Category: Fort Worth Texas

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In Remembrance: The Day I Was Hypnotized


In Remembrance is not about a last tribute to a dead guy; for me, it’s about remembering, while I can, bits and pieces of my colorful childhood.

I was nine years old and thought of nothing but baseball, cartoons, and fireworks. I won’t say my childhood was purified and biblically cleansed; my neighborhood pals and I did get into our share of trouble, resulting in no less than three or four butt-busting per day: my poor mother’s spanking arm was toast by noon. We did nothing bad, just the usual little kid stuff: blowing up mailboxes with Cherry Bombs, setting garages on fire, and fighting the “hard guys” across the tracks. It was the 1950s, and we were the first generation of baby boomers unleashed on our suburban-dwelling families.

Our hijinx had reached a crescendo, and the mothers in the neighborhood were plumb worn down from our growing delinquency. Threats of being sent for a stint at The Dope Farm, a boy’s ranch for unruly boys, had lost their punch: we needed an intervention, and fast.

My neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Mister, retired Air Force officers and native Californians, were consulted over cocktails and cigarettes in their luscious backyard one summer evening. A few of the mothers and fathers had one too many Hollywood Dirty Martinis and made an early exit from the pow-wow, leaving my folks, a few buzzed moms, and Skippers’ parents to ask for help. The Misters were our heroes, mentors, and dream parents. We would have gladly traded ours for their parental guidance. Mrs. Mister was the neighborhood “it girl,” and all the fathers had the “Hubba Hubba’s” for her: she was an exact pod person for Jayne Mansfield.

Mrs. Mister, after a few double Martini’s, said she knew a doctor who worked miracles with hypnosis. He had convinced Mr. Mister to quit smoking and hypnotized her Poodles, Fred, and Ginger when Mr. Mister had made them street rat crazy after sending them into the stratosphere on his homemade rocket and Doganaut capsule. The dogs were a wreck until Doctor VanDyke got hold of them. She felt the doctor could take some of the piss and vinegar out of us boys and a few of the poor girls that had joined our coterie of mayhem. The plan was hatched.

The Misters gave a backyard cookout, which was the cover for the intervention. Doctor VanDyke set up his office in the Mister’s TV room, and each of us kids was escorted to the Doctor by a parent. Skipper was first to go down, then Georgie, Cheryl, Rhonda, Bean, Frankie, Billy Roy, Stewart, Stevie, and I batted clean-up.

The old guy was covered in creepiness. Bald head, a sharp devil goatee, horned-rim glasses, and a bowtie. My mother sat in the corner as the doctor held a little pendent in front of me, giving instructions to watch the shiny object, and I was getting sleepy. I gave in: Doctor Creepy put me under. It was a nice nap, and I was refreshed and a bit goofy when I joined my pals in the backyard, but something was off, not just with me but with all of us.

Rhonda and Cheryl announced they were no longer friends with us and were quitting the baseball team so they could go back to playing with doll babies. Skipper wouldn’t drink his Kool-Aid; said it tasted like cat turds. Georgie was whimpering and crying like a baby and sucking his thumb, Stevie got all Romeo’d up and tried to plant a kiss on Rhonda, and she whacked him on his head with a Coke bottle, causing blood to run down his face, and I had this sudden urge to pee, which I did without embarrassment, whipping it out in front of all the guests. My poor mother was mortified. Doctor VanDyke had flicked the wrong switches in our young brains; we were now worse than before. The party abruptly ended.

After a week of house arrest, most of us were back to our normal bad behavior. Mrs. Mister learned that Doctor VanDyke was not a real doctor but had learned hypnosis from a mail-order course advertised in the back of the Farmers Almanac. He was a huckster.

The gang went back to our routine, baseball, cartoons, and fireworks. The two girls rejoined the team and threw away the doll babies and dresses. I felt pretty darn good, except I couldn’t bring myself to touch plastic Tupperware; it was like a live Rattlesnake in our kitchen. The old standby staple of every mother’s kitchen scared the liver out of me. It still does.

