I was young, barely talking, so I couldn’t say Trigger. It came out as Twigger. The other little buckaroos in the neighborhood mocked my speech impediment. I was three years old, so what. I rode the wilds of Sycamore Park, ducking under low branches, hearing Indians in the trees and Buffalo calling. I rode the banks of the swollen creek, watching turtles feed on the carcass of a carp. I was, in my intended element, a cowboy. Then, the owner of the Little Pony Picture Service lifted me off and put the pony in the trailer. Bummer.
Strawn, Texas Depot, back when there was a train running
Strawn, Texas. Yep, same name as mine and a distant relative in the family food chain. We visited the town last Saturday for a day trip and lunch. Founded in the late 1800s and soon to be the gateway to our newest Texas state park, “Palo Pinto Mountains State Park.” A 5,400-acre rough and rustic layout that includes a lake, a river, a creek, mountains, trails, rocky escarpments as big as a house, and every kind of critter imaginable. The main entrance is through the town, which is in need of a shot in the arm to boost the economy. 80 percent of the downtown buildings are vacant. The Paramount Plus, Taylor Sherriden-driven television show “1883 The Bass Reeves Story” wrapped filming in the town last March and, at the request of the city fathers, left many of the sets and changes made to the abandoned 1800-style buildings. The little town has seen better days, but no one can remember when.
The Strawn Greyhounds are the winningest six-man football team in history, with numerous state championships. Mary’s Cafe, the famous eatery written up in food magazines and Texas Monthly for her large Chicken Fried Steaks, was left in its original condition because Mary and her gals fed the film crews good ole’ high-calorie Texas vittles; Chicken fried everything and topped off with gallons of white gravy, and to finish up, with a lot of sugary pie, iced tea, and coldbeer ( all one word in Texas).
Fake front movie set left by the 1883 crewsOld Hotel repurposed for the series
I’m no stranger to Strawn. My affiliation with the village goes back to 1958 when my father purchased a lot on Lake Tucker, the town’s source of drinking water and a beautiful small body of water formed by a creek when the dam was built by the PWA in the 1930s. The lot itself was steep and rocky, backing up to a massive hill and rock escarpment with boulders the size of a single-family home and a Buick. There was a dwelling of sorts, a small plywood one-room fishing shack with a tar paper roof. It had running water, a bathroom, a window unit, a hotplate for cooking a few cots, and a small dock. My mother was appalled but captive and had to rough it; she couldn’t walk out and darn sure couldn’t swim back to the dam. The place was crawling with Rattlesnakes, Copperheads, and Coral Snakes, and that was just the vicinity of the shack. Down at the dock, by our flat-bottom aluminum boat, the only transportation to the shack unless you could rock climb, the Water Moccasins were as thick as mosquitos. My mother, holding my baby sister in a parental death hug, damn near had a nervous breakdown as my father and I set about chopping the heads off of every venomous reptile we could find with a sharpshooter-shovel and a chunkable bolder. The Rattlers were the most fun; they would strike the shovel and break a fang before they were guillotined. I got to remove and keep the rattlers for later use in scaring the kids in my neighborhood. I could have been bitten many times over if I had thought about being scared, but I tackled the task with glee and abandon. I was a feral boy in my element.
The second night in the shack, during the wee hours before dawn, my mother heard something sniffing and clawing at the door. It could have been a Coyote, a Mountain Lion, a Bobcat, a Bear, or the dreaded Sasquatch. That was it for her, and we packed and left the next morning. She never went back.
Every visit to the grocery store found me hounding my mother for a nickel or two so I could ride the stationary pony to nowhere. She always gave in and handed me a few nickels to keep me riding the range while she shopped. In my kid’s mind, the wilds of Texas stretched before me, Indians around every corner, wild critters stalking me on my trusty steed. When the coins ran out, I would sit quietly on Twigger until my mother fetched me. I missed my pony, but I was glad when she changed stores, and the new one had a rocket ship to nowhere.
A Typical Beer Joint on Jacksboro Highway, photo by a local Wino
I’ve known old buddy Mooch for around fifty years and thought I knew everything about the man, but now I know I don’t
I rode with Mooch to Fort Worth to pick up a load of mulch. It’s one of those places where a tractor drops a bucket full in the bed of your pickup truck. Cheap and efficient. When Mooch picked me up, I assumed his Chihuahua, Giblet, would be in the front seat next to Mooch. Giblet was in the back seat strapped into a child carrier wearing Apple Air Pods, held in place with scotch tape. I didn’t want to appear stupid, so I said nothing about a dog using Air Pods. I did ask what Giblet was listening to. Mooch said, “He likes those Tibetian Dog Chants; it keeps him soothed, and he doesn’t break out in hives or crap in the seat. Chihuahuas are a nervous type, you know.” He’s right; the little shit has bitten me numerous times; once, while trying to steal my Whataburger, he bit my bottom lip, and I needed stitches. The dog is so damn old; he’s probably broken some kind of Chihuahua life record.
