Tall Tales and Ripping Yarns from The Great State Of Texas
Author: Phil Strawn
I'm a 7th generation Texan and write about growing up in this great state. Tall tales and ripping yarns are what Texas is about, and I will oblige my readers with these. Most stories are true, some are a total fabrication, and others are a bit of both.
Bugs and Marvin The Martian, courtesy of Mel Blanc
Since childhood, I knew we were not alone in this universe. A steady diet of space movies on channel 11 made a believer out of me. “The Forbidden Planet” with the robot and that hubba-hubba Ann Francis chick, and “Invaders From Mars,” where kidnapped folks had a red glowing jewel drilled into their neck, became zombies, and were sucked into the Martian cave via sand dunes. Those are the two that gave me screaming assed nightmares but piqued my still-forming juvenile imagination into what it is today. Certain that I saw a UFO over the Gulf of Mexico when I was eight years old, a run-in with small grey alien beings when I was abducted from my warm bed, taken aboard a mother ship, and implanted with a device that tracked my life and gave me superior mental powers over my childhood friends. I was hooked like a crappie on a purple people eater jigamajig spinner.
Now, all of these decades later, our slippery when-wet government confirms that the spaceships and little green men are real, and we have many of these crafts in our possession. I am relieved to know my beliefs were correct. The next time I drive through Roswell, New Mexico, which will be next month on our way to Ruidoso for some mountain air and horse racing, I will feel relieved that I was right all along. May the force be with you, and all that goes with it.
White House First Dog Bites 6 Secret Service Agents
” It’s Cocaine Dog”
The Secret Service, after being bitten six times by the new First Dog, confirms the dog found another baggie of the white powder on the front lawn. It appears the First Dog ingested a large quantity of the drugs before going on a biting spree through the president’s private residence. Agent 86 confirms the dog has been spending a lot of his off time with first son, Hunter.
My father, Johnny Strawn, on the left, playing twin fiddles with Bob Wills
In the early fifties, my Father, Johnny Strawn, owned the Sunset Ballroom, just a stone’s throw off Jacksboro Highway in West Fort Worth, Texas. A country fiddle player by profession, he soon realized that trying to play nightly gigs at other clubs and managing his own business didnāt work,Ā so he hired, as his club manager, his childhood running buddy, best friend, and my God Father, Dick Hickman.
Dick and my Father had grown up together in depression era Fort Worth and remained best friends to their last day. Decades later, they often reminisced, over a good glass of scotch, that “they didnāt know they were poor because everyone had the same amount of nothing that they did.ā
Dick, besides being the new manager, was also pulling double duty as the club’s bouncer. A job he deplored but accepted and performed well when required. Being a family man and a peaceful sort, he soon became weary of kicking unruly customer’s rears every night, so my father, in a lapse of good judgment, hired one of the local tough guys to take Dicks place as the official bouncer and security, A mean little cat, that went by the name of āToes Malone.ā If he had another first name, he kept it a secret.
Toe’s was a likable two-bit-north side thug that had experienced one too many run-ins with the Fort Worth mob. The boys in the mob liked him and thought he was a funny guy to be around, so when Toe’s tried to horn in on their action or crossed them in any way, instead of just killing him outright like anyone else, they would shoot, or remove a body part to teach him a lesson.
After a few major discussions in a back ally with his admirers and the loss of an ear, three fingers, and an arm, āToe’sā got his new name.
He didn’t give up being a tough guy.Ā Being the mean little son-of-a-gun that he was, he had the local boot shop install two small pen knife blades into the toes of his Justin cowboy boots.
He was pretty agile for a one-armed cat and could carve you up like a Winn Dixie rib-roast before you knew what happened to you.
No one messed with Toes. He was the original Bad Leroy Brown of the South.
The patrons loved Toes so much that they would ask him to show his little ātoe knivesā to their wives just for laughs. He would gladly hoist his boot up on their table, proudly display his shiny little blades to anyone who asked, and tip a buck or two. The wives, giggling like school girls, would open their pack of Lucky Strikes on his boot tip blades.
