Category: Fort Worth Texas

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Growing Up In The 1950s. Threats Used By Parents To Keep Kids In Line


Pictured is the infamous “Dope Farm” in Fort Worth, Texas. A facility built to house drug addicts and high-profile bad guys. If you grew up in Fort Worth in the 1950s, chances are good that your parents used this place as a threat to keep you in line.

My neighborhood buddies and I were a bit on the bad side; nothing severe, just minor kid things like blowing up mailboxes with cherry bombs, setting garages on fire, raiding the milkman’s truck while he was taking the bottles of milk to a doorstep, dropping firecrackers down rooftop vents, fun little things like that.

These minor infractions usually ended with one or all of us getting a butt whooping with a belt, flyswatter, Mimosa tree switch, a tennis shoe, or a Tupperware cake pan. The Tupperware hurt more than any of the other weapons our mothers could find. When our hijinx got to be too much, our mothers would pull out the dreaded threat of “Okay, that’s it, either straighten up or I’m sending you to the Dope Farm.” That’s all it took to turn us into practicing angels for a few days. All the kids knew about this place. The narcotics users, gangsters, and local children who misbehaved went there. None of us actually knew anyone who had been incarcerated within those walls, but the thought of going there scared the liver out of us.

In the late 1950s, a cousin of mine turned into a genuine hoodlum, robbing a grocery store dressed up like Mr. Greenjeans from the Captain Kangaroo show. Greased back hair, black work boots, dirty Levis, and a white tee-shirt with a pack of Camels rolled into the sleeve, and he rode a junked-out motorcycle. When my mother spoke of him, she crossed herself. My poor cousin was added to the ever-present threat because he spent a year of his teenage life at The Dope Farm, living in a small cell, eating Wonder Bread and Bologna samwithches, and watching the old movie “Boys Town” every Saturday night. There wasn’t a Father Flannigan on the premises, only guards with guns and a Baptist preacher.

I was pretty good for a year while my cousin was locked up. We received a Christmas card with a picture of him dressed in his striped pajamas, slicked-back hair, and a Camel dangling from his snarly mouth. All this while perched on Santa’s knee. It was a nice little card, similar to the ones we made in school from construction paper and paste. Some bad words and threats were written below the photo, but my mother wouldn’t let me read them. She cut the bad word part off and taped the card on the ice-box, so every time I opened it, the threat was there, and it worked.

The only kid, other than my hoodlum cousin, who was dragged off to the place was our baseball team center fielder, Billy Roy. Billy started hanging out with our nemesis across the track, The Hard Guys, and became a regular James Cagney by the fourth grade, robbing a local convenience store with a Mattel Fanner 50 cap pistol. You guessed it, he went to the Dope Farm for six months. He learned some good stuff there because when he came out, he went directly into a lucrative life of hoodlummanity and crime. Last I heard, he was in Sing Sing.

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Dispatches From The Cactus Patch March 14th 2024. Remembering The 1960s


A shot of the crowd at Texas International Pop Festival, August 1969. The promoter, Angus Wynn, thought it would be a great idea to have a Yogi or a Swami to lead the crowd of zonked-out teenagers in an hour of Transcendental Meditation since it was the most recent in-crowd thing to do thanks to the Beatles and the Beach Boys who hung out in India with the famous Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Jr. He got a discount on a guy out of Deli, India, who was working in a sub sandwich shop in Brisbane, Australia, but was once a revered holy man in his home country. After a crazy hot night of music that lasted until after midnight, the Maharishi O Mah-ha-Ah-ha took the stage with a sitar player and three nude women beating on tablas and tambourines, all sitting crossed-legged on a rented Persian rug from AAA Furniture Rentals. The crowd, still suffering from the after-effects of too much pot and the brown acid that Wavey Gravy warned them about, eventually got into the groove. After an hour of chanting mantras, swooning and swaying, and all that middle eastern crap, the Maharishi passed hand-woven Indian baskets through the crowd asking for donations. What the good Ah-ha didn’t realize was that even though the young folks were long-haired, dope-smoking teens, they were Texans, and most of them owned shotguns and rifles and drove pickup trucks. Tithing was meant for Sunday church only, not some dude in a robe with a red dot on his forehead. The poor Maharishi was last seen tied to the front fender of a GMC pickup loaded with long-haired hippy Texans shooting their shotguns into the air while speeding down I-35. Best not to “Mess With Texas,” which is where that famous saying was born.

