With all this talk about AI taking away the techie jobs, I saw three (illegal impostors) day-laborer robots in front of Home Depot this morning, waiting to be picked up for work. Since ICE is in Granbury, I’m not sure how they’ll handle these guys. George Jetson and Will Robinson had it pretty darn good.
Some months back, I said, under duress, that I would write less about politics and world events, only to calm my family from disowning me, which a few did anyway, but I could care less. I do, and welcome the grief, the foul language, and the loss of followers from this post, but I am at the point where some things have to be said by an average older American who can’t smile and hold it in anymore. Yep, all of my filters left this body years ago. That’s why my picture is in every Home Depot, Lowe’s, and other stores in town. Don’t help this old man; it’s an honor.
Our mainstream media, or what’s left of it, won’t say it; our woke children and grandchildren have no interest in real American history, how this country evolved, and why it is now threatened. They live in a teachers’ union-manufactured, protected fairy land where everyone rides Unicorns around campus and sprinkles themselves with fairy dust every morning to avoid reality.
Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Italy, and now parts of the UK are done with illegal immigration and the hordes of invaders, and are fighting back. They want to preserve their heritage, lineage, history, their country, and their wives’ and daughters’ lives and futures. I somehow get the feeling that here, we don’t see it the same way: or do we, and are so inept we refuse to fight back?
We have a president whom everyone who is a non-Christian or a liberal hates with a vengeance, that is so deep it has destroyed families, friends, and marriages, and is willing to sacrifice anything, even their pitiful lives, to prevent him from handing over our country to a vast army of invaders.
The young, university-educated, hip, liberal women are psychotic; the young men are without balls, but their man bun looks good and their skinny jeans fit well. And everyone is so hopped up on doctor-prescribed drugs that they think the books, the Koran, Animal Farm, 1984, and the computer HAL 5000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey are reality.
The men, males, with the correct hormones God gave them, are fighting back. And now, the women, real women, the ones like our mothers and grandmothers, that know what God made, are joining in. The Irish and Scottish and some Britons are arming themselves in militias and kicking these worthless moochers and criminals out of their countries. The problem I have with the entire scenario is: where in the United States of America are our militias, our Minute Men with muskets, pitchforks, hoes, or any tree limb they could use as a weapon to drive out the invader? They are not British as they were in the 1700s; they are Islamic, and their ideology doesn’t meld with Western values or civilization. It’s not a religion; it’s a coup to make the world Islamic and impose sharia law on every person on this planet, and that is an entire book of hundreds of chapters on why they want to take our country from us. Where are we, and why are we not stopping this? There are pages of questions and accusations I could write, but this small blurb will infuriate enough people as it is.
We have one man and a few others who are in public office who can see what is coming. A respected historian, Victor Davis Hanson, Pastor Greg Laurie, Doctor David Jeremiah, and others see it, call it as it is, and warn us, yet our young people, or should I call them “sheeple,” have been indoctrinated to the point of impotence and paralysis, cowering in a corner, shaking like a trapped Rat with a Terrier snarling a few inches away.
Let me say it another way: we do have men and women joining our military in droves, and they are Christians, or, if not true believers, patriots that see the clear and present danger that has already taken hold of our land. They know the dangers; they are willing to put their lives at risk and step over that line drawn by a sword in the hallowed dirt floor of the Alamo by William Travis. They will board that ship that may get hit by a missile, be the soft target for that bullet, or lose a limb to a roadside bomb, come home disfigured, or in a casket, or take a knife in the chest while having supper with their family at their neighborhood Pizza Hut. This country is not safe; our citizens, our heritage, our way of life that my family members fought for are in jeopardy of dissolving before our eyes. Look around today as you go about your chores and errands; you will see it if you look close enough.