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In Remembance: Kids With Weapons Of Mass Destruction


Toys in the 1950s, you gotta love them. The one pictured above, the machine gun that shoots wooden bullets, is a weapon I could never get my paws on. I did manage a Fanner 50 western pistol and a Colt snub-nose version that shot plastic bullets, but nothing like a machine gun. That would have been the ultimate weapon for our neighborhood battles against each other and “the hard guys” across the railroad tracks. All of these potentially lethal weapons were advertised in comic books. Did any responsible adult ever check these ads before the book was printed? Hard wooden bullets mowing down kids; talk about shooting an eye out or death. These weren’t ads dreamed up by New York Mad Men, but ones from back alley shops that made money off the gullibility of children, me included. My buddy Georgie ordered a so-called real hand grenade from the back page of a Richie Rich comic. A month later, he got a real steel WW2 surplus hand grenade in the mail. It wasn’t live with explosives, but damn, it gave his parents a shock. His father had thrown more than a few of them when he fought at Guadalcanal.

I ordered the Super Man X-Ray glasses from my Super Man comic book. The first pair I ordered for $1.49 called “Magic X-Ray Glasses,” got me into trouble. I told two girls from my neighborhood baseball team that I could see their bones and guts, even though I couldn’t see a thing. They ended up giving me a beating with their Hula Hoops! Who knew a Hula Hoop could hurt so much? I had the word WHAMMO imprinted on my back for a week. My mother dispensed the fake glasses to the garbage can in the alley and saved me from further assaults. Most everything bad that got me in trouble wound up in those alley garbage cans.

Faster Than A Speeding….

Yep, I had to have one, so for Christmas, mom coughed it up. It was a cheesy-looking costume, not much better than cheap pajamas. My Aunt Norma, a seamstress extraordinaire, added tufts of foam and cotton padding to give the appearance of super muscles. She made gold material covers for my PF Flyers and made a new cape. I was hot stuff. Naturally, all my buddies assumed this suit would enable me to leap tall buildings in a single bound, fly faster than a speeding bullet, and all that super stuff. I actually believed I could, so I climbed to the second-story roof of our house, stood on the roof line, cape blowing in the wind, and stared at my buddies thirty feet down in the backyard, awaiting my takeoff. Down the roof, I ran and launched off the edge into the spring air. I landed on top of two of my friends, which saved me from injury. Mother, who saw the whole performance immediately busted my butt with a Tupperware container while dragging me into the house. The suit was in the alley garbage can the next morning. I never flew again.

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In Remembrance: My Rocket Ship To Mars


Back in the 1950s, before the internet and home shopping networks, us kids were convinced that anything sold in a comic book had to be the real deal. Tiny Sea Monkeys, X-Ray Specs, Space-Ray-Guns, Real Hand Grenades, and yes, like the one above, a real Rocket Ship. What a gullible bunch of schmucks we were.

It took me nearly a year to gather and cash in enough soft drink bottles to purchase my very own rocket ship. I was just a quarter short, and fortunately, my grandfather came to my rescue; he knew where I lived! I was beyond thrilled, trembling with excitement like a dog trying to pass a peach pit, as I sent the order form by mail. In six weeks, my ticket to Mars would be in my hands: a bona fide rocket ship complete with illuminated controls, atomic fuel, a disintegrator ray gun, and space for a buddy and me. When I proudly showed the advertisement to my neighborhood scientist and mentor, Mr. Mister, he tactfully agreed to help me assemble the contraption upon its arrival, not wanting to burst my small bubble. According to my mother’s calculations, my rocket ship should arrive just after Thanksgiving but before Christmas, allowing Mr. Mister to assist me in assembling my celestial chariot. My nights were filled with restless anticipation, I developed a rash, and my appetite vanished; I was a jittery, nervous wreck of a kid.

