I wrote this story in 2021. It’s a real-life encounter near my Grandmother’s farm in Santa Anna, Texas: I was seven years old.
I was told not to go near the railroad tracks or the bridge over them; Hobo’s lived there. My Grandmother warned me daily of the consequences, which were all bad. Scary men, vagrants with no home and no family, they were just there, alone, living their life as best they could. I was seven years old and unafraid.
The dirt road along the tracks took me past Mrs. Ellis’s shack of a home. She didn’t live much better than the Hobo’s, but she had a home, a warm dry bed, chickens, and a dog, so she was poor but stable. She waved as I walked by, and then, as I got a few yards past, she took off to my grandmother’s farmhouse to tattle on me. I knew I was in trouble even before I got to the bridge. I considered turning back, but no, I needed to see this through.
As I got closer to the bridge, I could see there was a lone figure sitting on a bucket next to a campfire. I was puzzled because Granny always said there were dozens of those evil men under the bridge. Now, there was only one, and he appeared to be old and not much of a threat, sitting on his bucket cooking a can of something in the campfire. I approached him but with caution and a bit of fear. The Hobo waved me over. He was an old black man with hair as white as south Texas cotton. His clothes, mostly rags, hung on his frail frame; he resembled the scarecrow in my Papa’s garden. Next to him was a Calico cat, curled up in an old felt hat, purring and licking its paw. In the fire was a can of pork and beans cooking on a flat rock and bubbling like a witch’s brew. I sat crossed-legged on the dirt next to him.
” Does your Granny know you are here?” he asked.
” No sir, she don’t know, and I’m in a heap of trouble.” said I.
He smiled at me and said, ” It’ll all be good, your Granny knows old Bebe. I used to do odd jobs for her and your Papa and she paid me good and always fed me her heavenly biscuits and gravy. She is a wonderful lady, your Granny.” I couldn’t disagree with that, so I smiled back.
He took a worn-out spoon, heaped a large serving of beans into a dirty tin cup, and handed it to me. I was hungry. We ate our dinner together without talking. He gave the cat a spoonful of his beans. It was then that I noticed he had given me most of the can, and left little for himself. This old Hobo is living under a bridge with hardly any food and nothing of value to his name, except maybe the Calico cat, which he shared with a stranger, possibly his one meal of the day. In the mind of a seven-year-old, this seemed normal.
Bebe told me a little about his life and how he came to be a Hobo. I shared what little life experience I had accumulated up to that point. We laughed a little, and then he said I had better head back to the farm. We shook hands; I scratched the cat and walked down the road towards a switching I knew was coming.
My Granny took my explanation well. There was no switching my butt this time and no dressing down. As I walked through the screen door and headed for the barnyard, she said, “Sometimes the folks who have the least share the most. Remember that.” I have.
Old Pal Mooch called this morning asking me if I would help him bury something. Mooch is not a sentimental guy, so I was a bit taken back with his request. He didn’t say who are what it was, or what happened. I immediately assumed it was his old Chihuahua, “Giblet.” He said he would pick me up in ten-minuets.
As I opened the passenger side of the pick-up truck, I noticed a tarp with something underneath, and a shovel laying in the bed. There was also a gas can. We drove in silence for a few miles then turned on a dirt road and onto some federal land.
Mooch found a spot by a large Oak tree and dug a nice little hole, about large enough for a small dog. He then retrieved the tarp and laid it on the ground next to the grave.
When he jerked back the tarp, I expected to see the remains of his beloved dog, but instead, there was his new Apple laptop that his wife had given him for a birthday present. He quickly pushed it into the hole, poured gas on the machine and threw in a match. The fire did it’s work in less than a minute. I was too stunned to say much about what I had witnessed so I let Mooch do the talking.
“I paid nearly two grand for that sorry piece of plastic and I turn it on this morning and get Error 19. Sum-bitch, the darn laptop has the COVID-19 Virus so here we are burning it just like they did when the plague was killing those folks in Europe” he says.