This entire “shit show” started with the Woodstock flock and the idealistic generation that supported it. I was one of them, until I grew up, worked, paid taxes, suffered through life, and am now about done with all of it. That decade gave us some historical music, unbelievable science, but not much else. Gloria Steinham, Betty Friedan, Pauli Murray, Susan Brownmiller, Bella Abzug, and the organizations they formed that turned all-American teenage girls into crazed feminists. Thank God, not all of them bought into it, but enough did to turn the tide and divide this country. Oh, wait, I forgot Angela Davis, the radical Black Panther, and her minions: kill whitey, kill everyone, then bring Fidel Castro over to run the country for us. Burn the typewriters and copy machines. Kids? We don’t need children to hold us down; they are a chain around our neck, screw them.
You may think I dislike women, but I don’t in any way. I only dislike women like the ones mentioned above, and the millions like them that move among us now, and will get in your face about anything. They know us men, us older men, raised correctly, won’t punch them out, but that is also changing. Without women, we wouldn’t have great doctors, scientists, nurses, mothers, teachers, warriors, and a long list of other contributions. Women bring empathy to a world where men are far less empathetic about most things. Knuckle-dragging Neanderthals chewing on a raw leg bone of a saber-toothed tiger. Yeah, I can be that way sometimes, but then Momo, my dear sweet wife, who was a nurse and understands far more than most, keeps me in check as best she can.
I am an old man and will be 77 in a few weeks, but I would join that militia, pick up that rifle, put on that fifty-pound backpack, and drive the evil invaders from our country. God knows our ballless politicians will never do it. They are there for the gravy train, the yellow brick road, and a never-ending land of Oz. Not Dr. Oz; I dig him.
Christians, men and women, had better put your Bible to your forehead, pray, and ask the good Lord forgiveness for what you are about to do, and give us the strength and fortitude to pull it off. Sally-Forth, pick your weapon, whether it be fierce religion or a gun, but for Christ’s sake, do something.
Our Pastors, Priests, Preachers, Men of the cloth, and Elders in churches need to get on board and stop with this “love everybody” BS they preach on YouTube and from the pulpit every Sunday. You read the Bible, and it is full of evil people and the evil deeds they committed, and how Christians stopped what they could, and thousands of years later, are still waging that war. We have been invaded, and the enemy is entrenched in political offices around our country, pushing for their Sharia law and to hell with Christianity, and let’s not forget Gods chosen people, the Jews; they want every one of them dead, and if a Christian is in the way, well then, we are dead also. Hitler and his cronies would be a perfect fit today. Dress them in a nice Brooks Brothers suit, give them a microphone or a podcast, and we have the 1930s repeated. Tribalism is alive and thriving in this country. I wince at using the term “us against them,” but it’s too much of a perfect fit to not say it.
To all my 1,000-plus followers, if you don’t care for my opinion or my options, tell me. I have skin as hard as Teflon-coated steel, and shit rolls off of me like it does the Clintons. That’s what blogging and writing is about, Dear Hearts; it’s not all poetry, pretty stories with happy endings; it’s sometimes the harshest of truths. But let me tell you, I am one pissed-off Texan and am a good shot. God Bless Texas and The Alamo.
I will admit to being ignorant about some things, and the term ” throwing shade” at someone or something meant nothing to me. Us’n Texans have been doing it for years. I recently discovered what it meant by accident, using AI.
All of my relatives were professionals at this so-called newest trend. My grandmother’s ” Well, bless her little heart,” was the favorite one. The side-eye glance, the eye rolls, the fart, and shaking your leg — all of them —were used around me since childhood. I had no idea it was a form of insult or mockery, just an old farm saying. I’ve done it myself, and to this day, I still say ” Bless their little heart,” which means they are plumb stupid as a dead rock.
Momo, my wife, is not a Texan: she was hauled down here from Pennsylvania for her father’s job at Texas Instruments. She has a few of her own. When you’re uptight about something, you’re ” wound up like a nickel rat.” That’s those cheap 1950s Japanese mice you wound up and let them scurry around the floor; the spring usually broke after a few times, so they became something of a novelty.