My late cousin, Velveteen, and her late husband, Zig Zag, came up with this idea for a hippy-only tea bag while living in a commune in the mountains of New Mexico. Since they enjoyed sitting around all day doing nothing, they figured why not let the rest of the regular folks enjoy their lifestyle, too. The tea, with its mystery ingredients, was a hot seller for a while until Lipton caught wind of it and sued them into the next galaxy.

My late cousin, Alice, was the only waitress at Woodstock in 1969. She and Wavey Gravy came up with the idea to serve all the attendees breakfast in bed, but she was the only member of the Hog Farm lucid enough to work. When asked how the gig went, she said, ” I didn’t make a cent in tips, damn Hippies don’t have no money anyway.” She met Arlo Guthrie backstage and married him the next day during a Joe Cocker set. They later opened a famous restaurant in upstate New York, where you could get anything you wanted at Alice’s restaurant.

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Dispatches From The Cactus Patch 3/9/24


My late cousin, Chumly, is pictured above after he found his calling in shark training. Steven Speilberg employed him to wrangle his pen of sharks used in the movie Jaws. This is the last photo of Chum after he thought he had made friends with the lead shark. The only parts of Chum recovered were the sneakers and sunglasses.

My mother’s late uncle Zap was considered the inventor of the family. His most famous contribution was the ” Home Personal Hair Removal Wand,” which was the forerunner to Nair and other hair removal products that became household staples in the 1950s. Zap and his lovely wife, Yippie, a Harpers Bizzare hair model, are pictured here, demonstrating the device for the Fort Worth Press in their backyard pool in 1957. Her hair from the waist down was zapped away, but when she fell backward into the pool, she was rendered bald as a cue ball. The divorce came shortly afterward.

Pictured above is my cousin’s niece, Fifi, who, since the age of 16, has identified as a dog. After years of expensive therapy, her parents gave in and presented her with a custom-made Serta dog bed. The last report is that all was going well except for letting her out to pee twice a night and holding an umbrella over her when it’s raining.

Pictured above is my grandson’s Boy Scout Troop 33 1/3 of the Texas Longhorn Division, arriving at the Texas/Mexico border to support the National Guard. After arrival, they were issued Daisy BB guns and a towsack full of chunkable river rocks to fend off the invaders. Jesus Navidad, an illegal, after crawling through the razor wire, said, “Those Boy Scouts are mean little shits, and man, those BB guns and rocks hurt, I texted all my relatives and told them to stay home until they can catch a free flight to New York.”

My childhood neighbor, Mrs. Mister, in 1956, posing for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram after becoming the only female swimming instructor at the parks and recreation’s Forest Park Pool. Swimming lessons hit an all-time high that summer and the pool had a record year. I’m the goofy kid, bottom right, second up behind our right fielder, Rhonda.

Pictured above, around 1954, is my neighborhood milkman, Mr. Rock Pint. He was a swell guy who gave all of us kids free chocolate milk and ice cream sandwiches during the hot Texas summers. All the moms loved him, and many of the younger kids resembled Mr. Pint; must have been something in the milk?

Pictured above is a crowd photo from the Texas International Pop Festival, August 1969. I am in the center of the crowd, about thirty people back; Momo, my wife, is just to the right of the center, about forty people back. My buddy, Jarry, is the blond guy with the severe sunburn that required hospitalization, but the paramedics wouldn’t transport him until the Grand Funk Railroads set was over. I survived one-hundred-degree temperatures for three days and got to meet Janis Joplin one late night when this nice gal with a Texas twang asked me if she could cut in line as I was waiting to buy a hot dog. It took a minute for me to realize it was her, but I was cool; it was the sixties, man. That night, ole Janis “took a little piece of my heart, now baby.” Momo and I still get a good laugh and a few wheezes when we revisit those times. Our children and grandchildren will never be as cool as we were.

