Category: Fort Worth Texas

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A Christmas Lesson Remembered


In 1955 I was six years old and received a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. Looking back, I was probably too young for such a weapon, even though it struggled to break through a cardboard target. Attitudes then were different about what a boy should have and be exposed to. There was no “toxic masculinity,” or confusion about what was between our spindly legs; boys were boys and girls were the way God made them to be, something my neighborhood buddies and I would appreciate in later years.

I asked Santa for the rifle, and behold, the old gent delivered, just like the one Ralphie got in “A Christmas Story.” A few of my friends also received the same air rifle. We were now armed and ready for war against the Germans or even the Alamo revisited. My parents, typical of the times, saw nothing wrong in me having a gun. My father, a veteran of WW2 knew them well and wasn’t about to raise no pansy-assed kid. Try that these days, CPS would be knocking at your door within the hour.

My grandfather, a veteran of WW1 volunteered to instruct me in the finer points of gun safety and marksmanship. He fought in the trenches in Europe and knew his way around a weapon or two. I didn’t know more than that about his war days, it was all a bit secretive.

Before Christmas supper, we drove to Sycamore Park for the first lesson. Forest Park was but a few blocks away, but he felt we needed more land around us in case a BB took a wrong turn. He retrieved a few empty soup cans from the trunk and placed them on a log about thirty feet away. I loaded the rifle and waited. Grandfather showed me how to hold the gun, site my target, and squeeze the trigger. I missed all the cans and wasted most of the BBs in the tube. I was down to maybe a dozen or so and still hadn’t hit my target. He wasn’t impatient with my lack of marksmanship but felt it was time for some hands-on instruction. He took the rifle, shouldered the stock, aimed, and knocked every can off the log without missing one shot. I was beside myself with envy. Here’s my old grandfather shooting like Buffalo Bill. After he handed the gun to me, I proceeded to miss every can until the BBs were gone. Time to go home.

Walking back to the car I told him that maybe someday I would be able to shoot as well as him. I was a kid and blurted things out without thinking, so I said “Grandad, did you learn to shoot like that in the war?” We were almost to the car when he said, ” Yes I did, but shooting soup cans off of a log is different than shooting a man.” I didn’t understand what his answer meant; too young and blissfully ignorant.

That lesson was more than an old man showing his grandson how to hit a soup can perched on a log. It was the best life lesson I ever received.

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Christmas Is Time to Recognize Family. Right?


I received two emails a few days ago; one from Family Search and the other from Ancestry, both genealogy websites. I’m more well-connected than I thought.

It appears that on my mother’s side of the family tree, I am related to Belle Starr, the infamous female outlaw, Cheif Quannah Parker, the famous chief of the Comanche Nation, and son of Cynthia Ann Parker and Peta Nocona. My great-grandmother was on friendly terms with Quannah when she lived on the Indian reservation and before she met my great-grandfather, Love Simpson, who was a Cherokee and a Deputy U.S. Marshall for the Indian territory in Oklahoma. My grandmother would often hint that maybe they took a few long walks in the misty moonlight and things may have gotten out of hand. She also possessed an old ratty-assed wig and would pull the thing out ever so often and show it to us kids. She said it was Chief Parker’s long ponytail after it was cut off when the soldiers arrested him. We believed every word of it. It gets better. I am also related to the infamous Texas outlaw killer, John Wesley Hardin. For some unknown reason, Bob Dylan was intrigued with outlaws and killing for a while, so he wrote a song about Hardin. This was before his Nashville days. I’m waiting on that royalty check, Bob.

I had no idea that Davy Crockett was in my family tree, yep, also on my mother’s side. That explains my over-the-top childhood obsession with the Alamo, flintlock firearms, long sharp knives, and coonskin hats. I would have been picked for membership in the “Sons of the Alamo” lodge if I had known this forty years ago. Captain Kangaroo, Buffalo Bob, and Shari Lewis are also cousins; so that makes Shari’s puppet Lambchop a family member too. Howdy Doody is not mentioned, nor is Mr. Greenjeans, although he was my favorite.

Family Search, the site run by the Morman Tabernacle Church, and choir, says that on my father’s side, I am related to our first president, General George Washington, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Waylon Jennings, Will Rogers, Wild Bill Hickock, Buffalo Bill Cody, Billy the Kid, Doris Day, Mary Martin, Tiny Tim, Roy Rogers, Ray Charles and a fifty-fifty chance, to Rin-Tin-Tin and Sasquatch. Damn, son, now that’s a list. I’m getting a big head just writing this.

My mother always told me that our family goes way back and has lots of closets and skeletons. My father, always said that his family has a whole scrapyard of bones and is bat-shit crazy on top of that. Now I have to figure out how to tell my friends about my relations without sounding like a deranged liar.