It was best to just remain quiet. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was a computer error, not a virus.
Read this morning that Woodstock will be back for another encore. It’s been fifty-six years since half a million young people sat in a pasture, listening to rock music, believing they had changed the world. It was revisited in the 90s and was a miserable mess, even without the rain and mud. Some things should be remembered for what they were and leave it at that. But possibly, this 56-year reboot could be a winner.
Imagine if some of the original musicians returned, and they might if asked. It would be worth the ticket cost to see Stills, Nash, and Young wheeze through a set. They could set a full size cardboard figure of Crosby next to them, since he has gone to Nirvana. Melanie could ride her little scooter onstage and croak through a few tunes. Country Joe and the Fish could do the Vietnam song again, and Joni Mitchell might even make the gig this time. John Fogarty will be born on the bayou again. Of course, Hendrix, Janice Joplin, and the mighty Joe Cocker have checked out, so Santana must fill that void. John Sebastian and Arlo Guthrie could do their hippie single-guitar thing and say “wow” a few hundred times. Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm could run the concessions.
I’m sure the rest of the lineup will consist of current stars. Rappers, dancers, acrobats, and singers fly through the air or take the stage via a zip line suspended from a cell phone tower a mile away. It’s not about talent these days. It’s all, “look at me” and auto-tune. Katy Perry can fly in on a Game of Thrones dragon while lip-singing any of her forgettable songs. Courtney Hadwin, the fiery young reincarnation of Janice Joplin, will probably steal the show. Greta Van Fleet will wow the crowd with their spot-on imitation of Zeppelin. Wonder how that will turn out since Robert Plant will be performing?
I attended the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival and saw most of the acts at Woodstock a few weeks later, so I can say, “been there and seen it all.” It will be fitting for the old-timers to show the young fans how it used to be. ” No rain-No rain.”
Over the years, I’ve spotlighted the storytelling skills of my two late Uncles, Jay and Bill. They remain in good standing and are the best liars and yarn spinners I have met. Each could have been as popular as Will Rogers, but they chose the farmhouse porch as their stage, shunning the spotlight and life as a celebrity.
Around the age of nine, I was convinced that the spirit of Mark Twain had somehow entered my body, and my destiny was one he had lived. My teacher, an older woman of little patience, was convinced that I was dropped on my head during infancy, which led to my outlandish literary behavior. She couldn’t see that I was destined to be a writer of some importance. Mathematics was a mystery I loathed, but I perked up when the curriculum came around to History and English. To me, everything became a story and originated from my grandparents’ farm, my extended street-rat crazy family, or neighborhood antics, and included made-up tales of ridiculous origins. Mrs. Badger, ever the suffering teacher, labeled me an insufferable pathological liar and called my mother in for the dreaded parental meeting, which included my school’s principal, who sat with a wicked wooden paddle in his lap, poised to administer punishment. Mother handled it well until we reached home. There was no butt whooping, but she did corner me in the kitchen, put her face nose to nose with mine and in a seething saliva spewing accusation said,
“You are one of them..my loathsome, worthless brothers have ruined you: I forbid you to associate with them, ever again.” She was right, they had, and I wore that tawdry badge proudly. All those nights sitting on the farmhouse front porch listening to their beer-infused tall tales, yarns, and lies formed me. I was spoiled, but happy goods. My family lacked the foresight needed to distinguish a liar from written fiction. My Aunt Norma, a tarnished angel, is the gal who taught me to read, write, and imagine. She understood my affliction.
Preacher Little, to the left, addresses his small congregation with a firm reminder that the sky is not a-falling and that it’s high time they get a grip on the wild ride we call life. An hour later, a raucous band of Fire Ants laid siege to the squishy Peeps, and thus, the service came to an untimely end. My wise old Grandfather, or maybe it was an old-man neighbor, once opined, “Son, you can’t go traipsing about with your head aimed at the clouds, waiting for a disaster to drop from the sky. Best keep your eyes peeled to the ground, lest you unwittingly find yourself knee-deep in a nest of Fire Ants.”