He was part of the entertainment, sort of a hoodlum head waiter that would kill you if you complained about anything.
My father said his presence increased business, so he kept Toe’s own despite his reputation. In later years, he admitted that firing Toeās would have likely led to his own early demise.
Toe’s, being a hoodlum to the core, couldnāt help himself and finally crossed the mob boys one too many times. On a cold December night in 1953, out by Crystal Springs Ballroom, they blew him in half with a shotgun blast.
My Father, saddened by the grisly demise of his entertaining employee, was relieved that he didnāt have to fire him.
Toes had no true friends to speak of, so it was that the memorial drew only a sparse gathering of musicians, the very mobsters whose hands bore the stain of his demise, and a handful of patrons from the Sunset.
On top of his casket sat his little knife boots and a nice framed picture of a 10-year-old Toe’s. A very fitting end. And once again, Dick had his old job back.
The Sunset, as the legend goes, was where the famous Roger Miller goosing incident occurred.
Itās been said it happened at Rosas or any number of clubs in Fort Worth, but I have it from two witnesses, my father, and Dick, that it happened at the Sunset.
Roger Miller, one of future āKing of the Roadā fame, grew up around Fort Worth and Oklahoma and, like many stars, struggled many years in the joints before making it big in Nashville. He was worse than a half-assed fiddle player but a promising songwriter, scraping out a living by frequenting the Sunset Ballroom, Rosas, Stella’s, The Crystal Springs Ballroom, or any other club that would let him sing and play for a few bucks.
One August night at the Sunset, he sang a few tunes onstage and tortured his fiddle for the less-than-appreciative crowd. The dance floor was full of sweaty ātummy rubbingā dancers doing their best to ānot pass outā from the oppressive Texas heat that saturated every corner of the un-air-conditioned joint.
An attractive couple took to the floor, the lady in her fitted peddle pushers moving her backside with a careless grace that drew the attention of the young musicians on stage.
She got that jiggling backside near the edge of the stage, and Roger Miller, being the pre-Icky Twerp idiot that he was, couldn’t resist reaching out with his fiddle bow and goosing her tush.
She jumped.. pushed her dance partner away, and slugged him in the nose. Under the influence of numerous whiskey and cokes, the injured fellow stumbled and fell into a table full of visiting mob boys who turned out to see Roger torture his fiddle and sing a few tunes.
The ensuing brawl lasted a good ten minutes, clearing out the club. Dick carried the fighters out by the collar, two at a time. The mob boys āwhooped upā on most everyone within a three-table area, and the rest of the people just whooped each other. The Fort Worth police came in, assessed the situation, sat at the bar, had a free Coke, took their pay-off money, and left.
Roger was banned from playing his fiddle at the Sunset, and soon after that incident, he went on to Nashville and started writing better tunes and working in better joints.
My Mother, fed up with my father’s teetering on the fringe of certain death,Ā finally told him to sell the place or he would be living there by himself.
Dad sold it to Dick, who, after a few months, realized the nightclub business was not for him. He sold it to a steady patron with a questionable reputation, and the club, after becoming an illegal gambling joint in the late fifties, finally ceased to exist and was demolished in the mid-seventies.
Despite its well-deserved reputation, most of the great entertainers did manage to play there; Lefty Frizzle, Marty Robbins, Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys, Bill Boyd and the Cowboy Ramblers, Willie Nelson, The Lightcrust Doughboys, and a long cast of other impressive country music acts.
One Saturday night, a few weeks before Dad sold it to Dick,Ā Bob Wills, and his band had a show in Weatherford, Texas, that was canceled due to bad weather. Not wanting to make the night a complete loss, he stopped at the Sunset on his way back into town. Being good friends with my Dad and his mentor, Bob took the whole band on stage and did a knocked-out impromptu show.Ā Word on the Jacksboro Highway spread fast; within an hour, the place was packed to capacity.Ā I have an old 8×10 black and white picture of Bob andĀ Dad playing twin fiddles on San Antonio Rose. It was a night he was profoundly proud of and, over the years, spoke of it often.