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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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Just A Little Off The Top, Please


If you were a kid in the 1950s, there is a good chance you had to endure the “home haircut.”

My father, also known as “Mr. Cheapass,” became a barber almost overnight. A friend had given him a pair of worn-out electric barber clippers, and he saw a way to save that $1.50 flat top haircut I received once a month. My mother, bless her heart, tried to intervene and save her only son from the humiliation of the shearing, but the old man won the battle, and I found myself sitting in our kitchen with two phone books under my butt, just like the real barbershop.

No cape, no tissue around my skinny neck, no talcum powder, no Lucky Tiger Hair Tonic, just a worn-out towel with a clothespin holding it in place. My mother sat at the kitchen table, misty-eyed, crossing herself despite being a Baptist.

My father tried to act like a “real live barber” by making small talk, asking me about my baseball team, the weather, and my dog. It didn’t work; I knew I was in for a massacre.

He didn’t know which guide to use, so naturally, he picked the wrong one, flipped the switch, and tore into my nice, thick seven-year-old hair. Gobs of dark hair were spilling onto the towel and the floor. My mother sat there with a shocked look on her face. The more he buzzed me, the worse it got. Finally, he removed the guide and put the clippers on my scalp, rendering me bald except for a tuft of hair in front for the application of Butch Wax.

The deed was done. I was scalped, mutilated, disfigured, and humiliated. Lucky for me, it was summer, and by the start of school, I would have a normal head of hair. My father was rather pleased with his handiwork and strutted around the house for an hour or so. I happened to catch my mother tossing the clippers into the garbage can in the alley the next day. When school started, she took me to my regular barber and paid half the buck from her grocery stash.

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The Little Buckaroo


The Little Buckaroo, early 1950s

I was young, barely talking, so I couldn’t say Trigger. It came out as Twigger. The other little buckaroos in the neighborhood mocked my speech impediment. I was three years old, so what. I rode the wilds of Sycamore Park, ducking under low branches, hearing Indians in the trees and Buffalo calling. I rode the banks of the swollen creek, watching turtles feed on the carcass of a carp. I was, in my intended element, a cowboy. Then, the owner of the Little Pony Picture Service lifted me off and put the pony in the trailer. Bummer.

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Riding The Range To Nowhere


Every visit to the grocery store found me hounding my mother for a nickel or two so I could ride the stationary pony to nowhere. She always gave in and handed me a few nickels to keep me riding the range while she shopped. In my kid’s mind, the wilds of Texas stretched before me, Indians around every corner, wild critters stalking me on my trusty steed. When the coins ran out, I would sit quietly on Twigger until my mother fetched me. I missed my pony, but I was glad when she changed stores, and the new one had a rocket ship to nowhere.

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A Visit To The Old Jacksboro Highway


A surprise from old buddy Mooch…

A Typical Beer Joint on Jacksboro Highway, photo by a local Wino

I’ve known old buddy Mooch for around fifty years and thought I knew everything about the man, but now I know I don’t

I rode with Mooch to Fort Worth to pick up a load of mulch. It’s one of those places where a tractor drops a bucket full in the bed of your pickup truck. Cheap and efficient. When Mooch picked me up, I assumed his Chihuahua, Giblet, would be in the front seat next to Mooch. Giblet was in the back seat strapped into a child carrier wearing Apple Air Pods, held in place with scotch tape. I didn’t want to appear stupid, so I said nothing about a dog using Air Pods. I did ask what Giblet was listening to. Mooch said, “He likes those Tibetian Dog Chants; it keeps him soothed, and he doesn’t break out in hives or crap in the seat. Chihuahuas are a nervous type, you know.” He’s right; the little shit has bitten me numerous times; once, while trying to steal my Whataburger, he bit my bottom lip, and I needed stitches. The dog is so damn old; he’s probably broken some kind of Chihuahua life record.

Since we were near Jacksboro Highway, Mooch asked me how about dropping by his favorite bar for a beer. Sounded good to me, it was over a hundred degrees, and there’s nothing like a dark, cold bar in the summer.

Only a few bars are left on the old Hell’s Highway; they’ve all been dozed, and shopping centers and fast food joints have taken their place. We drove until we were in the country, then pulled into a gravel parking lot in front of Big Mamu’s Bar And Grill.

” This is my favorite bar in my whole life,” says Mooch. ” I’ve been coming here since I was of legal age to drink beer. This is where I got my first taste of the nightlife and other things I can’t discuss.” We ambled in, sat at the bar, and a female bartender brought us two ice-cold Lone Star longnecks. Mooch introduced her as Little Mamu. Her mama, Big Mamu, sold the place to her some years ago and retired back to Chigger Bayou, Louisiana, her hometown. Little Mamu and her husband, Budraux, run the business. Little Mamu, after a closer look, was darn rough. She’s seen some action in her bar years, probably shot or cut a few folks and busted some heads. Bottle blond hair and a hefty figure with arms like Popeye, I wouldn’t want to mess with her. The songs say the gals look better at closing time, but I doubt Mamu would improve by 2 am.

