Month: October 2023

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The Final Gasp Of Hallows Eve


Eddie the Raven

Tis almost over, the night of ghouls, Ravens, and goblins, beggers of sweets, impersonators of the great, the terrible, and the incorrigible loose souls. I have made it through another Halloween and haven’t seen or heard anything about Taylor Swift. Thank the Lord she didn’t show up at the Rangers versus the Diamondbacks game.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—

            Only this and nothing more.”

Until next year, I bid you adieu.

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The Boys and Girls of Summer


On the third day of summer vacation, the euphoria of no school for three months had lost its sparkle. Our gang of sweaty-smelly boys spent most of the day sitting under our neighbor, the Mister’s Mimosa tree, drinking grape Kool-Aid and eating home-baked oatmeal cookies baked by our mom-mentor, Mrs. Mister. Saturday couldn’t get here fast enough; that was the first day of official practice for our second-year little league team, “The Jets.”

This year, as a group, by a special vote in Skipper’s garage, we decided to let Cheryl and Ann play on the team, putting Freckeled Face Bean and Georgey on the bench for a few innings. Mr. and Mrs. Mister were in agreement; the girls were better at catching fly balls. In 1957, teams didn’t award participation trophies; it was all about winning the game. Cheryl played some last season, and we put Ann through the try-out wringer at recess. and she passed every test, so we will be the first and only team in the Fort Worth Little League system to have two girls on a boy’s team. We “broke on through to the other side” and didn’t know what we had done. I believe our assistant coach, Mrs. Mister, was secretly proud, being a former Air Force officer and ball player herself.

Saturday arrived, and our practice time on the diamonds was at noon, right when it was cooking like a griddle at a balmy 98 degrees. Mr. Mister worked with our two pitchers, and Mrs. Mister took the rest of us heathens to the field, hitting flys and grounders and yelling at us when we messed up. Ann and Cheryl caught every fly ball, and me, at shortstop, only missed two grounders and tosses to first. It was going to be a good season. Georgy and Bean sat on the bench, sulking. I guess I would, too, if I lost my spot to a girl. We were kids, but back then, even boys were a bit manly men, only smaller.

After practice, Mr. Mister told us that the coach from the Trimble Tech area team had been spying on us, hiding behind the concession stand and taking notes. It was a known fact that any team from that area of Fort Worth would be known as ” the hard guys.” We figured he was scouting out whose legs to break if they caught any of us out of our neighborhood and alone.

Our first game was a week later, and damn if it wasn’t the “hard guys” team. We watched from our dugout as they warmed up, fearing the worst. The pitcher had a five-o’clock shadow and arms so long that he left knuckle furrows in the infield dirt. Most of their team was a head taller than us and had to be old enough to drive. These guys can’t be Little League? Many had likely spent time at the Dope Farm or jail; they had all the markings of experienced delinquents. Their coach was a walking mugshot. We were doomed and knew it.

Bottom of the seventh, and we were down by two runs. Skipper was throwing his hardest and slipping in some calculated peppered pitches Mr. Mister had taught him. The “hard guys” weren’t even swinging hard, and all their balls went to the fence line and a few over it.

Our coach, Mr. Mister, suspected something for some reason and asked the umpire to examine their bats. The umpire was equally suspicious, so he grabbed a few of their bats, pulled a pen knife from his pocket, dug out a wad of wood filler, and emptied four large ball bearings into his hand. The little mobsters were using fixed bats. He then checked their cleats and found all of them to have been filed to a sharp edge. He confiscated their bats and shoes, making them play in sneakers or barefoot. He gave them a beat-up Rawlings bat to use. They were caught, and the crowd of parents booed them into the next county. After that, they couldn’t buy a ball past second base, and we scored three runs and beat them. Strike one up for the good guys. Mrs. Mister informed us that their team had been dissolved a few days later, and the players were suspended. Their coach was likely on his way back to Sing-Sing.

The rest of our season was memorable. Our two girls got a write-up in the paper, along with a cute picture. Skipper got bonked in the forehead and missed four games, and Freckled Face Bean caught a case of Polio and was out for the season but expected to make a full recovery. We missed the championship by two games, but hey, it was a great season.

The Misters gave the team a backyard cookout a few days before school started. Parents, siblings, dogs, and the whole shebang crowded into their backyard. At the end of the party, with fireflies drifting around us in the summer evening, our team gathered in a circle for a moment of recollection. We had been so wrapped up in months of baseball no one noticed that we all had changed. The school fat was gone, replaced with dark suntans and sinewy arms and legs. Baseball was our game, America’s game. At that brief moment, as we stood in the dark, silent, we were the boys and girls of summer.

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Bwana of The San Saba


Strange, how much he looks like Teddy Roosevelt

A good friend is an avid hunter of deer and other edible wildlife. His domain is Texas, so this story is about him. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

The San Saba, Texas plains and rocky hills are as rough and desolate as any place in the state. The Great White Hunter prefers them that way. This harsh country is home to the skittish and elusive Texas white-tail deer, his favored game. He has taken many in the twenty years he has hunted this land, and the best are mounted on the walls of his private trophy room. Four walls of antlered Deer, all with a startled look on their faces.

A hot November day of hunting in the rocks and brush has yielded no Deer, but The Great White Hunter did bag three Squirrels, a Chipmunk, a Cottontail Rabbit, a large Rattlesnake, and four Blue Catfish from a sparkling creek. Supper tonight will be tasty. Maurice, his faithful guide, armorer, and camp cook, knows how to prepare wild game perfectly. Squirrel on a Mesquite stick is his signature dish. Add some fire-grilled Catfish, corn on the cob, pan-fried taters, and cold Lone Star beer, and it’s a campsite dish that would make Martha Stewart’s mouth water.