The old place may have carried a less than stellar reputation, but that long demolished building hosted some of the greatest musicians in country music.
It was too hot to play pick-up baseball games unless my buddies and I got to the Forest Park Ball Diamonds before 8 am, and the city pool was closed because of the Polio scare; my mother kept a picture of an iron lung taped to the icebox to remind me what would happen if I disobeyed her orders. Boredom set upon us, we had too much free time on our grimy little hands, so the six of us that comprised our neighborhood coterie did what any gang of young boys would do; we went feral. It was two full months of constant butt-whoopings, loss of cartoon time, and other parental vs child warfare. My buddies and I agreed it was our best summer so far.
Mr. and Mrs. Mister, our next-door neighbors and mentors, attempted to reel us in, which worked for a short while. Mrs. Mister, a wonderful mom substitute who resembled the movie starlet Jane Mansfield, would let us sit under their backyard Mimosa tree. At the same time, she served chocolate chip cookies and Grape Kool-Aid to control our restless young spirits. Fred and Ginger, her twin white Poodles, would join us and beg for cookies. Mr. Mister, when his wife wasn’t looking, would let us have a sip or two of his ice-cold Pearl beer. We were bad assed and nation-wide.
This was the summer we declared war on our school tormenters, the older boys across the tracks known as “the hard guys.” And thanks to Mr. Mister and his military and engineering experience, we successfully implemented a detailed plan and defeated our nemesis. Sidewalk biscuits with implanted cherry bombs and a small Roman Catapult designed by Mr. Mister played a role in the defeat. Instead of feeling remorse for injuring our schoolmates, the battle made us insufferable and meaner, fueling our summer of feral behavior.
Our parents and Mrs. Mister were shocked and bewildered. Fifty or so butt-whoopings with everything from a belt, switch, and a Tupperware pan, didn’t phase me or my gang. The three girls in our neighborhood, our classmates, were all tomboys, and they said we were now “too mean” for them to associate with. Cheryl, our center fielder, the only girl we would allow to play on our team, called us “mean little shits.” Those are pretty sophisticated words from a seven-year-old gal, although we knew some of the good ones we heard from our fathers.
Skipper, or resident math wiz and duly elected gang leader, had the “Hubba-hubba’s” for Cheryl and gave her his tiny Mattel Derringer cap pistol as a sign of affection. He found it on his front porch one morning with a note from her mother that read, ” stay away from my daughter, you mean little shit.” Now we know where her scoffing comments came from. He was crushed, of course, but he was young and felt much better after he blew up Mr. Rogers’s mailbox with a cherry bomb. Firecrackers and high-powered fireworks secretly supplied by Mr. Mister played a big role in our feralivious behavior. The two neighborhood garages that caught fire were blamed on us, and Georgie, with his love of matches and lighter fluid, may have had something to do with those fires, but he wouldn’t admit to it.
My parents started taking Miltowns, an early pill similar to Xanex, and most other parents began drinking more than normal. Mr. Mister was called in to negotiate a truce, but secretly, he was on our side. He felt boys should have the right to cut loose and show their young oats, even though we didn’t have raging hormones, underarms, or pubic hair, which we anxiously awaited.
Our parents had enough of our feral behavior, and one Saturday evening, there was a hot dog party in our backyard. All my gang was there, as were their parents. Ice cream and a cake were served along with burnt wieners, and the Misters were there with Fred and Ginger. It was a downright ambush, the predecessor to the popular “intervention.” Our parents let us know that the next stop for us was “The Dope Farm,” an institution where malcontents and little hoodlums were sent to do time. We knew the stories about the place. It was out of a horror movie, and Father Flannigan wouldn’t be there to save us. It was time to clean up or be locked up doing hard labor and eating maggot-infested gruel. No more baseball, cartoons, or Mrs. Mister’s cookies and Kool-Aid. We huddled, agreed amongst ourselves, and promised our parents we would walk the righteous path of the good child. We did for the most part, but we hid our stash of cherry bombs for the next summer.