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“Come And Take It” The Story of The Alamo Brisket


This Tall Tale is from 2021. With the anniversary of the final battle of The Alamo upon us, I figured a re-visit might be welcomed.

Tex R. Styles learned the art of grilling at a young age. His father, an expert, medal-winning griller, and smoker, proudly and meticulously teaches six-year-old Tex the art of cooking everything from burgers to ribs on his cast-iron Leonard Brothers charcoal grill. The family lineage of grilling over an open flame can be traced back to the British Isles and their ancestral home of Scotland, where a Styles family member cooked meat for Celtic warriors, the King of England, and Mary, Queen of Scots.

When Tex turns eleven, his father conducts a tiki-torch-lighted ceremony in their backyard and passes the sacred grilling tools to his only child. Father Frank, the local priest, attends the party and lays down a righteous blessing on Tex and the family grill.


When young Tex fires up the charcoal on summer evenings, the neighborhood gathers in his backyard to watch the boy genius at work.
Once he has entered his “Zen-cooking zone,” he serves up a better T-Bone than Cattlemen’s, and his burgers are known to bring tears to a grown man’s eyes. Around Fort Worth, the word is out that some little kid over on Ryan Ave is a “grilling Jesse.”

Tex receives a bright green Weber grill for his thirteenth birthday and a professional cooking apron with his name embroidered across the front. The Star-Telegram newspaper takes his picture and writes a glowing article that appears in the Sunday food section. Over on Channel 5, Bobbie Wygant mentions him on her television show and sends him a congratulations card. He is now a local celebrity. Dan Jenkins, the hot-shot sports writer at the Telegram, does a piece on Tex for Sports Illustrated, and just like that, young Tex is officially a “big deal.”

When Tex turns sixteen, like his father and grandfather, he is inducted into the “Sons Of The Alamo” Masonic Lodge. To become a member, your family tree must include one direct family member who fought and died at the Alamo. Tex’s great-great-great-grandfather was a defender and was killed in the siege. He was also the head cook and griller for the Texian Army and a rowdy drinking buddy of Jim Bowie and Colonel Travis.

New members must speak before the lodge elders, recounting the siege from their family’s history. Since childhood, Tex had heard this family story a hundred times and can repeat it word for word, but tonight, he is drawing a blank on some critical details and decides to wing it a bit. In the mind of a sixteen-year-old, his modernized recount of the battle makes perfect sense.

He stands in front of the assembled elders, leans into the microphone, and begins;
“In late 1835, my great-great-great-grandfather, Angus Styles, traveled from the Smokey mountains of Tennessee to the dangerous plains of Texas with David Crockett and his band of long-rifle toting buckskin-clad rabble-rousers. Angus was in the dog house with his wife most of the time, so he figured a year or two in the wilds of Texas would smooth everything out with the Mrs.

Before immigrating to America, Angus was the chief griller and top dog chef for the Duke and Duchess of Edinburg in Europe. David Crockett knew Angus was a master griller and wanted him to travel with his men so they would eat well. Crockett and the men killed the meat, and Angus grilled it to perfection.

Arriving in Texas, Crockett tells Angus they are making a stop-over for a few days at a mission called The Alamo in San Antonio De Bexar. A buddy needs help fighting off a few Mexican soldiers; it shouldn’t take more than two days.

Once at the Alamo, arriving in the dark, entering via the back gate, Angus realizes Crockett was wrong in his evaluation. The rag-tag Army behind the walls would be no match for the thousands of Mexican soldiers sitting on a riverbank a few hundred yards away, eating tortilla wraps and polishing their long bayonets. Mariachi music floating on the breeze gave the scene a weird party-like atmosphere.

Angus locates and converts an old Adobe oven to a smoker griller, working on some chow for the Texians. Brisket, ribs, and sausage, along with his secret sauce, will be on the supper menu.