My good friend, Jarry Boy Davis, in our teenage rock band years, heard plenty of them from his mother, an in-your-face Southern lady from Memphis. ” He’s as crazy as a peach orchard squirrel; that guy is a stupid tool. Can’t pour piss out of his own boots.” If a girl was downright ugly, she would be called ” an unfortunate-looking little thing.” Same for the boys.
Now that I am old and have nothing to lose, I will participate in more “shading” events, especially when it comes to those “panty waist” men in Washington. Why do we senior citizens dislike our government so intensely? I’ll write about that another time.
The Ozempic crowd in Hollywood seem to be the worst, and the best at it. All of those poor folks, skin and bones, bulging eyes, failing organs, having to be helped to walk onto the movie set, they shade everyone, even themselves, without knowing it. ” Bless their little hearts.”
I read X (Twitter) and sometimes post on there. I also have a notesfromthecactuspatch on Facebook, so I visit that site once in a while. What bothers me nowadays, well, every day 24-7, is the amount of false information on all the social media sites. Nothing is confirmed, and any dipwad with an account can put out any form of disinformation they dream up, and folks believe it as gospel. Does King Charles hate Trump? Doubt it. Does the PM of Italy hate him? I doubt that one, too. So who, and what do we believe? The MSM legacy media is so full of crap you can’t believe anything on the evening news, not even on Fox or Newsmax, so where does that leave us people who actually know how to read a newspaper and decipher the real world from the world of AI, which WordPress uses a lot for spelling and punctuating. AI scares me because not only does it know more than I do, but also because so much of it is incorrect. This post is not intended to be funny, but seriously worrisome. I’ll check back with ya’ll later. Have a good day, and ask Grok to cook you a good supper. The Texan.
The hundreds of hours I wasted thinking about Santa Claus, where he lived, and whether he was happy. Did Mrs. Claus make him hot cocoa and cookies? Does his reindeer live in a lovely barn? How do they fly? Is Rudolph the leader of the pack? Did he get my letters? Was I on the nice or naughty list? Is his spying Elves watching me? These were questions that required an answer. My parents were no help, they would smile and pat my little flat top haircut head.
Santa consumed my life from 4 years old until I turned 9. I was a true believer, a young pilgrim to the point of becoming a child Santa Evangelist. Anyone said something terrible about Santa; it was put up your dukes time or a come to Santa prayer meeting. My younger sister was also a firm believer, but then, she was brainwashed by me, and I was programmed by my parents, grandparents, and the rest of the family.
On Thanksgiving Day, the trickery commenced around our household. First, my mother, the master of deceit, would warn us about the naughty list and what would happen if we were on it. Then it was, ” The Elves are watching you through the windows to see if you’re good.” That’s the one that got to me the most. I had a plan to catch them.
After lights out, I slinked out of bed under the cover of my darkened room. Crawling on my belly like a soldier, I made my way to the nearest window. Back against the wall, I slid up and moved the blinds in a flash, hoping to catch the little guys. Failing to catch one spying on me didn’t deter my mission: I knew they were there and faster on the draw. Santa and his gang were tricky ones.
The annual Christmas visit to Leonard Brothers Department Store in downtown Fort Worth was the ultimate Santa experience. Toyland was akin to holiday Nirvana for us kids. A rocket ship monorail glided around the basement ceiling, kids packed in like sardines on a rocket train to nowhere. Parents rush to purchase presents while the kids are busy, hiding them under their coats or in bags and lying to their innocent children with straight faces.
Santa held his court in the middle of Toyland. His throne was 10 ft. off the ground, with stairs leading up and down. A majestic sight if there ever was one. Sitting in a velvet chair fit for a king while his Elfin helpers lifted the crumb crunchers on and off his lap, it was pure excellence. A line of snot-nosed kids snaked around the room, waiting for their chance to place their order, up the stairs, on the lap for 15 seconds, then off the lap, and down the stairs. The visit was over before you knew what had happened. It was the same routine for years, and I loved it. I could spit out my order in under 10 seconds. Santa and his helpers were impressed.