The Devil’s oven has descended on our renowned small town of Granbury. It’s hot, so there is no reason to piss and moan. It’s July, so we get over it, mostly.
Every year, the 4th of July weekend brings thousands of folks to the square looking for something they don’t have in Fort Worth, Dallas, Waco, or somewhere in rural Texas. The lake itself is a big draw. It borders downtown, and at least two thousand overloaded pontoon boats and jerk kids on jet-powered crotch rockets, ripping up the water.
Throngs of folks in SUVs and expensive pickup trucks show up and wander around the square, drinking beer in clear plastic cups. A few of the restaurants sell it in pop-up minibars along the streets. Men with a cup of beer in each fist, and women with their cups of white wine, walking, stumbling into shops, buying up everything they can find; great for the merchants, tough on the locals who want to enjoy some of the festivities.
We have a square that is the epitome of the old west. White rock buildings were constructed in the 1800s, with narrow streets and quaint shops. The Paramount television series 1883 was filmed in our town square and the countryside around us. Being voted the best small historic town in the country for four years has much to do with the invasion. I am noticing more young folks now than in years past, and that’s a good thing. The old folks are too tired to walk around in the heat, and they don’t spend much money and tend to only drink one beer if that.
MoMo and I sat at our usual picnic table at the Brew Drinkery on Pearl Street, enjoying a craft beer, some chips, and people-watching. Young folks, and old folks dressed in red-white-and-blue attire, some with hardly any attire, some with too much attire, dogs with clothes, dogs with shoes, big dogs pulling small people around, folks with too many kids to corral, and everyone has a clear plastic cup of beer. Cheers and a happy Fourth of July from Granbury, Texas, and the Cactus Patch.
It will be around 106 to 109 degrees today in Granbury, Texas. MoMo and I are hunkered down in the house, shades closed, and fans running. I will go outside after dark to water my poor plants that are perishing from the heat, and a twenty-mile-per-hour wind, so it feels like a commercial hair dryer. The weather folks on the tube say it will be over one hundred all week. We are doomed.
When Armadillos start drinking iced cold beer, you know it’s hot. We have a house, Finch, nesting her eggs under our metal carport. MoMo is worried that she may get too hot or the eggs might cook, so she wants to buy the little bird a small air-conditioner or a misting machine. I’ll check with the bird tonight to see if she is interested.
In the 1950s, we had a heat wave that lasted all summer. Some folks say 1980 was the worst, but we had AC back in 1980, and in 1955, very few folks had AC; our family had an attic fan and a backyard water hose to spray ourselves with. One of our neighborhood girls put some biscuit dough on the sidewalk, and “boom,” she invented sidewalk biscuits. You couldn’t eat them without breaking a tooth, but they were great for chunking at kids you didn’t care for. Skipper, our resident wiz-kid, devised a weapon using sidewalk biscuits and cherry bombs, a kid’s hand grenade that we used in a battle against “the hard guys,” a group of punks from across the tracks tormented our gang of well-behaved heathen children. We couldn’t go to the Forest Park public pool because our mothers said it was a sure bet that all of us would contract the dreaded Polio virus and our neighborhood would be wiped out, so we were stuck with lawn sprinklers to beat the heat.
My neighbor, and mad scientist, Mr. Mister, purchased an enormous blow-up kiddie pool, filled it with ice he stole home from his employer, Carswell Air Force Base, filled it with his water hose, and ran a tube from an air pump in his garage to the pool, and invented the first “Spa.” Us kids sometimes got to use it, but it was mainly for himself and Mrs. Mister, who lay in the contraption until midnight drinking frosty adult beverages and smoking ciggies. We had to do what we could to stay cool in those “good old days.”