This bar was right out of the 1950s. Red naugahyde booths with little jukeboxes at each table. The rest of the furnishings looked to be original as well. The old Wurlitzer JukeBox in the corner was an antique but was pumping out Merel Haggard like a champ. The neon and backlit beer signs were old and likely worth a fortune. The Ham’s Beer bear was there, the Miller High Life man fishing for trout, and a revolving Jax Beer sign. This was a man’s bar. It dripped dive and beer joint like a dimestore Siv.

Mooch pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and sat on the bar. ” You about ready, Little Mamu?” he says. Mamu grabbed a step stool, climbed onto the bar, and walked over to where Mooch and I sat. I didn’t know if she would do a Hoochi Coochi dance or drop-kick one of us in the face. Mooch turned on the flashlight; Little Mamu raised her skirt a bit, and Mooch shined the light up her dress, bent over, and took a peek upward. ” Yep, everything looks just fine, gal,” he says, handing her a twenty-dollar bill. ” When did you start wearing those Fruit of The Loom underwear? ” Little Mamu didn’t miss a beat, ” I would have worn my Fourth of July ones if I had known you were coming; you haven’t been here in months,” she says. I’m not sure what I just saw; Mooch looking up a woman’s dress with a flashlight? I’ve seen some things, but this is the best one yet. We finished our beer and left.

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Baseball, Balloon Tires and Cap Pistols


I first met Billy Roy on a Monday morning in September of 1957 when Mrs. Edwards, our third-grade teacher, introduced him to our class. He stood next to her, arms crossed with a sour-ball look on his face.

I knew this kid was trouble. He hadn’t done a thing to anyone yet, but he had that weaselly look about him; beady eyes, no chin, partially bucked front teeth, and a bad haircut giving him the appearance of a hillbilly.

Our teacher says he is from Hamburg, Germany, and his father is an officer out at Carswell Air Force Base. Billy Roy, she says, is a German and an American citizen but doesn’t speak good English quite yet. So then, what is he, an all-American boy or a Nazi transplant? We, kids, knew all about those guys, watching World War II movies on channel 11 and playing war with our BB guns. We always whopped the Nazis and the Jap’s. We also took care of the Mexican army when we defended the Alamo.

As luck would have it, Billy Roy now lives in my neighborhood, three houses down from my best buddy, Skipper, so after school, the gang calls an emergency meeting to figure out how to deal with this infiltrator.

It’s decided to give the “new kid” a chance to prove his salt; he would be allowed to hang with us until deemed worthy or fell flat on his face.

Our parents got word of our secret plan and told us, “We had better be nice to Billy Roy, or we would wind up at the “Dope Farm.” Someone ratted us out; most likely, it was Georgie; he’s afraid of everything and can’t keep a secret. He is also a known titty-baby.

“The Dope Farm” is a juvenile detention institution that our parents use as a threat when we act up. It keeps us in line. The stories about the place give us nightmares; it’s Sing-Sing for children. One of my older cousins spent some time there, and later when he was supposedly rehabilitated, he robbed a Piggly Wiggly dressed as a woman.

Saturday came our day to ride our bikes to Forest Park diamonds for pick-up baseball games. Our group of eight departed from Skipper’s house at 8:30 am. Billy Roy is standing on the sidewalk as we approach his house.

Skipper stops and asks Billy Roy if he has a bike and a glove; in broken English, he states he has neither of those items.

Georgie, the titty-baby, then says in a snarky tone, “if you don’t have a bike and don’t play baseball, you can’t be part of our gang.” The word’s spoken, the gauntlet laid. It looks as if Billy Roy might be out. Everyone gives him “the look” as they ride by. I feel a little bad for the kid.

Billy Roy keeps to himself during the next school week, eating his sack lunch alone and staying inside during recess. We can care less. He can’t tote his salt.

Saturday morning, 8:30 am, the same scenario. We leave Skippers’ house on bikes, heading for the ball diamonds. As we approach Billy Roys’s house, he comes flying out of his garage on a brand-spanking-new Schwinn Hornet bike. A chrome headlight and taillight adorn the bright red and white bike—the sun’s reflection off the chrome fenders that cover the white sidewall balloon tires is blinding. Hanging on the handlebars is a new double-stitched  “Plug Redman” Rawlings baseball glove, and sitting on his little head is a genuine New York Yankees ball cap.