I asked Santa for a bicycle when I was 9 years old. A red and white machine with side mirrors, streamers, a headlight, and white-side-wall balloon tires. I also asked for a new BB Gun, a larger Cub Scout knife, and a Fanner 50 cap pistol with green stick-um caps. My sister asked him for a doll that was larger than she was and a dollhouse.
Christmas Eve arrived, bedtime rolled around, and we hit the sack. Hot Ovaltine and cookies put me out like a light. Then, sometime after midnight or later, I had to pee. I didn’t want to get up, but the Ovaltine was causing me some discomfort. Half asleep, shuffling down the hallway, I looked into the living room as I passed the doorway. With a Schlitz beer in his hand, my father sat by the tree, assembling a red bike like the one I expected from Santa. My mother was working on a cardboard dollhouse, and the giant doll my sister wanted was standing under the tree, looking creepy.
I convinced myself that Santa must have run out of time and had recruited my parents to complete his work. The reality of the sight escaped me.
My father looked up and saw me standing there; our eyes met, and he smiled like a raccoon caught in a trash can. The jig was up. The big lie was exposed, and my childhood imploded right there in the hallway. Daddy was Santa, and Mom was Mrs. Claus. I peed and made my way back to bed, not comprehending what I had witnessed.
I awakened at daybreak, our usual Christmas morning routine. I was thankful to be awake and away from the nightmare that had gripped me most of the night. I was relieved that it was all caused by the Ovaltine. The gifts were under the tree, and life was good. I loved the bike and the BB Gun, but my sister feared the enormous lifelike doll.
After breakfast, I was lying under the Christmas tree, building an army fort with my plastic soldiers. That’s when I found a Schlitz beer bottle, assembly instructions for a bike, and a few tools.
At seven years old, I learned of my first, but far from the last, Texas legend. The best storytellers and liars I ever knew were my two uncles on my mother’s side of the family, Uncles Bill and Jay Manley. They are the ones who told my cousins and me about Santa Anna’s “Mountain Boomers.” My mother believed the two ruined me and turned me into a liar and teller of tall tales, which is not such a bad thing.
The Mountain Boomers were giant lizards that ran on two legs and came down from their lair on Santa Anna Mountain in search of food. Anything would do, but they were partial to goats, wild pigs, small cows, chickens, and tiny humans. If you were caught outside in the wee morning hours, it was a sure bet a Mountain Boomer would get you. We, kids, were scared shitless of even going out of the farmhouse after dark. Now we had giant lizards and the dreaded Woolly Boogers to deal with.
With no air conditioning in the farmhouse, we were forced to sleep with the windows open and would lay in our beds shaking all night, waiting for the monsters to break through the window screen and carry us away. Our Granny was no help; her standard goodnight to us was ” sleep tight and don’t let the Mountain Boomers bite.”
Summer evenings on the farm were made for sitting on my grandparents’ covered porch, watching lightning bugs dance, listening to the crickets chirp, and catching the faraway howls of an occasional Coyote pack running the creek that passed through the pastures.
The sky was black as pitch, the Milky Way as white as talcum powder, and heat lighting in the West added to the drama of the evening. We kids were ripe for a big one, and my uncles never disappointed. First, homemade ice cream was eaten, then the cooler of Pearl Beer came out, and the stories commenced.
Already that June, my cousin Jerry and I had been to see the hero pig and the three-legged chickens and had learned of the dreaded Woolly Boogers. Hence, we needed a new adventure: our summer was losing air like a punctured tire: we were tiring of shooting chickens with our Daisy BB Guns, then getting our butts switched by Granny.
“Did you kids see that over there in the trees across the road? I think that might have been one of them Mountain Boomers,” says Uncle Bill, in between swigs of Pearl. Then, of course, we strained our eyes to see what he said he saw, but nothing. Then, a few moments later, “There it goes again, I tell you kids, that was one of them sumbitches running on two legs carrying a wild pig in its teeth.”