A week after stuffing my face with turkey, the postman dropped off a ginormous flat box at our doorstep. The moment of truth had arrived. With my mom’s assistance, we lugged the package into our living room, and I eagerly began unpacking my “spaceship.” Instead of finding an epic disintegrator gun or an atomic fuel cell, I only uncovered a pile of flat cardboard, a string of Christmas lights, and two measly C batteries. Oh, and to top it off, the instructions were in Japanese. Talk about a recipe for a miniature meltdown! In my time of need, my mother summoned Mr. Mister from next door. After assessing the comical catastrophe, he instructed me to head over to his place for some cookies with Mrs. Mister while he worked his magic on assembling the rocket ship. Now that’s what I call outsourcing! What a guy! All of us boys wanted to be like Mr. Mister.

Two hours later, I returned home to be greeted by the sight of a rocket ship chilling in the middle of our living room. It was a real looker, decked out in red, white, and silver, all prepped for a space adventure. So, I hopped in, ready to blast off into the great unknown. I couldn’t locate the blastoff switch. I turned to Mr. Mister for some wisdom, and what does he say? “Looks like they forgot to send the engine with the ship. Let’s see if we can piece one together out of spare aircraft parts I have in my garage.” Yeah, right. We both knew it was BS. As I climbed out of the rocket, I accidentally fell backward into the ship. We tried patching it up with tape, but nope, it was toast. There I stood in the dim alley, staring at the crumpled remains of my dream rocket ship to Mars. The things we do for adventure!

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All Hands To The Border…


Scouts heading to Eagle Pass, Texas.

To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

I was a Boy Scout; before that, I was a Cub Scout. My sons and grandsons were, and are, Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, so the tradition runs deep in my family. We are not an army, one that can bear arms and fight the enemy, but if pressed, we could, with the right arms, cause our invaders to re-think their decision. Send some scouts to the border, give us some Daisy pellet guns, and hide and watch. Pellets may not wound them, but damn they hurt.

Father Frank, my priest at The Lady of Perpetual Repentance, has mobilized the Holy Sisters to the border. Mother Agnetha and the ladies have had the honor of winning the state rifle range championship five years running, and they are putting their Winchester prowess to work on the border, defending their home state. When things get tough, call in The Nuns With Guns.

My 24th cousin, Annabelle Oakley. She’s been shooting things since she was a wee-one after joining the Barnum and Baily Circus, so now she is heading for the Texas / Mexico border to do some trick shooting through razor wire.

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In Remembrance


“In Remembrance.” How many times have you rolled your eyes at that phrase? Obituaries, Eulogies, sympathy cards, and Life Celebrations all bring it to mind, but to me, it feels like a worn-out catchphrase from the past. Not the most fitting expression, but it has that eye-roll-inducing charm. My grandparents, bless their hearts, were professional funeral attendees. They never missed a chance to show up for the bereavement and raid the potluck table – family, friends, neighbors, and even strangers. Their dedication to mourning and food was truly unmatched. Some months, my grandmother didn’t cook a meal; they lived on leftovers from the family gatherings after the service. Ham, roast beef, tater salad, rolls, they ate better than anyone in the family. Death is final, but it comes with good food.

I’ve taken that old phrase, “In Remembrance,” and revamped it to perfectly encapsulate my childhood adventures. It has nothing to do with shuffling off this mortal coil, pushing up daisies, biting the dust, buying the farm, ashes to ashes, or any other worldly farewells. It’s all about the good ol’ days, mischief managed, butt whooping, and the epic tales of my early youth. I’m an old guy now, so time is of the essence, and my keyboard is hot. My punch card could run out at any time, anywhere.

There will be a flurry of “In Remembrances” hitting my blog. I figure a small novella broken into multiple chapters will about do it. I will, because of being blessed with a crazy-assed family, be using them as fodder and foils in many of the recounts. To protect the guilty, I will change some names because a few of them are still among us.

My direct family, Mom and Dad, are floating around in the clouds now, so what I write about them will be respectful and kind, even though my dear Mother whipped my little kid’s bony rear thousands of times with everything from Tupperware to a Mimosa Tree switch. My neighborhood pals and, of course, my mentors, Mr. and Mrs. Mister, played a large part in my development into what I am today. According to my wife, Momo, I should get into a time machine, return, and start it all over. I’ll give H.G. Wells a ring.