While watering my landscape this morning, I heard a loud buzzing sound radiating from a Salvia bush. I part the leaves searching for this buzzing source.
Bingo, attached to a branch, is a Murder Hornet. I have a picture of the little beast on my refrigerator for identification, since I knew they were heading my way. The Farmers Almanac said they would make Texas by late spring, so the magazine was correct for once.
Why are all pandemics, poisonous foods, pharmaceuticals, and end-times monsters originating from the Asian continent, mainly China?
It’s a laundry list of evil mutants starting with Godzilla, Mothra, Son of Godzilla, King Kong fighting Godzilla, Giant Transformers, The Corona Virus, The Asian Flu, The Bat Flu, the Pig Flu, the Bird Flu, and now hornets with the face and murderous attitude of Charles Manson.
Fearing for the lives of my Bumble Bees, I spray the Murder Hornet with a substantial dose of Black Flag. It flaps its wings a few times and buzzes at me. No effect whatsoever. Okay, this mutant is chemical resistant and knows what I look like and where I live.
I retrieve my 1966 era Daisy BB Pistol from my work shed; old school tactics are now on the table.
I sneak up to the Salvia bush and spread the branches enough for a clean shot. There it sits with a Bumble Bee in its grasp, stinging the life out of the poor pollinator. I see a dozen more casualties on the ground below the plant—Satan with wings and a stinger. This monster has to go to La La Land now.
The first BB bounces off the buggers’ armor plating, putting a hole in my den window. There goes $300 bucks. Now it’s personal. The second and third shots wing the critter, and now it is insanely mad and buzzing like a chainsaw.
With only two BBs left in my pistol, I go for the kill shot to the head. I take my aim and begin to squeeze the trigger. The murderous thug-bug looks up at me with its Charles Manson eyes, and a shiver runs up my spine. ” Go ahead, kill me if you must, but I have friends that will track you down.” It’s look says it all.
I take the shot, and the invader falls to the ground, headless. The Bumble Bees, sensing victory, swoop in and finish the killer off. Payback for their fallen brethren.
I retrieve the dead hornet from the bush with a pair of Martha Stewart grilling tongs and place it on my backyard retaining wall. A few squirts of charcoal lighter fluid and a wooden match complete the deed, and the bad-ass bug is on its way to hornet Valhalla.
My wife walks up and says, ” so, you got him, good job. Look at these cute little packs of Chinese seeds that came in the mail just now.”
For my birthday a while back, my wise and thoughtful wife, Momo, gifted me a classic 1970 Underwood 310 manual typewriter. It is a wonderful present I would never have purchased, although I have yearned for one for a while now.
For some time, possibly five years or so, I have been whining and casually threatening to go “old school” with my writing and get away from this demon laptop. It’s too easy to keep on tapping and spit out a page or two of gibberish that has more words than needed and makes no sense. It’s not about speed and what your program does; it’s about the content. A typewriter makes you think before striking that key. The delete button does not exist.
Hemingway would tap for hours on end, and then if he wasn’t pleased with his effort, it went into the waste basket. Using a typewriter to transpose your thoughts to paper is a commitment, and not an easy one.
There was a typewriter in our household when I was a child. It was a large black beast of an Underwood, all pure American heavy metal, requiring a grown man and a hefty child to lift it. I would peck on it for hours and eventually come up with something legible. I never once saw my parents use it, so its presence in our home was a mystery. I heard from my older cousin, Cookie, that it was my grandmother’s when she lived in California, and she spent all of her waking hours tapping away letters and movie script ideas. It caused a good bit of drama and injury within the family, so it was banished to our household for safekeeping. My father wasn’t pleased when he would find me chicken pecking away.
