Tag: 1950s

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Is This The Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy? Caught In A Landslide, No Escape From Reality


Me Before I Quit Smoking

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.

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Getting Down With Reverend A.Z. Bergeron: My Time As A Southern Baptist


Brother Dave Gardner

After church service on Sunday, I was visiting with my Pastor. I had finished playing in the worship band, and we talked music for a minute or two, then he asked me about a recent post I had written about my uncle’s dog eating his false teeth. He wanted to know if the dog ate all the teeth and whether the story was true.

I am blessed with a colorful family on both my parents’ sides, so most of what I write is factual and as accurate as my old mind remembers. My cousins disown me, and the rest of the living family thinks I make everything up and have a mental disorder, which I may have, thanks to a bad fall and brain trauma I suffered a few years back that erased part of my memory. However, I didn’t need that part anyway; I still have plenty to tell. I will admit to embellishing the historical facts a bit, only to make the story more believable and easier on those who lack imagination. If I hadn’t witnessed the events firsthand, I wouldn’t believe them either.

The Pastor and I got to talking about my experience as a child attending the Polytechnic First Baptist Church back in the 1950s. I was young, only six years old, with no formal religious training or exposure, except for a few weeks of vacation Bible School in Santa Anna, Texas, taught by two of the meanest, vengeful old bags in town —old maid sisters who were as mean as a sun-stroked Rattlesnake. So my attending that church was a tiny miracle, because I was traumatized by the old battle-axes and should have been in professional counseling. My parents were always short on cash, so a cup of hot Ovaltine and some cookies were the cure for most everything, including childhood trauma.

The good Reverend Augustin Z. Bergeron, the preacher at Poly Baptist, was no mere mortal man. He came from the deep in the Louisiana bayou country, a small Parish named Chigger Bayou, which is also the home of Le Petite Fromage and her daddy, the famous Cajun musician Baby Boy Fromage. My father was good friends with Le Petite during his teenage years in Los Angeles, California.

Reverend Bergeron possessed magical, mystical, fantastical powers, or so the legend is told in Fort Worth. He could cure folks from almost any malady, and did so weekly during Sunday services. He possessed an uncanny resemblance to the famous preacher turned comic, Brother Dave Gardner, another southerner with a bombastic Beatnik style wit and a side wink at southern-style Christianity. Reverend Bergeron either copied Gardner or Gardner saw the good reverend in Chigger Bayou and stole his schtick, which was controversial for a preacher. My father always compared him to Brother Dave, saying his wit was just as sharp and funny. I was a kid, so I didn’t get any of it. I was two years away from discovering Gardner’s comedy records, but when I did, I wore them out and fancied myself a mini-Brother Dave: when I wasn’t pretending to be Mark Twain.

The congregation at Poly Baptist never knew what to expect when the service started at 9 AM. The chorus of big-haired gals in purple robes sang the traditional hymns, all boring and dry as a week-old biscuit. Reverend Bergeron would saunter in from stage left, grab the microphone off the pulpit, and start singing like Ray Charles. The organist followed suit, and the choir became Martha and the Vandellas. That’s when the place started rocking like a black church in the Mississippi low country, which was strange, because most white folk Baptist churches in Texas didn’t have music other than a choir, and no hot-shot keyboardist. The Reverend would dance across the stage, duck walking like Chuck Berry, spinning, falling to his knees, yelling “Thank you, sweet Jesus”, then crawling across the stage like a baby, and, all the time holding on to his lighted Camel cigarette and the microphone. Another blasphemous act, since smoking was deemed a sin by the church. He also had a large Tupperware tumbler of Ice-Cold sweet tea sitting on the pulpit and would constantly refill the tumbler from a pitcher just off stage. Some folks speculated it wasn’t tea, but hooch, and that was the reason for his antics. My parents loved the guy and would smoke as many cigarettes as he did during the service. Almost everyone in the church smoked and would drop their ashes on the wood floor, another sinful citation. An ethereal cloud of toxic blue smoke hung in the air of the un-airconditioned church. It was so thick that it hid the tops of the stylish ladies’ Bee-Hive hairdo. It gave the place a creepy feeling, as if we were suspended in the clouds or the fires of Hell were seeping through the cracks in the old wood floor. I believed it to be from below, and always kept my small legs propped on the Bible holder on the back of the pew. Satan wasn’t going to pull my young butt through those cracks in the floor.