A young pioneer woman from northern Texas is there with her father, a volunteer. Veronica Baird is busy baking bread and cinnamon rolls in another adobe oven and lends Angus a hand stoking his fire. A prominent German fellow, Gustav Shiner, wanders over and offers Angus a mug of his homebrew beer. It’s looking like the Army will eat and drink well tonight.

A chilly March wind is blowing toward the Mexican Army camp, and the troops smell the delightful aroma of cooking meat and baking bread. Having marched 1500 miles with little food, they are famished, and the wafting perfume makes them salivate like an old hound dog.

General Santa Anna and his officers also smell the same heavenly aroma and, having not much to eat in the past few days, hatch a scheme to get their hands on that meat and freshly baked bread. Santa Anna sends a white flag rider with a note to the gates of the Alamo.

Standing in the courtyard, surrounded by hundred-plus fighters, Travis reads the letter, ” Dear Sirs and Scurrilous Rebels, on behalf of our large and overpowering Mexican Army and of course, myself, General Santa Anna, we would be willing to offer you a general surrender of sorts if you would share your delicious meat and bread with my troops. Looking forward to a good meal. Yours until death, General Santa Anna.”

The men, in unison, yell, “hell no,” we are not sharing our chow. Being a bit smart-ass, Travis orders two 20-pound cannons to fire a rebuke into the Mexican camp.

The first cannonball destroys the Mexican’s chuck wagon and what beans and flour the troops have left. The second cannonball blows up the cantina wagon, vaporizing numerous cases of tequila and wine. Now, the officers and troops have no food and no hooch. Santa Anna is as mad as a rabid raccoon and screams, “that’s it boys, we are taking the mission pronto.”

The battle started that evening, and as we all know, it didn’t turn out well for the Texians. Veronica Baird survived the massacre and said that Angus Styles and Gustav Shiner fought off the advancing soldiers with carving knives, a keg tap, and her sizeable wooden baker’s Peel. They fought to their death.


As the women and children of the Alamo were escorted out of the mission, Veronica Baird spots Santa Anna, sitting on his black horse, about to take a bite from one of her captured Baird Cinnamon rolls. She chunks a rock and knocks it out of his hand. General Santa Anna’s Great Dane dog, Mucho Perro, gobbles it down before it hits the ground. Sweet revenge.

She later wrote a book about the battle, which sold pretty well here in Texas. Not only is the Alamo our sacred national treasure, but it was also the first BBQ joint in Texas. Thank you, and I hope you enjoyed the story of my grandfather Angus dying at the Alamo.” And with that, Tex takes a seat next to his stunned father.

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God Bless The Alamo


A few more days until we solemnly recognize the fall of the Alamo, March 6th, 1836. It’s not a day that will live in infamy like Pearl Harbor, the battles of Gettysburg and Yorktown, but for us native Texans, it’s a day of retrospect that deserves the reverence we bestow upon it.

The blog-es-phere is chock full of opinions about Travis and his men; poor old Santa Anna only wanted to get along, move along and be friends, but had to kill all the defenders because he was forced to. Bullshit, he was a murdering dictator and knew full well what he was doing. Three thousand plus soldiers against less than two hundred poorly equipped pioneers and farmers. Not much brotherly love was present in San Antonio that February and March. There are even stories, one of which I read today, that swear black slaves were picking Texas cotton outside the gates of the mission before the Mexican army invaded. If it’s on the internet, it’s got to be true. Right?

Starting in the first grade, I was taught the history of the Alamo. My teacher made sure my classmates and I knew the story of the battle, the events that led up to it, and the aftermath at San Jacinto. Mrs. Edwards, my teacher, was a native of San Antonio, so she was a bit “ett” up with the whole thing. Us six year- olds, although slightly lacking in historical proficiency, understood the enormity and the importance of the battle. We regularly staged a neighborhood reproduction of the battle a few times a month, using my parent’s garage as the besieged mission.