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January Dispatch From The Cactus Patch


Don’t Look At That Sun..You’ll Go Blind

I’m ready for the Eclipse in April. That’s me back in my 3-D days. I walked around for months wearing my cheesy glasses. Everything looked better in the beautiful hues of red and blue, so I saved them in my Roy Rogers lunch box with the original Thermos that held my cold Ovaltine and kept it cold for half a day. How did it know? I figure these specs will work just fine for the Solar Eclipse.

The Beat Goes On…And On

My father’s late cousin, Mail Order Preacher, Little Jimi Bob Fender of Fort Worth, Texas. He started out playing that “Devil music,” rock-a-billy, and jive-assed jumping-around stuff out on Jacksboro Highway. After getting knifed a few times, then shot up real good by the jealous husband of some old hairy-legged gal, he glammed onto religion and started the “Church Of What’s Happening Now.” He had the rocking-ist church music in Texas, and many of the great musicians, such as Delbert McClinton and Willie, stopped by on Sundays to jam. As you can see, he was a snappy dresser. Dig that guitar and that blue suit.

When It’s Round-Up Time In Texas

Back in the 1950s, long before there was the Dixie Chicks, there was my late 14th cousins’ trio, “The Texas Fried Pies.” They played most of the grocery store openings, school assemblies, parades, Tupperware parties, Avon get-togethers, rodeos, The Fat Stock Show, and select funerals. Left to right: Peach E. Keen on the doghouse bass, my cousin Apple Coreby on the banjo, and Cherry la’Tartness on the squeezebox.

The Gospel According To That Person of The Year

Good Lord, help us, please. Now she has her own religion and a bible? It was bound to happen, given she has around ten million young zombie followers. I read from a former swiftie-cult member that when she turned 21 years old, her brain hit reset, and she became a normal woman and started listening to George Strait. There is hope.

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Dispatches From The Cactus Patch…A Few Things You Might Not Know About


Pictured are my late father’s late cousin, Bell, and her husband, Alexander, showing off their 1952 invention, the “Head Phone,” which was the predecessor to the modern mobile cell phone. It was an awkward unit to use. The phone is attached to your head, and the braided phone line is carried in a backpack. Cell towers weren’t invented, so the unit and the lovely couple were tethered to the home plug by a five-hundred-yard cord roll. She eventually sold her phone ideas to some hot-shot princess in Monaco who came out with her own line of cute little bedside phones. ” Besides”, Bell said, “every time the damn phone rang, it gave me a massive headache.” Alexander, on the other hand, was unable to speak, smoke a ciggie, or drink his nightly cocktail, which impacted their social life.

Pictured is my first real grown-up science experiment kit, Christmas 1955. I asked our neighborhood mentor and mad scientist, Mr. Mister, to tutor me in the art of scientific experimentation. He brought home a few viles of Plutonium X3 from his job at Carswell Air Force Base, and with parts and dangerous minerals from the kit, an old Waring blender, and a Betty Crocker pressure cooker, he and I constructed and tested a small nuclear device right there in our neighborhood. Our garage was totaled, and we were all puny and hairless for a few months, but the family got over the effects of the radiation and, seeing they had a small genius in the family, awarded me a second kit the next Christmas. See Below.

Christmas 1956, I received my second kit, like the one above. I had no idea what Meth was, and the instructions were in Spanish, so frustrated with making 9 Love Potions and disappearing inks, I gave the kit to my cousin, Jock, who set up a cute little lab in his family’s camper trailer parked in their backyard. After blowing up their trailer and suffering non-life-threatening injuries, he was sent to the Juvenile Dope Farm for six months. The last I heard, he opened several pot shops in Ruidoso, New Mexico, after retiring from the Texas Senate.