He had us firmly hooked and reeled in. Then he starts in on the story. Uncle Bill took a swig of Pearl and said,
” Right down this road here, about twenty years ago, a family’s car broke down, ran out of gas, I think. The daddy, a man I knew well, walked into town to find some help. He left his wife and small son in the car. It was late at night, so he figured they would sleep until he returned with some gas. The little boy got out of the car to pee alongside the road. His Momma heard him scream and came out of the car in a hurry: a 7-foot-tall Mountain Boomer was standing there with the little kid in its mouth. The poor boy was already almost chewed in half. His guts were hanging out and dragging on the ground. The big lizard took off running with the Momma chasing it. Another of them, Boomers, was hiding in the scrub brush and got her, too. A few days later, the sheriff found their bloody remains up on the mountain. They knew a Mountain Boomer had gotten them because they found their tracks. That’s why we never go outside after midnight around here.” My other cousins and I were almost pissing our pants.
When we stayed at the farm, I don’t believe any of us ever slept well again after that night. But, even after we were adults, my uncles swore the legend and the story were true. I still dream of them.
A while back, an obnoxious blogger that fancied herself a serious author said that writers are not authors, and real authors are those that have been published and cut their teeth in academia, meaning a teacher or a professor of sorts. The rest of the poor souls plodded on through pages of typos and third-rate editing. I know that Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Capote would likely not agree with her observation.
Being the smart-ass that my mother raised well, I challenged the blogger on her assessment of the current literary scene and its “wink-wink” secret membership.
I knew she was a teacher right away because the following lecture and browbeating reminded me of high school. Much high-handed rhetoric and pontification without explaining anything. Sound familiar?
My measured response was that you must first be a writer to become an author. A writer is anyone that puts to paper a story of fact or fiction. It matters not if anyone ever reads your effort; it’s done and sealed. If your writing makes it to a publishing house or a website, you may call yourself an author, but you are still a writer. Nothing changes but a definition and perhaps a fat check.
My first writing was around ten years old and was on a Big Chief tablet. I was working my way to being the second coming of my beloved Mark Twain.
My uplifting teacher at the time had no problem telling me I would likely become a writer. Of what, I asked? She said maybe a book or a novel or a newspaperman; she thought I had a knack for the genre. She did encourage me to learn typing, which I did on a 1930s-era Underwood that occupied my parent’s dining room table. I was the only kid in our neighborhood that knew typing. My friends were google-eyed envious as if I had broken the enigma code or figured out the Orphan Annie decoder ring. I did gloat a bit, but not too much.
At 76 years old, I consider myself a writer; with over 200 short stories and interviews to my name, they attest to my efforts.
I have, over the years, been published a few times; Interviews about the rock scene in the 60s and early country music, so even though I received little to no money, I could, if I wished to, call myself an author. But it’s all a wordplay around egos. So, until I can come up with something as serious as Thomas Wolfe, Harper Lee, Truman Capote, or my beloved Mark Twain, I will remain a humble writer.
Perhaps Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty had it right? Drive a beat-up car across the country, searching for the real America; find that touchable and believable reality. The young Marylou is along for the ride; she adds the angst to their search: a real woman, one to drive the two of them mad. Three is a tangled mess. Two recovering Catholic boys question their upbringing. Harsh realisms, self-flagellating, pot smoking, cheap liquor guzzling, teetering on becoming a criminal or a saint.
Roughians, hooligans, hipsters, Bohemians, and rapscallions. These were the self-educated beast shaped by the great depression that taught us that America isn’t perfect and never can be as long as flawed and greedy people make decisions for the masses. Lords and Cerfs; Alms for the poor, sir?
The late 1940s was a time of realism. Fantasy was for the dreams of children. The recent brutal world war ended the tragic depression years, and sacrifices and loss of human life in far-off lands all played out in real-time, not on a roll of film. There was no “escape from reality.”