Our family left the church a year or two later and attended an Episcopal Church, which was boring compared to Reverend Bergeron’s Baptist Church. I still dig Brother Dave Gardner.

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Dispatches From The Cactus Patch, August 10, 2025


Keep Those Teeth In Your Mouth….

One of my recent “Ask A Texan” write-ups included a blurb where a large dog ate a man’s lower false teeth. It fit the story well, and it actually occurred about 67 years ago, and I was around when it happened.

My late, late, late uncle wore choppers, as he called them, and had a love-hate relationship with his false teeth. This was back in the days when the technology was archaic at best, and folks suffered greatly when wearing the prosthetics. They weren’t quite George Washington’s wooden teeth, but not much better. I’ll tell the story as best I remember it, as it was told to me by my uncle, then my Sainted Mother.

My two late uncles were the best liars and yarn spinners I have known. My Mother says I am possessed with their restless spirit, wisdom, and imagination: I’ll gladly accept that. Uncle Jay was the best of the two. Uncle Bill was close and at times could out-lie and rip a great yarn better than his brother, but only after Jay drank too much Pearl Beer. I would sit in awe as the two of them went at it on the front porch of the farmhouse on hot summer nights. Of course, cold Pearl Beer always made everything better. One night, the two of them may have had a bit too much beer and retired early. Uncle Jay had lower false teeth, a result of an injury in World War II. He collided with his anti-aircraft gun, or that’s the story he told. My Mother, his sister, said he got them knocked out in a barroom brawl, which sounded about right; he was a mighty scrapper. He also had a large Chow dog named Mr. Pooch. As dogs go, he was friendly, but only if you didn’t get too close, look at him, or try to pet his big head; then he would rip your arm off. So, we cousins stayed the hell away from Mr. Pooch.

Upon turning in for the night, Uncle Jay removed his lower teeth and set them on a chair by his bed. Mr. Pooch, ever the faithful dog, slept by the bed on a pallet of Granny’s quilts. The dog needed something to chew on, so during the night, he helped himself to Jay’s lower false teeth. In the morning, Jay, seeing a tooth and some gum material on Pooch’s pallet, realized the dog had eaten his teeth. Country folks didn’t use vets back in the 1950s, so he figured Pooch would pass the teeth in a day or two. Granny gave Mr. Pooch a dose of salts and some fiber to speed up the process.

The cousins, including me, were doing our usual daytime activities: shooting chickens with our BB Guns, roaming around the Mesquite Tree woods looking for Rattlesnakes, the usual kid stuff. My cousin, Beverly, headed back to the farmhouse by herself, probably to get some ice tea. We heard her scream and took off running. We found her plastered against the wooden plank wall of the smokehouse, crying and snow white; she was having a minor breakdown. We checked her for a snake bite and found none. She then pointed to a large pile of dog poop about ten feet away and wailed louder. Jerry and I walked over to the unusually large pile, and there, alone, was one of the most enormous dog turds we had ever seen. Looking closer, we saw that it had human teeth and was smiling. It scared the hell out of us, and we ran to join Beverly. We didn’t know that Mr. Pooch had eaten our uncle’s lower false teeth, so we thought it was a demon turd from hell or something worse. After Granny told us the story and inspected the poop, we all had a great laugh. Uncle Jay and Mr. Pooch never lived that one down. We never let him forget it.