Since we were near Jacksboro Highway, Mooch asked me how about dropping by his favorite bar for a beer. Sounded good to me, it was over a hundred degrees, and there’s nothing like a dark, cold bar in the summer.
Only a few bars are left on the old Hell’s Highway; they’ve all been dozed, and shopping centers and fast food joints have taken their place. We drove until we were in the country, then pulled into a gravel parking lot in front of Big Mamu’s Bar And Grill.
” This is my favorite bar in my whole life,” says Mooch. ” I’ve been coming here since I was of legal age to drink beer. This is where I got my first taste of the nightlife and other things I can’t discuss.” We ambled in, sat at the bar, and a female bartender brought us two ice-cold Lone Star longnecks. Mooch introduced her as Little Mamu. Her mama, Big Mamu, sold the place to her some years ago and retired back to Chigger Bayou, Louisiana, her hometown. Little Mamu and her husband, Budraux, run the business. Little Mamu, after a closer look, was darn rough. She’s seen some action in her bar years, probably shot or cut a few folks and busted some heads. Bottle blond hair and a hefty figure with arms like Popeye, I wouldn’t want to mess with her. The songs say the gals look better at closing time, but I doubt Mamu would improve by 2 am.
This bar was right out of the 1950s. Red naugahyde booths with little jukeboxes at each table. The rest of the furnishings looked to be original as well. The old Wurlitzer JukeBox in the corner was an antique but was pumping out Merel Haggard like a champ. The neon and backlit beer signs were old and likely worth a fortune. The Ham’s Beer bear was there, the Miller High Life man fishing for trout, and a revolving Jax Beer sign. This was a man’s bar. It dripped dive and beer joint like a dimestore Siv.
Mooch pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and sat on the bar. ” You about ready, Little Mamu?” he says. Mamu grabbed a step stool, climbed onto the bar, and walked over to where Mooch and I sat. I didn’t know if she would do a Hoochi Coochi dance or drop-kick one of us in the face. Mooch turned on the flashlight; Little Mamu raised her skirt a bit, and Mooch shined the light up her dress, bent over, and took a peek upward. ” Yep, everything looks just fine, gal,” he says, handing her a twenty-dollar bill. ” When did you start wearing those Fruit of The Loom underwear? ” Little Mamu didn’t miss a beat, ” I would have worn my Fourth of July ones if I had known you were coming; you haven’t been here in months,” she says. I’m not sure what I just saw; Mooch looking up a woman’s dress with a flashlight? I’ve seen some things, but this is the best one yet. We finished our beer and left.
Some Of My Favorite Things…sort of like Julie Andrews sang about in that movie with all the singing kids
One of the better albums from 1960s Japan. Godzilla does a jam-up job on his Yokohamafuchi electric guitar, although when he attempted to sing ” It’s Hard To Say I Love You When I’m Breathing Fire,” with his backup singers “The Hiroshima Sisters,” he hiccuped and accidentally incinerated the girls, along with most of the studio musicians.
Kids with a few dollars in change will buy anything. I was one of the little suckers for these ads in the back of comic books. Charles Atlas training manuals, tea-cup monkeys, live sea horses, tiny submarines that ran on baking soda, and the above X-Ray Specs. I sent my five quarters in an envelope and a month later received my prize. They were more like those cheesy 3-D glasses than real glasses. Georgie, my buddy, was my test specimen. Nope, nothing there, still Georgie in his baseball cap, no bones, innards, or X-Ray vision. I should have ordered the genuine Super Man glasses. I tried them on a few of the tom-boy girls in the neighborhood. After I told them I could see their bones and guts, they beat me with a hula-hoop; although I tried to tell them I was kidding, the beating continued; I barely got away. I handed them to my mother; she put them on, looked at me, and said, ” I see you’re still wearing yesterday’s underwear.”