My mom had big hair “back in the day,” meaning the 1950s. Her brother, J.A. Manley, my jovial uncle, was a beautician; for all we knew, he was the inventor of big hair in Texas. It came to the point that she had to duck to go through a door, and she was all of five feet two inches tall. Back then, the bigger the hair, the more prominent the gal. She wasn’t rich, but my uncle ensured she had a main that required three cans of hair SprayNet to hold it upright. Going to the grocery store with her was a life lesson experience. If a lady she knew saw her, they would approach, pushing a cart full of TV dinners, and say, “lookit yeeew, your looking so good, gal. Is that a new dress? I jus luv yer hair-dew, how’s the fammmmily and them?” I usually got a pinch on my cheek or a smooch if I was too close. One lady always tried to clean my ears with a hanky and spit. They all had big hair and an even bigger greeting. It never changed. It was a secret society code known only by Texas mothers.
Saying Goodbye’s
Trips to a friend’s or family were part of our weekends. Grandmothers, cousins, neighbors, friends of cousins, complete strangers, it didn’t matter. When it came time to leave, my father and I would go to the car and prepare to sit and wait, sometimes fifteen minutes, but most often half an hour or more. Texas women say goodbye in stages. They all did it, learned from their mothers and grandmothers, and so on. The first goodbye is, “we got to go home now, but will see ya’ll next week; we sure enjoyed the supper.” That was the beginning stage. The second stage was standing at the door gossiping about family and who drank too much beer or hooch and cussed too much. The third stage was standing on the front porch, talking more, and discussing family issues. The fourth stage was about halfway to the car, and the gossip and family issues got more serious. The fifth stage was my mother opening the car door and adding more condolences, Thank yous….., and a few hugs. Then, we left. I was usually asleep by then, and my father had smoked most of his Lucky Strikes.
Shopping And Trickery
If you lived in Fort Worth, there were limited options for a woman’s clothing shopping. Leonards’s Department Store was the go-to place. It had everything the big boys in New York carried and then some. You could buy an Italian cut-crystal vile of Liz Taylor’s spit, a genuine copy of Rock Hudson’s wedding album, a live cow, and an Evinrude boat motor. My mother stuck to clothes; she was always on a budget and searching for the best bargain. If she found something she liked, she would hide that article in another rack so no one else would find it. This went on for hours, then she would revisit the pieces of clothing and decide the one she wanted. It wasn’t just her, all the women in the store did the same thing, and they would watch each other hide things and then grab them for themselves. All of my aunts and cousins did the same thing. I only got a pair of PF Flyer sneakers, maybe a tube of BBs, and a pair of button-fly Levi’s. It’s a Texas thing.
I don’t mean the beautiful song by Dear Old George Harrison, son… I mean, it’s hot, damn hot, here in South Central Texas. I shouldn’t bitch too much, we had our chance to move to Ruidoso, New Mexico, and passed, and now we suffer. That’s what Texans do, and we do it well. I should be better conditioned; my family didn’t have air conditioning until the early 1960s. I grew up heat tolerant and blazing tuff and could walk on hot sidewalks barefoot while eating a 0-degree Popsicle that would stick to my bottom lip and rip off the skin. Now, I’m just a pansy-assed old guy. It was 107 degrees here yesterday, with a heat index of 117. I’m listening to Christmas music, just trying to stay cool. My poor plants are stressing, begging for water, and screaming all night. As a dedicated gardener and ornithologist ( birdman ), I must watch out for my flora and fauna. Lots of water and good quality birdseed, although the Crow family is back and cleaning the feeders out in record time. Now they sit on my roof and “caw..caw” for hours, claiming my homestead as their own. I’m a bit nervous because, as a child, I saw Hitchcock’s classic “The Birds,” and it traumatized me to the point that I ran from Sparrows and Parakeets. Crows are enormous birds with large beaks that can take out my good eye with one peck; as long as I keep the excellent seed coming, I should be alright. It’s so hot; even the smaller birds sit in the shade all day.
