travis and Stephen F. Austin of the “favorite son” list.

Mo and I were headed to Colorado Springs to visit her daughter and family, so stopping in Archer City to visit McMurtry’s hallowed book store ” Booked Up” would make the trip an event to remember. This bubble was more significant than the one I had for Marfa. If not for Hemingway and Steinbeck, there would have been no McMurtry. If not for McMurtry, there would not be other great writers that learned from him.

The website said the store is open for business. It wasn’t and had not been for a while. I peeked through the dusty glass front door, and some autographed books were displayed on a table, where they once had been for sale. I was about as hang-dog as a man can get.

A fellow pushing his garbage bin to the street was helpful and filled us in on the particulars. It’s a good yarn but could also be a steaming pile. Small towns run on gossip, rumors, and legends.

The old man leaned on his trash bin, got close to the window where my wife sat, and let her rip.

When McMurtry passed on, he left his two town bookstores, his typewriter, and 30,000 rare books to the lady that ran them for years; Khristal Collins. His wife Norma Fay and his writing partner Diana Ossana got the cash. His estate hired a hot-shot New York book bow-tie-wearing appraiser to give the books a value. It seems the fellow opened a few books and some stock certificates fell out, then some more books and more certificates hit the floor. Now, he had to go through every book in both stores. It may take years. Let’s hope his wife checked their mattress.

In the literary world, the man is not a mere mortal, except that he did pass away at home a while back, so I was disappointed that a writer of his Homeric wizardry could actually expire.

I can imagine Larry sitting on his front veranda in the late afternoon, enjoying a good glass of scotch while contemplating his next book about the fictitious town of Thalia, Texas, and he fades with the setting sun.

When and If the Booked Up store re-opens, I will make the trip back to Archer City. I’m still hoping to meet Sonny, Duane, and Jacy.

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Larry McMurtry Made Me Crazy


This coming Wednesday, July 27th, my wife and I are driving to Colorado Springs to visit her daughter and family. New transplants from Fort Worth, Texas to the liberal and hip state of legal pot and “mile-high-hipsters.” We are making a bucket list stop along the way to the small Texas town of Archer City.

My wife Mo, is accomodating, but she thinks the head injury I suffered two years ago has effected my mental priorities. “What the hell is an Archer City?” she asked. I can’t explain without choking up. How can a writer explain the reverance of visiting the holy grail of litature. I get so excited, I piss my pants a bit, but that’s because I am 73 years old and cancer did a whammy on me.

For the illiterate non-book readers who are followers of my blog, Archer City is the hometown, and for 70 years, the home to one of the greatest authors in American literature; Larry McMurtry.

Born, raised, and recently died there, he is the fair-haired favorite son that put this one red-light town on the map. A true son of Texas that accepted his many awards in jeans and Justin boots. He may have lived in New York City for a spell, but he got back to Texas as soon as he could. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his book “Lonesome Dove” in 1986. A good ole boy from hicksville Texas writing about the famous cattle drive inspired by Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, both legendary and larger than life figures in the old west; bet it pissed those Swedes off but good.

Like many great novelist, he was an educater at North Texas State and Rice University; but I don’t hold that against him. He wrote on a portable typewriter and didn’t own a computer or a cell phone. He could play the rube with the toothpick in his teeth then write an essay that would bring tears to a grown mans eye. He also kept a rebelious streak in his back pocket as he was one of the Merry Pranksters along with Ken Kesey and his Acid Test for a few days when the circus stopped at his home in Houston. He said the LSD made him a tad anxious and preferred whiskey. For reasons unknown, in his last years, he married Ken Keseys widow and moved her to Archer City.

One of his novels, “The Last Picture Show” was a Peter Bogdonovich movie that raised a public ruckus in 1971 for the nudity and taboo liason between a high school football player an the coaches wife. A young Cybil Shepard even showed her little titties in a swimming pool scene. Good Lord.

The cast of characters in his books was drawn from the townspeople he grew up with and even with the slightest of name changes, they were easily recognized and plenty pissed until the movie and books put their one horse town on the tourist map. The movie was shot in black and white and filmed in a ramshackle Archer City which took on the 1950 look and name of “Thalia, Texas.”

As in many of his books, the places folks spent their time was at the Pool Hall, The Kwik Shack, The Movie Theater and the Dairy Queen. I plan to visit his book store, “Booked Up,” and of course have a burger and a shake at the famous Dairy Queen. One more thing striked off my bucket list. Who knows; I might see Jacy and Duane eating a chicken fried.

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