Walt Disney and his television series Davey Crockett, King of The Wild Frontier, turned every boy, and most girls, in my grade school into a rabid Texian defender, ready and willing to fight the battle a second time using our Daisy BB guns and Cub Scout knives for arms. Having a native Texan and hometown boy, Fess Parker, in the role of old Davey didn’t go unnoticed in Fort Worth. Fess, dressed in full buckskin and coonskin cap came to Fort Worth to promote the show and the schools had to declare a holiday because they were empty. That is how serious we are about our history. Yes, we are all braggarts, insufferable most of the time, and onery as a Honey Badger, but pound for pound, put us against any enemy, and we will get the job done. My fellow members at The Sons of The Alamo Lodge, of which I am a member in good standing, can attest to our state of readiness.

Keep your powder dry; God Bless The Alamo, Goliad, San Jacinto, William Travis, Sam Houston, Juan Sequin, Davey Crockett, Bob Wills, Willie Nelson, and George Strait.

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WordPress Is Now Facebook, Twitter And Instagram


Oh My! Say it ain’t so, Sheriff!

Yes, Dear Hearts, the best blogging site out there, has been discovered by the cancel crowd. They now think WordPress is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all the other platforms where they can hide behind a keyboard and burn down the mission with hateful, moronic verbiage. In the past 14 years I have been blogging, there have been only a handful of inappropriate comments thrown my way; some I responded to, others got the trash can symbol. My most recent post, ” High Noon At The Border,” must have caused folks to lose some brain cells and hide in their safe rooms.

Sure, it’s comedy; anyone with half a brain can see that, although I now know there are folks out there who take it seriously. I received one comment from a former Texan who was dragged to California at a young age. She wrote an alternate scenario about the border, which was snarky, well-written, but full of venom. I can picture her at her Apple laptop, tapping away, sipping on a latte’ in between sobs. You can bet she is a Garrison Keillor fan and listens to NPR. I hope the crazed woman doesn’t have access to an assault rifle, most folks know I live in Granbury, Texas, and I wouldn’t be too hard to find. Out of respect for my readers, I ditched her cute little reply, as well as a few others that started with an F and ended with a k..you get the message. I must be on the right path if it offends the ones that cause all the trouble in this country. I’m rather enjoying this.

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Dispatches From The Cactus Patch Feb. 28th, 2024


One of the by-products of becoming a senior citizen is the onset of boredom. I can only watch so much Wheel of Fortune, although Momo would sit for days watching a pre-recorded loop of the same episodes and keep guessing all the puzzles, waiting for old Pat to send her a check or a vacation voucher to Ukraine. I want to slit a vein.

The Beatnik thing didn’t work out; I was too old, forgot all the best verbiage, and couldn’t stand to wear turtleneck sweaters anymore. Revisiting “On The Road” stirred an interest, but then I took a nap and forgot about it. When I have a good idea, it’s best to avoid daytime naps; they tend to act as a mental reset button for us folks.

Momo suggests I try my hand as a social influencer on TikTok or YouTube. She might be onto something. I have an abundance of white hair, much like those TV preachers from the 1980s when a person could lay their hands on top of their Motorola console color unit and be healed, but only after you gave the call-in number person your credit card number: no donation, no cure. I have the schtick and the suaveness to pull it off. I imagine it would be more like a Brother Dave Gardner comedy album. Speaking of, Brother Dave was my idol back in the late 50s and early 60s. But then, the portable record player broke. My comedy stint was over before it started. But I have the hair: you be the judge and let me know; my phone number is BR-549. A coinsedense how much I resemble Brother Dave.

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In Remembrance: Mrs. Mister Makes A Killing


A Tall Texas Tale For Those With Wrinkles…

Pictured above is none other than my childhood neighbor, Mrs. Mister, pouring her revolutionary beauty concoction, “Mrs. Mister’s Transforming Beauty Soak And Wrinkle Eradicator,” into the swimming pool at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, circa 1956. After emptying the last magnum of this magical elixir into the pool, every female club member over the age of fifty plunged into the water and adamantly refused to emerge until they attained Mrs. Mister’s enviable wrinkle-free appearance. Admittedly, a few of them came close to the mark, but, alas, the majority remained, shall we say, in dire need of further miraculous intervention.