Reunions And Medical Conditions
The Orphans 1968
Last Saturday, MoMo, myself, Danny, and Dana Goode met Jarry and Benita Davis for lunch at the famous “Lucilles” restaurant in Fort Worth. Jarry, Danny, and I played in the “Oprhans” and “The ATNT” back in the sixties. We were a semi-infamous rock band that played all the DFW circuits, LuAnns, The Studio Club, Strawberry Fields, The Box, Teen A Go Go, Phantasmagoria, etc., traveled around Texas and Oklahoma, and even opened for the “Iron Butterfly.” The three of us are the surviving members; our drummer Barry and keyboardist, Marshall, have gone on to the great jam session in the sky. We revisited some of the good old musical days but mostly talked about kids, grandkids, our working lives, and then, of course, our medical issues, of which we have plenty. We all had cancer and beat it, foot issues, hearing loss (caused by loud rock music and large amplifiers), brain trauma, back surgeries, transplants, nervous breakdowns, plain nervousness, forgetfulness, food allergies, food fears, fear of everything, and upcoming funerals ( our own ). We didn’t start showing scars, but we came damn close. I might have won that one. I believe the patrons around us were glad to see us leave. We promised to get together again, and we will, while there are still three of us.
My granddaughter recently introduced me to the music streaming service Spotify; I am officially hooked on this application that is now on my laptop and my iPhone. John Prine, Emmy Lou, Willie and Waylon, and Lyle Lovett, they are all on there. One artist I had not heard of is Mary Gaither, a grammy winning folk singer. I thank the good Lord for helping me find Mary and her music.
One song, in particular, grabs me by the heart. ” Mercy Now.” She came to write this song by living it or knowing someone who has walked that path. I think we all have walked that path at one time or another; I know my trail is well-worn like the wagon tracks on the prairie.
Lyrics to “Mercy Now”
First Verse;
My father could use a little mercy now The fruits of his labor fall and rot slowly on the ground His work is almost over it won’t be long; he won’t be around I love my father; he could use some mercy now
My father has been gone for a long while, since 1995, my mother since 1998, and my oldest son since 2012. I still think of them, but not as often as I once did or should, but this song washes me in their memory. My father started his life as a country musician and ended it as a successful home builder. He became ill in 1994, struggled, and fought a mighty battle, but passed from brain cancer. When he passed, he and I were at odds on a few things that we never resolved, and I deeply regret that. I, if anyone, should have shown him and my son a little mercy; it should have been me. My failure to forgive is my burden to carry. We all are flawed people. God made us that way so he could lead us back to him and give us our faith or let us ride the express train to hell. It’s our decision. Fathers, mothers, sons, sisters, and daughters should put aside their pettiness, interferences, verbal battles, and self-righteous beliefs. Some, too soon, will leave this world, and it should be on good terms and wrapped in forgiveness and love. We will all die, and mercy is our gift to our loved ones.
Third and Fourth Verse That Sums Up Our World
My church and my country could use a little mercy now As they sink into a poisoned pit it’s going to take forever to climb out They carry the weight of the faithful who follow them down I love my church and country, they could use some mercy now Every living thing could use a little mercy now
Only the hand of grace can end the race toward another mushroom cloud People in power, they’ll do anything to keep their crown I love life and life itself could use some mercy now could use a little mercy now
I know we don’t deserve it But we need it anyhow We hang in the balance Dangle ‘tween hell and hallowed ground Every single one of us could use some mercy now Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Not since World War II has our country teetered on the verge of war, not just two enemies, but many that will come at us from all continents and within our own country. Our leaders, hungry for power and greed, have let us become weak and lost. Our Churches and our pastors try to appease everyone instead of leading their flock by the word of the Bible and leading us in the right direction. People are angry at one another, some for a good reason, but many are taking their anger and misfortunes out on the innocents, family, or strangers around them.
Notes From The Cactus Patch 