Back before we had NPR and educational television, we kids had Shari Lewis and Lambchop, Howdy Doodie ( who was a real kid with strings tied to his body), Mickey and Amanda, the mud turtle and Opossum, Soupy Sales, and White Fang and a dozen more. This album was somewhat educational, in a Dave Gardner, Rusty Warren adult party sort of way. The gal that sings songs about puppets is Shari Lewis’s half-sister, which tried to horn in on Shari’s gig by coming up with two repulsive puppets calling them “Clam Chop” and “Devil Baby.”My cousin Jok loaned me the album. He’s the one that blew up everything with cherry bombs and shot my other cousin, Ginger, in her butt with an arrow. He was not the best influence.
A picture of my Christmas display in my front yard from six years ago. I saw nothing wrong with having a rubber T-Rex and a few Raptors eating Santa and Barbie for Christmas dinner. I had colored solar lights at night, which looked like a professional display. I was feeling pretty darn good about it until a few old ladies in my neighborhood, the ones that drove Cadillacs, sported blue hair, and wore prune faces, complained to the association office, and under threat of arrest and seizure of my home, I removed the display.
Yep…I had one of those too. Imagine giving a kid a toy gun that shoots hard plastic bullets, and they hurt at close range. In the 1950s, folks didn’t see the harm in giving us kiddos potential leather weapons. Everything was good until my cousin, a little cherry bomb kid, forced a 22-caliber bullet into my rifle and blew the thing to pieces. I also possessed a real sharp full-size Jim Bowie knife and a WW2 Army Surplus hand grenade.
Bugs and Marvin The Martian, courtesy of Mel Blanc
Since childhood, I knew we were not alone in this universe. A steady diet of space movies on channel 11 made a believer out of me. “The Forbidden Planet” with the robot and that hubba-hubba Ann Francis chick, and “Invaders From Mars,” where kidnapped folks had a red glowing jewel drilled into their neck, became zombies, and were sucked into the Martian cave via sand dunes. Those are the two that gave me screaming assed nightmares but piqued my still-forming juvenile imagination into what it is today. Certain that I saw a UFO over the Gulf of Mexico when I was eight years old, a run-in with small grey alien beings when I was abducted from my warm bed, taken aboard a mother ship, and implanted with a device that tracked my life and gave me superior mental powers over my childhood friends. I was hooked like a crappie on a purple people eater jigamajig spinner.
Now, all of these decades later, our slippery when-wet government confirms that the spaceships and little green men are real, and we have many of these crafts in our possession. I am relieved to know my beliefs were correct. The next time I drive through Roswell, New Mexico, which will be next month on our way to Ruidoso for some mountain air and horse racing, I will feel relieved that I was right all along. May the force be with you, and all that goes with it.
My father, Johnny Strawn, on the left, playing twin fiddles with Bob Wills
In the early fifties, my Father, Johnny Strawn, owned the Sunset Ballroom, just a stone’s throw off Jacksboro Highway in West Fort Worth, Texas. A country fiddle player by profession, he soon realized that trying to play nightly gigs at other clubs and managing his own business didn’t work, so he hired, as his club manager, his childhood running buddy, best friend, and my God Father, Dick Hickman.
Dick and my Father had grown up together in depression era Fort Worth and remained best friends to their last day. Decades later, they often reminisced, over a good glass of scotch, that “they didn’t know they were poor because everyone had the same amount of nothing that they did.”
Dick, besides being the new manager, was also pulling double duty as the club’s bouncer. A job he deplored but accepted and performed well when required. Being a family man and a peaceful sort, he soon became weary of kicking unruly customer’s rears every night, so my father, in a lapse of good judgment, hired one of the local tough guys to take Dicks place as the official bouncer and security, A mean little cat, that went by the name of “Toes Malone.” If he had another first name, he kept it a secret.
Toe’s was a likable two-bit-north side thug that had experienced one too many run-ins with the Fort Worth mob. The boys in the mob liked him and thought he was a funny guy to be around, so when Toe’s tried to horn in on their action or crossed them in any way, instead of just killing him outright like anyone else, they would shoot, or remove a body part to teach him a lesson.
After a few major discussions in a back ally with his admirers and the loss of an ear, three fingers, and an arm, “Toe’s” got his new name.
He didn’t give up being a tough guy. Being the mean little son-of-a-gun that he was, he had the local boot shop install two small pen knife blades into the toes of his Justin cowboy boots.
He was pretty agile for a one-armed cat and could carve you up like a Winn Dixie rib-roast before you knew what happened to you.
No one messed with Toes. He was the original Bad Leroy Brown of the South.