My love of the machine started at an early age, and came into full blossom as a teenager in the 1960s, when I started to write stories. I took typing in high school to sharpen my skills and learn the keyboard. I studied two years of journalism, and learned to love the written word. My teacher was my mentor. She pushed me to excel. It all paid off well. When computers came about in the late 90s, I was a good typist and had no problem adapting.
I will keep you posted on how this “old school” project turns out. I typed a page on my Underwood, and my fingers are throbbing.
An old friend of mine passed a few months ago. We had been apart for years, yet he held a distinct place in my thoughts. I sometimes borrowed fragments of his vivid life for my short stories, which pleased him. His name was simply Junior. He believed a last name was of no consequence and cared little for family ties.
In 1957, he opened a coffee house in the heart of downtown Fort Worth, Texas. Although they will tell you that “The Cellar” was the first, the “Hip Hereford” came first by a full year.
Junior was born to be a cowboy. His father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and all the uncles and cousins wore the same boots and lived by the code of the West. There were more cowboys in his bloodline than in a John Wayne film. It should have been his fate. But then, his favorite horse, Little Bill, kicked him hard in the head. After that, he turned his back on the rugged ideals of the West. He became the owner of a coffee house club, a renaissance man, a poet, and a man who lived life like a Stetson-wearing beatnik. He said a life spent on a sweaty saddle, inhaling the stench of cattle farts, was not the life he dreamed of.
The opening night for the coffee house was Halloween 1957. Junior hires two street winos to help run the door and do odd jobs. They were reluctant to give him their birth names, so he christened them Wino 1 and Wino 2. They were good to go as long as Junior paid them and kept the booze flowing. The following is an excerpt from the unfinished story.
Around 7:15, Wino 2 informs Junior that the first performer has arrived and takes the stage for the introduction. He steps to the mic and, in that pleasant voice, says, “Ladies and gents, please welcome to the stage, Mr. Blind Jelly-roll Jackson and his nurse Carpathia.”
An ancient black man with hair as white as South Texas cotton, holding a guitar as old as himself, is helped to the stage by a prim female nurse dressed in a starched white uniform. The old man wears a red smoking jacket, a silver ascot, and black trousers. Dark sunglasses and a white cane complete his ensemble. The old fellow is as blind as Ray Charles.
The nurse gently seats the old gentleman in a chair provided by Wino 1 and lowers the large silver microphone to a height between his face and his guitar. She then stands to the side of the stage, just out of the spotlight. Blind Jelly Roll starts strumming his guitar like he’s hammering a ten-penny nail. Thick, viscous down strokes with note-bending riffs in between. His frail body rocks with every note he coaxes out of his tortured instrument. He leans into the mic and sings,
“We’s gonna have us a mess o’ greens tonight…haw..haw..haw…haw…gonna wash her down with some cold Schlitz beer..haw..haw..haw..gonna visit ma woman out on Jacksboro way…gonna get my hambone greased”. This was Texas blues at its best.
On cue, his nurse steps into the spotlight, extracts a shiny Marine Band harmonica from her pocket, and cuts loose on a sixteen-bar mouth-harp romp. Her ruby-red lips attack that “hornica” like a ten-year-old eating a Fat Stock Show Corndog. The crowd loves it. They dig it. When Blind Jelly Roll finishes his song, Wino 2 passes a small basket through the group for tips. Jelly Roll and his nurse take their kitty and depart. He’s due back at the old folk’s home before midnight.
Momo and I are gearing up for our yearly trip to the Texas Bermuda Triangle: Marfa, Fort Davis, and Alpine. Strange lights, strange people, and a weird town full of characters out of a 1950s sci-fi western movie. We love the place. So in honor of our love for this quirky village, I’m revisiting a post about our last journey into the Chihuahuan Desert, the twilight zone of Big Bend, Texas.