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Ask A Texan: A Life Without Fireworks? Not In My Lifetime


Unfiltered and Unfettered Advice From A Texan For Folks That For Some Reason Just Can’t Seem To Make It Here. Bless Their Hearts.

The Texan

The Texan: Recently, I’ve received numerous inquiries regarding my infatuation with Pyrotechnics, Fireworks, and things that explode. I won’t beat around the Prickly Cactus; the letters are talking about my love for that classic American invention: Cherry Bombs, the firework of my childhood. Inexpensive, well-made in the USA, it packed a powerful punch and was too dangerous for children. Sure, my cousins and I had Black Cats, Lady Fingers, Doodle Bugs, and other puny munitions that could barely destroy an Ant hill or a Dixie Cup, but nothing could top the vaporizing, nuclear power of a well-placed Cherry Bomb. My sister and her cousins and friends played with Sparklers: a stick of iron wire coated with magnesium nitrate and potassium chlorate that reaches 3000 degrees. What fun, and what could go wrong letting small children wave around a welding torch? This was well before parents found out that those things could disfigure or kill their child, and cigarettes gave you lung cancer. I’ve told many of my readers that dangerous fireworks and the 1950s go together like Forest and Jenny, and peas and carrots.

My fondest and fuzziest memories of 1950s summers involve fireworks. My cousin, Jok, and I always had a supply of them thanks to his older brothers and my neighbor, Mr. Mister. Jok’s youngest-older brother, Michael, our main supplier of fireworks, purchased an MG sports car, a beautiful piece of English engineering. There it sat, parked under a large Oak tree to protect its delicate paint job from the brutal Texas sun. We had just completed blowing up my father’s Aunt’s mailbox with a Cherry Bomb, and the lure of illicit excitement overrode our common sense. Jok placed the munition on top of the left front tire. He lit it, and, giddy with excitement, we dove under their covered porch, awaiting the blast. The fender muffled the initial explosion, but a cloud of smoke told us the test was successful. Creeping closer to the injured auto, we could see the fender had an upward pooch about six inches high, and the top of the tire was shredded. We knew instantly that retribution would be swift and painful, likely lasting for days, if not weeks. It was. First, there were the multiple butt whooping’s from Aunt Berel and Uncle Orem, followed by one or two from his brother, a few from my mother, and then one each from the other Aunts, culminating in the final one from my grandmother and grandfather. They never found our stash of Cherry Bombs.

This explains my fondness for gifting a box of Cherry Bombs to almost all my readers who write in for advice. Nothing relieves anxiety and tension like blowing something up with fireworks.

God Bless Texas and Davy Crockett.

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The Endearing Connection: Ozzy and Ozzie. Pass Me That Burning Guitar…


When old Rockers check out, they do it in style. Ozzy Osborne did one last concert the week before his ride up to meet Saint Peter. TV preacher, Joel ( Money Bags) Olsteen, said that Ozzy, upon being stopped at the gate by an Archangel, told God that the whole black satanic Satan thing was just an act, and he never liked the taste of Bats. I haven’t heard anything yet about whether that worked. Alice Cooper had more fun with the makeup and outfits, and Alice is a Christian, so he will likely make the cut when his time is up.

I was not a Black Sabbath fan, and couldn’t name you one tune they did, but I did watch the Ozzy and family show a few times and found it sort of entertaining and depressing at the same time. I was accustomed to the original Ozzie show, the one with his wife, Harriet, and the two nice-looking sons, and a street full of nicely dressed neighbors. Everyone cooked hamburgers on their charcoal grills every night because the weather on the back lot at California’s Desilu Studios was always so perfect. That’s the Ozzy I connect with. Much like Ozzy Osborne, Ozzie Nelson was also a musician and a television producer. Big Band music, large-scale orchestrated numbers featuring blaring horns, doghouse bass players, and hep cat drummers. Then his son, little Ricky, grew up and had twinkling blue eyes and perfectly styled wolfman hair, a nice Martin guitar, and sang teenage songs that made the young girls all jelly-legged and instantly fertile. So, the dull Ozzie could have related to the outrageous Ozzy, as he had raised a rebellious teenage musical son.