Who knew that Lard was so good for you? My grandmothers would not have been able to cook a meal without a tub of Crisco, White Cloud, or Puffy Stuff lard. They also kept a soup can full of used bacon grease next to the stove, so if they were out of that soft, luscious lard, they could still fill our bloodstream with massive doses of saturated vein-clogging fat. My grannie soaked her chicken mash feed in Puffy Stuff and then fed the hens her secret mixture. She claimed it made the eggs bigger and better, and when she wrung the head off of one of the greased-up hens and cooked it for supper, the chicken was already basted and fried to a golden brown. Yummm. Gotta love that country cooking.

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Daily Writing Prompts…You Ain’t the Boss of Me!


Butch, Sundance, and the gang during a weekend in Granbury, Texas

Maybe some bloggers need prompts to give them that “get along little doggy” push, but I’m not one of them. My personal writing space and white laptop screen belong to me alone. I don’t need ” Big Brother Blogger” to lead me in any direction. I get lost enough on my own. WordPress means well. They want to help us. Think of them as the “Blog spot with a heart, we are all one big internet family, it takes a village” and all that crap. My track record of offending everyone is extensive and documented. No prisoners were taken, and none were harmed. My internal and social filters were lost some years ago. Not even WordPress can reinstall them. I am a rebel with no cause.

Me, the author, back in the day before I got a haircut

The writing prompt for today was a zinger: what would you put on a highway billboard. Considering most drivers have one eye and hand on their cell phones and are not paying attention to the road, why would the morons be looking up at a billboard? “Get your face back in that phone you idiot! Are you trying to cause a wreck?” would be an appropriate sign.

I don’t have a problem with highway advertising. Buc-ee’s has some great signs, as do Dairy Queen and McDonald’s. The only time they catch my attention is when Momo is driving, and I have time to scan the horizon. Churches are getting more inventive, ” Next Exit To Save Your Soul” visit the Second Baptist Church of Twickelstick, Texas, turn right and go 4 miles to reach Heaven. Car dealers are the most annoying. The classics that scream of desperation are ” Dust Bowl City, Where Texas History Lives.” Every darn town in Texas is not a historical landmark. My town, Granbury, is a true old-west historic town., and has been voted that honor for many years now. Lots of notable stuff went down here in the 1800s. General Granbury of the Confederate Army of Texas is a famous man; he lived here, so the town was named after him. The city fathers have armed citizens standing guard over his statue on the square because the new wokie residents from California want to pull it over with a rope tied to their Tesla.

Notable and historical visitors, gangsters, outlaws, and past residents of Granbury were; Billy The Kid, Sam Bass, Bass Reeves, Billy the singing Bass, The Bass-O-Matic, The Purple Passion Triple Jiggle Bass Lure, Cheif Quanah Parker, Santana, Sitting Bull, Crawling Bull, Annie Oakley, The Statler Brothers, Jerry Reed, Wild Bill Hickock, Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald, Lyndon Johnson, Lady Bird, Big Bird, The Surfing Bird, Elmo, Burt and Ernie, Clarance Odbody, Mr. Potter, George Baily, Rasputin, Krushev, Stalin, The Big Bopper, Buddy Holley, Candy Barr, Bill Barr, Captain Kangeroo, Mr. Peppermint, Ickey Twerp, Steve Allen, Ernie Kovacs, Soupy Sales, Mr. Greenjeans, Mr. Rogers, Mrs. Rogers, Roy Rogers, Buck Rogers, Roger Ram Jet, The Jetsons, Sky King and Penny, Poncho and Cisco, Yogi Bear, Boo-Boo, Willie Nelson, Charles Nelson Riley, Paul Lynde, Wally Cox, Rose Marie, Dick Van Dyke, Little Dutch Boy with his finger in the dyke( Rosie O’Donnel) Van Dyke Parks, Jack Keroauc, Sal Paradise, Wavey Gravy, Deputy Dawg and Muskie, The Three Stooges, Chewbacca, Princes Leia, R2D2, CP30, Willie Wonka, Kim Kardashian, Eddie Murphy, The Vanderbilt family, William Randolph Hearst, Patty Hearst, Huey Newton, Huey Lewis and the News, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Rodney Dangerfield, The Gopher, Carl the greenskeeper, Lacy Underall, The judge, Davey Crockett, Jim Bowie, the defenders of the Alamo, The Hole In The Wall Gang, and others liked the food at the hotel and the drinks at the saloon. The Paramount TV show 1883 was filmed here, and I heard that Taylor Sheridan liked the town so much he plans to buy it. So Granbury has some bragging rights and the signs to prove it. My town finds its way into many of my stories, as do the citizens, who now have it out for me. I have to go incognito when strolling the square.