In the days of COVID-19, when darkness, despair, and lemming-like stupidity seemed to envelop the world, every soul, human and animal alike, found themselves confined to their homes, forbidden to roam: even the wandering Buffalo was home-bound. It was then that Momo and I made a pact to evade the restrictions and set out on a clandestine journey to the remote Chihuahuan Desert, with our sights set on the enigmatic and quirky town of Marfa, nestled in the vast expanses of big sky West Texas. We had no idea that a small blurb of a village in the middle of the desert would be so ghosted. It was eerie in an Alfred Hitchcock movie way. We did find a small burrito hut, grabbed a few, and returned to Granbury. The trip was an utterly bummerited loss.
I wrote an unkind, snarky post about our Marfa visit in my hour of exasperated, irritated, and agitated gloom. The older I get, the more the little things in life send me into a combat zone of petulant whining and unforgiveness. So we were both surprised that, having a cocktail on our patio one evening, we decided to give little ole’ Marfa a second chance. We plotted a trip that would take us into the Chihuahuan Triangle, which, from what I have read, is a dry land version of the one-off of Bermuda. Marfa, Alpine, and Fort Davis make up the Texas twilight zone. Ghostly lights in the mountains, shooting stars that stop and change directions, and strange-looking young people wearing Keep Austin Weird tee-shirts that wander the streets at night searching for live music: it’s all there.
Hotel Piasano
Being a fan of the great Texas movie “Giant,” the Hotel Piasano, where the cast stayed during the 1955-56 filming, was our only historical option. Arriving in the afternoon, the lady at the check-in desk was gracious and friendly. She gave us the “classic” room, which in the hotel language means one that had not been renovated since the 1930s. That’s fine with us; we are interested in the historical value and feel of the place. I noticed some of the rooms were the star suites, so I asked about those. The concierge told us that the Rock Hudson room is available for around half a grand a night and includes a lighted display cabinet featuring the original book of wedding photos from his make-believe marriage. We passed. The Liz Taylor suite was priced the same and included a small lighted curio cabinet showcasing a dainty Italian crystal decanter filled with her spit. Momo said no. The James Dean suite showcased his favorite toiletry in a glass cabinet, his comb, and a half-used tube of Brylcream. No, on that one, too. The concierge did say that our room is rumored to have been the one that Chill Wills occupied, so we gave it a go. She added that the entire hotel is extremely haunted, so beware of ghostly appearances and personal items being relocated.
Liz, Rock, and Houston in Marfa 1955
Considering all the warnings about ectoplasmic phenomena, we unpacked in our classic room, which includes a 1930s-style bathroom with a corner shower and a drain in the sloped tile floor. I know damn well that Chill Wills could not have got his big ole Texas boy butt into this shower. French doors opened to a private walled patio with an outside stucco fireplace. How nice is that? I could picture Chill and Dennis Hopper sharing a whiskey by the fire. We enjoyed a cocktail while observing a thunderstorm roll over the mysterious mountains.
Our dinner at Jett’s Grill was nothing to text back home: My pork chop was too pink, and Momo’s chicken surprise lived up to its name; she was surprised it tasted like cardboard and cost thirty dollars. I enjoyed a Jameson Irish Whiskey on the rocks for almost twenty dollars, and Momo had a whiskey with ginger ale for twenty-one dollars; they charged her for the ginger ale. After paying the check, we felt a bit violated. We spent the rest of our evening in the classic room, waiting for another distant thunderstorm from over the mysterious mountains.
Planet Marfa
Local Marfites at Planet Marfa enjoy a brew, and Sagebrush Sonny is seated far left.
Planet Marfa became our next foray into the Big Bend Twilight Zone. The place took up half a city block. Inside was a genuine transcendental Indian meditation TePee, a full-size school bus dedicated to dogs, a modest kitchen offering the renowned Red Barron Pizza, and a bar bustling with locals partaking in their afternoon meet-and-greet. I found myself at the bar’s edge, ready to place an order, when I noticed an elderly gentleman perched on a stool beside me. Out of a sense of camaraderie, I motioned to the bartender to pour the old man another beer, my treat. He acknowledged the gesture gratefully, and we exchanged pleasantries as we shook hands and introduced ourselves. Resembling a character straight out of a Gabby Hayes movie, he embodied the quintessential oddity one might encounter in Marfa. Sagebrush Sonny Toluse, as he called himself, had called Marfa home for nigh on sixty years, having relocated from Presidio, Texas, a town situated right on the Mexico border and reputed to be the hottest spot in Texas.