I made a list of deceased musicians and read it to Momo. She is adept at correcting me when I make a social or personal mistake. She asked for a rundown, so I gave it my all, but all was wrong. I had no idea Bruce Springsteen, Spinal Tap, Stills and Nash, Neil Diamond, Diamond Lil, Joni Mitchell, The last Monkee, Paul Simon, Simon and Garfunkel, Dave Clark and his Five, Peter the Hermit, Freddy the Dreamer, and Sir Paul were still alive. What a shock. Ringo is now a member of The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, so I guess that “They’re Gonna Put Me In The Movies” tune paved the way. I told her to put the list in her desk drawer and check it in a few years to see if I foretold the future. The sad reality of old musicians and singers passing on is, who will pick up the torch and replace them? Please don’t even consider Taylor The Swifter and that group of cartoon music morons she spawned. I’m waiting on Dylan and Baez to go on tour.

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Ode To The Mesquite Switch


Memories of your childhood can invade your life at the oddest of times. While shopping at H-E-B a short while back, I witnessed a young mom dragging a screaming toddler down the aisle by his arm while the rest of his little body slid along the floor, she used her other arm to push the cart, which also held another small child. She was nonchalant about the whole scene; obviously, this was a common occurrence for her. I thought she at least had the guts not to give in to the little demon. In my childhood days, not that anyone gives a shit about what an old man remembers, my mother, and more likely my Cherokee Indian grandmother, would have administered a healthy dose of parental punishment. Today’s mothers call in a “child whisperer” to reason with the kid on their behalf.

My two late uncles, Jay and Bill Manley, had a significant influence on my upbringing, and not always in a good way. It must have been in the mid-1950s, on the farm in Santa Anna, Texas. My cousin, Jerry, and I were out behind the smoke-house shooting tin cans with our Daisy BB guns. This was about our only form of entertainment on the farm, except for shooting at rattlesnakes and each other. My uncle Jay walked up and asked if he could shoot my gun. Of course, he could; he was my idol, my mentor, my mother’s older brother; he could do no wrong, except that most everything he did was wrong in my mother’s eyes. I handed him my Daisy. He turned and shot one of my grandmother’s five hundred chickens square in the butt. The hen jumped, squawked, and ran a few feet, then went about pecking the ground for whatever chickens peck for. I was shocked. Jay said the BBs give the chickens a little sting, but don’t hurt the birds, their feathers are too thick. Well, that’s all I needed to know. I popped a few, as did cousin Jerry, and man-oh-man, what fun that was. Jay walked away knowing that he had given his nephews a new source of entertainment.

The rest of the day was spent shooting chickens. I must have used two tubes of BBs. The chickens, one of natures stupidest birds, jumped, squawked, and then went on about their chicken lives. My cousin and I were having a grand old time, and improving our shooting skills on moving targets.

Unbeknownst to us, my grandmother was watching the shooting gallery from the back porch of the farmhouse. Her son, Jay, ratted us out after putting us up to the crime. She let us have our fun.

At supper time, she called us to the farmhouse. Standing on the back steps to the porch with her arms crossed, we knew that she knew we had been shooting her egg-laying chickens. It was no use to plead and beg for mercy; we accepted our sentence. As always, she told us to go to the barn, go around to the back of it, and cut a nice limb from a Mesquite tree that would serve as the switch to deliver our punishment. She knew the mental anguish this caused, having us deliver the weapon to the executioner. I cut the shortest limb I could reach, hoping that the smallest weapon would deliver the least pain.

I handed her the puny limb. She smiled and said, “That’s the sorriest excuse for a switch I’ve ever seen.” She then walked to the barn and came back with a whole tree limb, complete with all the thorns. Jerry and I almost pissed our blue jeans. My uncle Jay was standing on the porch, doubled over in laughter. At that moment, I realized my mother was right about her brother.