Maurice comes from East Africa, and it’s common to refer to a white man hunter as “Bwana,” a term for a boss or an important fellow. The hunter cringes when Maurice uses this address; it reminds him of a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby movie. He prefers “The Great White Hunter.” His fellow members of The Sons of The Alamo Lodge gave him this name decades ago because of the hundreds of pounds of venison he donated to the lodge’s food bank.

After the scrumptious supper, The Great White Hunter takes a constitutional stroll away from camp. Dressed in a tee shirt, safari shorts, and ankle boots, he walks a narrow, dry wash, enjoying the serenity of the Texas dusk. His rifle is left at the campsite, leaning against a Mesquite tree; his Colt pistol rests on a backpack near the fire; he has a Barlow pocket knife in his pant pocket for whittling and cleaning his fingernails. He is, for once, unarmed.

He rounds a bend and comes to a halt. Standing ten feet away is a feral boar. He estimates the size of the porker to be around three- hundred pounds. His tusks are formidable and likely razor-sharp. The pig is in a foul mood and looking for a scrap. There is an Oak tree close enough to climb, but making it to the tree before the pig is doubtful. He pulls the pocket knife from his pants, opens the two-inch blade, and waits for the attack. He stares the porcine monster straight in the eyes; the unafraid boar meets his star, doesn’t flinch, and scrapes the rocky ground with its hind feet. Slobber drips from its mouth; the stench of the animal is overwhelming and smells of death.

The hunter has been in perilous predicaments, but never a scrap as one-sided as this. The pig has a natural advantage; he knows the loser will probably be him and hopes the injuries will be minimal and Maurice can get him to the hospital in San Saba in time. It will be a fight to the death. He chastises himself for leaving his weapon at the camp, which is too far away to call for help.

The peccary makes its move and charges the hunter, but the hunter is swift, jumps straight up, and uses the back of the porker as a springboard to propel himself into a forward somersault, landing behind the pig. The boar turns, gravel and dirt flying as it makes a second frontal assault. The hunter jumps on the back of the hog and rides it like a pony, stabbing it with his pocket knife as the hog runs for the brush. The pig makes it to the brush, and the hunter is dismounted by a low limb. The hog races to the safety of its companions before it expires. The bloodied and torn hunter walks into the camp, where Maurice patches his wounds and offers praise for his bravery. Three shots of George Dickel whiskey help ease the pain. Sitting around the campfire late into the night, Maurice grins and says, ” Bwana did well today, very brave fellow.”

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“There Goe’s The Sun..And I Say”


My son, Wes, lives on Padre Island on the Texas coast. He took this picture of the solar eclipse on Saturday. I couldn’t see it that well from this part of Texas, but as you see, it was perfect viewing at the beach. Gotta love George Harrison.

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Tuesday, October 3rd Update On The Future Saint Swift


Not In My Lifetime, Kiddo!

The Question Everyone Wants To Know…

Doe’s Taylor Swift use Autotune when she talks?

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Opinen’s And Duct Tape Around My Head


The NFL Has Lost What Credibility It Had

There she is, folks, standing with her girlie friends, cheering on her soon-to-be next breakup song inspiration: Travis Kelce, who doesn’t have a clue what he’s latched onto, but now that he has spent serious time with her, he’s fresh meat for the lithe blonde succubus. Who is it I’m taunting? Why it’s that semi-country music, man-hating gal, Saint Taylor Swift. I read on some sort of reliable website that there were ten- thousand of her “Swifty” lemmings praying and lighting religious candles outside the stadium in hopes of a miracle-induced glimpse of the Swift One as she and her entourage of movie brats left the venue. She brought in better ratings than the game, so you can bet that Jerry Jones is calling her for an appearance at his Dallas Plowboys game next week. If there are any more Taylor Swift sightings in the news, I may go into hibernation for the winter.

Chick Filet Is Costing Me A Butt-Load Of Money

Yesterday, while watching the tube, I enjoyed a chicken lettuce wrap from Chickie Filet. I bit down on the supposedly soft morsel and felt a piece of my proper back molar break off. After a visit with my dentist today, I will pay around two grand for a crown made from some new wonder material called Kryptontonium that will be good for at least a century. I asked my dentist why he couldn’t use the cheap stuff since my parking meter is about up. He said I’d have sound molars if I needed to eat in Heaven. He’s about half right.

Craftsman vs. Aftermarket Hardware

When I had my major back surgery over a year ago, my surgeon said he used only Craftsman tools and materials. I was comforted knowing that a brand that has been around for a hundred-plus years would be used on my spine. Screws, plates, cages, and other mysterious materials take to support my spine at L4 and L5. Good ole’ American-made stainless materials. Right? I hope my surgeon didn’t cheap out and use aftermarket materials, but how would I know? A few weeks ago, while attempting to catch a plane, I tripped on DFW’s uneven sidewalks and went down hard. I’m talking bone-jarring, falling like a tree hard. That, and another fall at the Houston airport and then a bone-jarring fishing trip in the Gulf, did my carcass in. Now my hardware has shifted, sprung a screw, or some other failure, and I am looking forward to another cut-and-paste spine surgery. I’m beginning to feel like Dr. Frankenstein’s creation. It’s only Monday, so I’ve got the rest of this week to see what else can go to hell.