I noticed Sagebrush Sonny had a wooden peg leg where his right-side human leg would normally be. He noticed me staring and felt compelled to explain his missing appendage. He asked if we were planning to visit the desert and view the famous Marfa lights. I said yes, we intend to do that tonight. He said they were quite a sight, but he warned me not to get caught out there after midnight: bad things happen in the desert.
He said he got caught out there after midnight about thirty years ago after his truck broke down. He decided to walk to town since he was close enough to see the glow of town lights, and that’s when a large pack of mongrels set upon him. He asked me if I had ever wondered why the desert was called the Chihuahuan Desert. I had no idea, so he explained. After the atomic bomb was built, the Army needed a place to dump the nuclear waste, so they chose a spot way out there, stashed some drums of goop, and left them to the elements. Over in Mexico, a fella was breeding Chihuahua dogs, and two of them got lost in the desert; of course, they found the nuclear waste site and lapped up some of the contaminated oozes, which did some crazy things to their DNA. Doing what dogs do, they had some pups, and then the pups met up with some Coyotes and had some more pups. The dogs kept on breeding until there were three or four thousand of the critters, except they weren’t regular dogs. They were all muscled up with shark-like teeth, and some had a fifth leg that allowed them to run like a greyhound dog. The mutts were still small, like a Chihuahua, but they were mutants and mean as hell. That’s how I lost my leg. A pack of them set upon me out there in the dark. I was trying to run, dragging some of them that had hold of my dungeree’s and then they started chewing my right leg. Since they were small, they could only reach up to my knee, and that’s where they stopped eating on me. A highway patrol came along and shot a few of the stragglers and took me to the hospital over in Presidio, where the doctor amputated what was left. That’s why I have the peg leg, and they are the reason it’s called the Chihuahuan Desert. The story alone made the trip a success.
Before I kicked the smoking habit, I look better now
Old people do odd things: I know this firsthand. I’m good at it. A few months ago, the urge to gather and distribute my personal items to family and friends took hold. 2 am in the wee hours, wide awake, I wrote a list of my treasures and who might be the recipient when I assume room temperature. I found that over the years, I have accumulated more useless crap that no one would want.
My tool shed, art studio, storage shed, and junk pile will likely go to the nice folks at the local Goodwill store. The handicap shower chair and the two walkers will stay. The nice walker, the one with four wheels, a handbrake, and a seat, will likely be my new ride. Some guys get a Corvette; I get a souped-up walker. My friend Mooch says he can add a battery-powered motor to make the baby run 30 MPH.
A few weeks back, I bought back one of my acoustic guitars that I sold to Mooch when Momo and I moved to Georgetown, Texas in 2008. It’s a real beaut: a Gibson-made Epiphone E J160 e. Only fifty of them were made in Bozeman, Montana, likely by some of the Yellowstone Dutton family. Now, I have one guitar for each of my three grandchildren, of whom two play guitar.
Us’un humans collect things throughout our lives; it’s our nature. At the time, we might have needed them, but eventually, the things become useless “things” taking up space.
Momo and I are taking a road trip in mid-April. Back to Marfa and Fort Davis, Texas, the Big Bend Chihuahuan Desert. God’s country, big sky and brilliant stars. Marfa is our go-to escape. The town is full of eccentric street-rat crazy folks, and we enjoy interacting with them. I plan to interview a few while sitting at the bar in Planet Marfa, where most of them congregate nightly to swap lies and tell tall tales. I fit right in, my kind of folks, and I need fodder for my stories and yarns. I may fill my pickup full of “things” and give them to the characters I meet. Folks like free stuff and can give the things to their friends down the line.
Notes From The Cactus Patch 