The patrons loved Toes so much that they would ask him to show his little “toe knives” to their wives just for laughs. He would gladly hoist his boot up on their table, proudly display his shiny little blades to anyone who asked, and tip a buck or two. The wives, giggling like school girls, would open their pack of Lucky Strikes on his boot tip blades.
He was part of the entertainment, sort of a hoodlum head waiter that would kill you if you complained about anything.
My father said his presence increased business, so he kept Toe’s own despite his reputation. In later years, he admitted that firing Toe’s would have likely led to his own early demise.
Toe’s, being a hoodlum to the core, couldn’t help himself and finally crossed the mob boys one too many times. On a cold December night in 1953, out by Crystal Springs Ballroom, they blew him in half with a shotgun blast.
My Father, saddened by the grisly demise of his entertaining employee, was relieved that he didn’t have to fire him.
Toes had no true friends to speak of, so it was that the memorial drew only a sparse gathering of musicians, the very mobsters whose hands bore the stain of his demise, and a handful of patrons from the Sunset.
On top of his casket sat his little knife boots and a nice framed picture of a 10-year-old Toe’s. A very fitting end. And once again, Dick had his old job back.
The Sunset, as the legend goes, was where the famous Roger Miller goosing incident occurred.
It’s been said it happened at Rosas or any number of clubs in Fort Worth, but I have it from two witnesses, my father, and Dick, that it happened at the Sunset.
Roger Miller, one of future “King of the Road” fame, grew up around Fort Worth and Oklahoma and, like many stars, struggled many years in the joints before making it big in Nashville. He was worse than a half-assed fiddle player but a promising songwriter, scraping out a living by frequenting the Sunset Ballroom, Rosas, Stella’s, The Crystal Springs Ballroom, or any other club that would let him sing and play for a few bucks.
One August night at the Sunset, he sang a few tunes onstage and tortured his fiddle for the less-than-appreciative crowd. The dance floor was full of sweaty “tummy rubbing” dancers doing their best to “not pass out” from the oppressive Texas heat that saturated every corner of the un-air-conditioned joint.
An attractive couple took to the floor, the lady in her fitted peddle pushers moving her backside with a careless grace that drew the attention of the young musicians on stage.
She got that jiggling backside near the edge of the stage, and Roger Miller, being the pre-Icky Twerp idiot that he was, couldn’t resist reaching out with his fiddle bow and goosing her tush.
She jumped.. pushed her dance partner away, and slugged him in the nose. Under the influence of numerous whiskey and cokes, the injured fellow stumbled and fell into a table full of visiting mob boys who turned out to see Roger torture his fiddle and sing a few tunes.
The ensuing brawl lasted a good ten minutes, clearing out the club. Dick carried the fighters out by the collar, two at a time. The mob boys “whooped up” on most everyone within a three-table area, and the rest of the people just whooped each other. The Fort Worth police came in, assessed the situation, sat at the bar, had a free Coke, took their pay-off money, and left.
Roger was banned from playing his fiddle at the Sunset, and soon after that incident, he went on to Nashville and started writing better tunes and working in better joints.
My Mother, fed up with my father’s teetering on the fringe of certain death, finally told him to sell the place or he would be living there by himself.
Dad sold it to Dick, who, after a few months, realized the nightclub business was not for him. He sold it to a steady patron with a questionable reputation, and the club, after becoming an illegal gambling joint in the late fifties, finally ceased to exist and was demolished in the mid-seventies.
Despite its well-deserved reputation, most of the great entertainers did manage to play there; Lefty Frizzle, Marty Robbins, Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys, Bill Boyd and the Cowboy Ramblers, Willie Nelson, The Lightcrust Doughboys, and a long cast of other impressive country music acts.
One Saturday night, a few weeks before Dad sold it to Dick, Bob Wills, and his band had a show in Weatherford, Texas, that was canceled due to bad weather. Not wanting to make the night a complete loss, he stopped at the Sunset on his way back into town. Being good friends with my Dad and his mentor, Bob took the whole band on stage and did a knocked-out impromptu show. Word on the Jacksboro Highway spread fast; within an hour, the place was packed to capacity. I have an old 8×10 black and white picture of Bob and Dad playing twin fiddles on San Antonio Rose. It was a night he was profoundly proud of and, over the years, spoke of it often.
The old place may have carried a less than stellar reputation, but that long demolished building hosted some of the greatest musicians in country music.
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.
It will be around 106 to 109 degrees today in Granbury, Texas. MoMo and I are hunkered down in the house, shades closed, and fans running. I will go outside after dark to water my poor plants that are perishing from the heat, and a twenty-mile-per-hour wind, so it feels like a commercial hair dryer. The weather folks on the tube say it will be over one hundred all week. We are doomed.