Skipper skids to a stop, and the rest of our bunch almost wrecks our bikes, trying to miss him. What is going on here?

The gang is in awe and more than a tad envious. This kid’s been here two weeks, doesn’t play baseball, can’t speak English, is likely a German spy, and here he is riding the Cadillac of bikes and now sports new ball equipment. Some snot-nose in our neighborhood is as rich as King Faruk, and it isn’t us.

Skipper, the wise leader of our bunch, surveys the scene, then tells Billy Roy that he can come along with us to the baseball diamonds since he now has the required items. So he rides at the end of our pack and struggles to control his expensive bike. He crashes a few times but catches up. Unfortunately for our intern, things don’t go well at the ballpark.

After educating Billy Roy on holding and swinging a bat, he’s bonked square in the forehead with a 40-mile-per-hour hardball. He’s out like a corpse.

The umpire, some kid’s father, drags him over to the bleachers and pours a cup of cold water on his head. Billy Roy wakes up, staggers for a minute, and acts like nothing happened. We are impressed; he’s tougher than we thought.

Around the fourth inning, Billy Roy tells us that he is going home. He’s a bit dizzy and wobbly after his bonk and can’t participate in the rest of the game. We get it. He departs, driving his fancy bike from curb to curb like a blind drunk.

After the game, which we won, we gathered our stuff left in the dugout.

Stevie says he can’t find his Cub Scout knife. Freckled Face Bean can’t find his Roy Rogers watch, and Skippers’ decoder ring is missing. My almost new pack of Juicy Fruit is also gone. Good Lord! There’s a thief amongst us. Georgie, the titty-baby, is the likely culprit; but he says he can’t find his dental retainer, so he’s cleared. That makes Billy “the Nazi” Roy, the perpetrator. There is an ass-whoopin’ brewing. With retribution in our hearts, we haul ass to Billy’s house.

Mrs. Roy answers their door. We demand to see Billy, so she brings him to face us. He stands behind the screen door for protection. But, of course, he denies it all until Skipper tells him to step onto the porch so he can whoop him. Billy steps onto the porch, but before Skipper can get a lick in, Billy pulls a switchblade knife from his pocket. He pops the blade and waves it at Skipper. Yikes! Not only is the little Nazi a thief, but he’s also a West Side Story hoodlum. We leave the porch and the guilty Billy Roy to his young life of crime.

After the incident, Billy Roy, to us kids, is a fart in the wind.

Having ruined his reputation in our neighborhood, he starts hanging with some older hoodlum boys from across the railroad tracks; we call them “The Hard Guys.” We are sure they will wind up at “The Dope Farm” sooner or later, and now young Billy will join them.

Billy Roy has been missing from school for almost a week, a few days before Christmas vacation. We figure he has the bird flu or polio.

The next day, a rumor around the neighborhood, and now our school, is that Billy Roy and two of the “Hard Guys” were pinched for holding up our small neighborhood grocery store with a Mattel Fanner 50 cap pistol.

We all agreed that the bonk from the baseball injured his kid’s brain and turned him into a criminal. Last we heard, Billy and the two “hard guys” were off to the “Dope Farm.”

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It’s 2009, And We Are In The Studio, Again!


The American Classics Band, 2009

Left to Right; Danny Goode-lead vocals and bass; John Payne-vocals, lead guitar, fiddle, mandolin, and keyboards; and probably some more instruments I’m leaving out. Phil Strawn-vocals and rhythm guitar, banjo- Jordan Welch- drums and bongos, cowbell, and sings like Roger Miller.

The American Classics Band
https://on.soundcloud.com/i9ryA

Track 4 covers Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Navajo Rug.” I’m new to SoundCloud, so I cut off our heads in the pictures. Why do these apps make it so darn hard to move anything over? WordPress won’t allow WMV files, so I had to upload the tunes to SoundCloud, which converted it to an MP3.

Track 1, “For What It’s Worth,” is our cover of Buffalo Springfield’s song about the riots on the Sunset Strip in 1967. The CD was cut at Wavelight Studios in Haltom City, north of Fort Worth. Larry Dylan was the sound engineer and owner of the studio.

Danny and I, back in 67-69, played together in “The Orphans” and “The A.T.N.T.,” which I posted our record a few weeks ago. John Payne played with the “Fabulous Sensations” out of Lubbock, Texas. He also got to sit down and visit with Buddy Holley’s parents in Buddy’s childhood home, so he has been close to musical royalty. Jordan Welch played with The Coachmen, another great popular band in the DFW area, back in the 1960s.

If you haven’t noticed, I discovered background colors today, so bear with the experimentation. It doesn’t take much to entertain me these days.

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“The Truth Is Out There; We Are Not Alone. See… I Told You So!”


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.