The bottom line is I will not be prompted to write about trivial ca-ca. If what I do write turns out to be bull crap, then so be it. I fear this post, against my will and better writing judgment, accomplished what WordPress requested. But, as any five-year-old will say: “You ain’t the boss of me.”

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Born On A Mountain Top In Tennessee…


Christmas, 1955, and I found this under the tree: my first stringed instrument, made by my Coonskin cap-wearing hero, Davey Crockett. My father, a musician, tuned it up and put it in my tiny hands. I must have been a musical savant because I played and sang, with no mistakes, the theme song to the Disney show Davey Crockett. My parents, flaber and gasted, grabbed the Brownie Box camera and took my picture while I was wailing on my miniature ax, mailing it the next day to The Arther Godfrey Talent Hour in New York City. I continued to give impromptu recitals around the neighborhood for my buddies until Georgie accidentally sat on my Davey guitar and crushed it to splinters. After that, I couldn’t remember the words to the song and forgot how to play, and wouldn’t you know it, a week later, Arther Godfrey called my folks for an audition. I could’a been a contender!

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Welcome To Crazy Town City Limits


Are we not living in “Crazy Town?” Fifteen Thousand clean, well-fed, cell phone-carrying invaders are on their merry way to our Texas/Mexico border, most of them adult military fighting-age males, ready for action. ” Come on down, free everything for life,” and our government does nothing, which they do well, to stop this invasion of our once sovereign land. Since our National Guard, hands tied to their waist, can do nothing, I suggested sending thousands of Boy and Cub Scouts to the border equipped with Daisy BB guns, ” the BBs won’t kill anyone, but damn, they hurt.” This may or may not stop the hordes of brain-eating Zombies, but maybe our folks in DC will get the message. Really, I’m kidding; this is a dream I had while under the influence of my pain meds. Sounds good though.

The NFL is experiencing a boost in game attendance when Taylor Swift is holding court in the owner’s luxury suite. Thousands of her young “Lemming Swifites” are in the bleachers, holding up ” We Are Here For Taylor” signs, clutching her CDs to their breasts, and praying for a glimpse of the anointed one. There is talk on the street that she may run for President. The country will need the “Auto-tune” app on their phones to understand what she is saying. Isn’t social media a grand thing?

I believe she just wet herself. Poor Travis

28 miserable years since my once wonderful football team, The Dallas Cowboys have made a Superbowl appearance, and now the owner, a Rummy-Eyed, jabbering, scotch-pickled Beverley Hillbilly from Arkansas is about to give his quarterback a 60 million per year contract to keep the team in their mediocre bubble. To Jones, it makes perfect sense; if the boys win a Superbowl, then they will be expected to produce a winning team every year, so just give the fans a smidgin of hope, enough to keep his Deathstar stadium full of hungry pilgrims, there to witness mediocracy at it’s best. I can’t bear to watch this trainwreck; at least our Texas Rangers delivered a World Series after receiving their new stadium. Please send Tom back down to Earth for one season.

Saint Tom

Momo is roaring back from her bionic knee replacement, sort of. We went shopping in Fort Worth yesterday, hitched up the wagon, and trekked to the big city. She’s happiest when spending money, so Old Navy, Acadamy, and Half Price Books got a token of her appreciation. I did notice that HPB’s is now carrying re-issues of the old classic rock albums. Back in the 60s, we paid around six bucks for one; now, they cost around twenty to forty bucks, and the vinyl is paper thin. I purchased a reissue of Bob Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline” to replace my long ago stolen original. Who thought that digital engineering of music would sound better than old-school analog. Wasn’t me, and it doesn’t.

Dylans Maximus Opus