The coterie of Bohemian writers and artists was forming. Jackson Pollock was dripping paint, Picasso was mutilating women on canvas, and Papa Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Alan Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac sat around small tables in dingy cafes and bars slamming down hooch, and writing the real stuff that made us smile, think, cry, or recoil in disgust. They took the American reality from the 1930s and 1940s and gave it to us with a backhanded slap to the face. It awakened some of us, the ones that paid attention.
Jack Kerouac and the rest of his group weren’t meant for literary sainthood; they were too stained, too fallible, and over-baptized. America was real; life was not always the astringed family of mom and pop, two kids, and a cocker spaniel. Sometimes it hurt. More often than not, it was damned good. Men were riddled with imperfections but still knew how to be male, and women were as perfect as they were created to be.
Somewhere on this trip, along the road, America lost its reality, and people turned to fantasy. Now, we are lost in a landslide, with no escape from a warped reality. The road goes on.
It was the summer of my seventh year, 1957.
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.
This Texan received a letter from Mr. Augustus McRae of Lonesome Dove, Montana. It seems that his middle child, a wealthy TV Preacher, has abandoned him and his wife, leaving them to fend for themselves in their old age.
Mr. McCrae: Back in 1978, I was doing some cowboying on a big ranch in South Texas and grew tired of everything. I hooked up my horse trailer to my Ford Pickup, loaded my horse, Hellbitch, up, and headed for Montana, where the water runs cool and the weather is nice. I made a stop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for some chow and decided to go into this topless bar called “Mamery’s Are Made Of This.” I was sitting there drinking my Schlitz and eating a juicy burger when this topless lady comes up behind me, pecks me on the neck and sings, ” Blow up the TV, throw away the papers, move to the country build you a home… plant a little garden…eat a lotta peaches…try to find Jesus on your own.” I was young and naive and figured that topless lady had something up her sleeve. She danced around that ballroom, and she did the Hoochie-Coo, she sang that song all night long, telling me what to do. Well, it worked. She gave me a big old smackeroo, grabbed her little suitcase, and hopped in my pickup, and the three of us headed for Montana. We built us a little log cabin, no TV, no papers, planted a great garden with Peach trees, raised a lot of children, and they all found Jesus on their own. That’s where my problem starts, Mr. Texan. Our middle child, Baby Face Joey, took to religion and preaching like a duck to a June bug. He preached to anyone who would listen and began healing the ranch’s livestock and the garden veggies: we had the nicest Peach orchard in Montana. When he turned sixteen, he left the house and found himself in Houston, Texas. He preached a lot, built a large congregation, and relocated his church to an old basketball arena. Now he has about twenty thousand people in his church, and he’s raking in money like there’s no tomorrow: wealthy can’t describe the amount of cash this little chiseler stuffs in his custom-made suit pockets. Me and his momma are old and don’t have much these days, so I call Preacher Baby Face Joey and ask him for a little financial help. He sends us a $50.00 gift card to The Walmart and a membership in the Jelly Of The Month Club. I’m as mad as a hungry wolf and the wife is ready to whip his little butt with a Peach tree switch. Do you have any suggestions on how we can manage this situation without disrupting the entire familyThe Texan: Well, Mr. Gus, I’m sometimes at a loss for words, but this isn’t one of them. When I was a young and hungry man, I too did some cowboying down in South Texas. I got bitten twice by Rattlers and stomped by a bull, and that was it for the wrangler days. I’ve been in your part of Montana and there ain’t a more beautiful place, cows and Peach trees all over the place. Those TV preachers get pretty full of themselves, and I believe I know the one you’re writing about, and he’s about as obnoxious as they come. I suggest taking your wife and any kids left at home, go to Houston, dressing in some ragged clothes from the Goodwill, and walk down the aisle begging for some help. If that doesn’t get Baby Face Joey to cough up some cash, then nothing will. Keep in touch, and I’m sending you an album of John Prine’s Greatest hits and an autographed picture of Gypsy Rose Lee for the wife.