Being the shrewd entrepreneur she was, Mrs. Mister struck a deal with Avon and pocketed a tidy sum for her creation. The miracle potion was rebranded as “Avon Skin So Soft,” renowned not only for its beautifying properties but also for its ability to repel those pesky “no-see-um” gnats. After all, why not fend off insects and look fabulous while doing so?

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In Remembrance: Fort Worth Days


Captain Salt and the Lonely Beatnik Band

Pictured above is my late cousin’s band, Captain Salt And The Lonely Beatnik Band. They had a steady gig as the house band for the Hip Herford Coffee House in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1957. Junior Parker, my cousin, is the hip dude in the striped shirt. No one could play a stringed instrument, so everyone had a set of bongos. When a guest, such as Brother Dave Gardner, was on stage, the boys would provide a soft, cool beat, adding an aura of hipness to the poet’s reading. The band released a greatest hits album in 1958 that was a local hit within a four-block area. A young visitor from England, on vacation with his aunt, visited the coffee house, heard the band, and dug their stuff. It’s rumored he went back to England and formed his own band called the “Quarrymen,” and years later paid homage to the boys with a groundbreaking album, Sargent Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. I guess you can say my cousin had “X-Ray Eyes and knew his groceries. ” Hit me, man, I’m ice cold.

born to be wild

I wasn’t satisfied with my ordinary peddle car; I craved excitement and wind in my flat-top haircut: Speed was my need. My neighbor, Mr. Mister, our local mentor, and mad scientist, helped me install a Briggs & Stratton 5 HP lawn mower motor in my Western Auto peddle car. We tested my machine on the runway at Carswell Air Force Base, and it reached a speed of 70 MPH. I was a speed demon… ready for Thunder Road, figure 8 stock car races, quarter-mile drags, cruising Berry Street, racing teenagers between traffic lights, which is what I did one Saturday night when my parents thought I was asleep and wound up in a jail cell after the fuzz arrested me and confiscated my hot rod.

Delinquent women on motorcycles

“The Shangri-La’s” motorcycle gang, Fort Worth, Texas, 1957. My late cousin, Marlene Brando, right front, on the bad-ass Harley, was the Leader Of The Pack.

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Tall Tales And Ripping Yarns From The Great State of Texas


In the past few weeks, I have received comments from folks who are not frequent followers of my blog. I enjoy hearing from new bloggers, no matter the platform they find me on. It’s good to know how the pulse of the country beats. I welcome all comments and have only trashed a few inappropriate ones over the last fourteen years. Lately, some folks write, “That can’t be true; you made this up.” Well, yes, I did make it up, but there might be a smidgen of truth that sparked the fire. Mark Twain wrote many fictitious tales based on real folks he knew. A kid’s dream found me wanting to be the next Mark Twain, but then, he had already claimed the prize and the glory, and I had to settle for John Steinbeck as my hero and mentor. A good choice.

The heading for my blog clearly, in bold letters, states that it’s ” Tall Tales and Ripping Yarns From The Great State of Texas.” Most of my stories, and some rants, are true and are real recounts from my childhood into adulthood. I trust my longtime readers can tell the difference. My wife, Momo, my perfect muse, to this day, will still ask me if this is a true story or one of my weird ones.

In Texas, we are called Storytellers, Dichos, and raconteurs. My grandfather was a raconteur of the whittle and campfire variety, often playing salty licks on his fiddle while he entertained the family with his yarns. Two uncles on my mother’s side were world-class storytellers and the best liars I have known. They missed their calling by not becoming writers or folklorists like our American legends, Will Rogers and J. Frank Dobie. Genetic tagging from my mouthy relatives to me may have something to do with this malady that keeps me awake with a burning brain. Momo says I am touched in the head; she may be right. I do remember a fall from my mother’s arms to a kitchen floor when I was a wee-one. The result is quite clear.