When Armadillos start drinking iced cold beer, you know it’s hot. We have a house, Finch, nesting her eggs under our metal carport. MoMo is worried that she may get too hot or the eggs might cook, so she wants to buy the little bird a small air-conditioner or a misting machine. I’ll check with the bird tonight to see if she is interested.
In the 1950s, we had a heat wave that lasted all summer. Some folks say 1980 was the worst, but we had AC back in 1980, and in 1955, very few folks had AC; our family had an attic fan and a backyard water hose to spray ourselves with. One of our neighborhood girls put some biscuit dough on the sidewalk, and “boom,” she invented sidewalk biscuits. You couldn’t eat them without breaking a tooth, but they were great for chunking at kids you didn’t care for. Skipper, our resident wiz-kid, devised a weapon using sidewalk biscuits and cherry bombs, a kid’s hand grenade that we used in a battle against “the hard guys,” a group of punks from across the tracks tormented our gang of well-behaved heathen children. We couldn’t go to the Forest Park public pool because our mothers said it was a sure bet that all of us would contract the dreaded Polio virus and our neighborhood would be wiped out, so we were stuck with lawn sprinklers to beat the heat.
My neighbor, and mad scientist, Mr. Mister, purchased an enormous blow-up kiddie pool, filled it with ice he stole home from his employer, Carswell Air Force Base, filled it with his water hose, and ran a tube from an air pump in his garage to the pool, and invented the first “Spa.” Us kids sometimes got to use it, but it was mainly for himself and Mrs. Mister, who lay in the contraption until midnight drinking frosty adult beverages and smoking ciggies. We had to do what we could to stay cool in those “good old days.”
My mom had big hair “back in the day,” meaning the 1950s. Her brother, J.A. Manley, my jovial uncle, was a beautician; for all we knew, he was the inventor of big hair in Texas. It came to the point that she had to duck to go through a door, and she was all of five feet two inches tall. Back then, the bigger the hair, the more prominent the gal. She wasn’t rich, but my uncle ensured she had a main that required three cans of hair SprayNet to hold it upright. Going to the grocery store with her was a life lesson experience. If a lady she knew saw her, they would approach, pushing a cart full of TV dinners, and say, “lookit yeeew, your looking so good, gal. Is that a new dress? I jus luv yer hair-dew, how’s the fammmmily and them?” I usually got a pinch on my cheek or a smooch if I was too close. One lady always tried to clean my ears with a hanky and spit. They all had big hair and an even bigger greeting. It never changed. It was a secret society code known only by Texas mothers.
Saying Goodbye’s
Trips to a friend’s or family were part of our weekends. Grandmothers, cousins, neighbors, friends of cousins, complete strangers, it didn’t matter. When it came time to leave, my father and I would go to the car and prepare to sit and wait, sometimes fifteen minutes, but most often half an hour or more. Texas women say goodbye in stages. They all did it, learned from their mothers and grandmothers, and so on. The first goodbye is, “we got to go home now, but will see ya’ll next week; we sure enjoyed the supper.” That was the beginning stage. The second stage was standing at the door gossiping about family and who drank too much beer or hooch and cussed too much. The third stage was standing on the front porch, talking more, and discussing family issues. The fourth stage was about halfway to the car, and the gossip and family issues got more serious. The fifth stage was my mother opening the car door and adding more condolences, Thank yous….., and a few hugs. Then, we left. I was usually asleep by then, and my father had smoked most of his Lucky Strikes.
Shopping And Trickery
If you lived in Fort Worth, there were limited options for a woman’s clothing shopping. Leonards’s Department Store was the go-to place. It had everything the big boys in New York carried and then some. You could buy an Italian cut-crystal vile of Liz Taylor’s spit, a genuine copy of Rock Hudson’s wedding album, a live cow, and an Evinrude boat motor. My mother stuck to clothes; she was always on a budget and searching for the best bargain. If she found something she liked, she would hide that article in another rack so no one else would find it. This went on for hours, then she would revisit the pieces of clothing and decide the one she wanted. It wasn’t just her, all the women in the store did the same thing, and they would watch each other hide things and then grab them for themselves. All of my aunts and cousins did the same thing. I only got a pair of PF Flyer sneakers, maybe a tube of BBs, and a pair of button-fly Levi’s. It’s a Texas thing.
Notes From The Cactus Patch 