Instead of switching us with her tree limb, she asked for my BB gun. She was an old Indian gal and knew how to shoot. She instructed Jerry and me to go about fifty feet away and start running in circles, which we did. She then started shooting both of us in the butt with our own BB guns, and man, did it hurt. I don’t think she missed a shot. After that, we didn’t shoot anything except tin cans. We knew that Granny kept a 22 rifle next to the ice-box.

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Summer Adventures of a 1950s Boyhood


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.

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The Day I Tried to Fly: A Superhero Story


I wrote and published this childhood memory back in 2018. Any kid who has ever dressed up in a superhero costume can relate to my true experience. Thinking back to that time in the mid-1950s, I now realize my neighborhood buddies didn’t care if I died right there in front of them while attempting this stunt. We were all bullet-proof and somehow had nine lives. It was all about the show, as I soon found out.

Surfing Netflix and Amazon Prime a few nights ago, I was surprised how many movies feature superheroes. Sure, the two originals are there, Superman and Batman, but then there are at least a dozen others. Did I sleep through some cultural entertainment shift?

The original Superman television series premiered in 1952, and by 1953-54 every kid in my neighborhood pretended to fly while fighting for truth-justice-and the American way. The girls wanted to be Super Girls, but the boys wouldn’t allow it. Superman was a man’s man, so they had to settle for Lois Lane.

The family that possessed the largest television screen was the meeting point where the gang gathered to watch our hero. My Father purchased the largest black and white television available, 15 inches, so our den was the destination.

There he stood in his padded super suit, cape flapping in the wind, a steely look on his all-American face. What a man! Only years later did we notice the slight paunch, the double chin, and the bad teeth.

At Leonard Brothers department store in Fort Worth, you could purchase a genuine Superman cape for $2.00 or for $20.00, a kid could have the full outfit, which included a blue stretch top and tights, a red speedo, and super boots. The kids in our neighborhood couldn’t afford the suit, so they settled for whatever fabric they could find for a cape.

I was the lucky one. My Aunt Norma, a seamstress extraordinaire made me a custom-fit Superman suit. It was a beauty; dark blue stretchy top with little super muscles sewn in, blue tights with a red swimsuit, gold fabric covers to over my PF Flyer tennis shoes, and the bright red cape with the super “S.” I was in super heaven and the envy of all my pals. We immediately planned a flying demonstration, and I was the vehicle. The reality that I had never flown didn’t matter . Our home, the only two-story house on the block was the designated launch point.

After gathering in my den for our afternoon viewing of Superman, the gang rushed to our backyard, awaiting the flight. I sneaked upstairs, squeezed into my super suit, and slipped through a window onto the roof.

The usual gang of six had suddenly swelled to thirty or so kids of all ages. “How can I fly in front of strangers? What if the suit doesn’t work?” I was getting a severe case of “cold feet.”

The roof grew higher with every breath as I inched my way to the peak. Looking down to the yard, it may as well be the grand canyon. I was shaking like a wet dog, and a dribble of pee leaked down my leg. A kid in the crowd yelled, ” What’s wrong kid…chicken.” That did it. I was by-golly flying today.

I crossed myself and ran down the slope of the roof. A millisecond before launch, my Mother yells from the window, “don’t you dare do that.” It was too late. My six-year-old super legs launched me into thin air. I hear theme music, feel the air under my cape and below, my pals, a look of wonderment on their faces, cheer me on to super glory.

Instead of gaining height and accelerating to supersonic speed, I made it twenty feet or so then dropped straight down, landing in the midst of the admiring crowd. Our thick lawn saved me from certain paralysis.

My Mother was on me like a duck on a Junebug. Jerking me up by my super cape, she proceeds to whip my little butt with a flyswatter; the only weapon she could find. I was mortified; young Superman receiving a whooping from his super Mom. The crowd dispersed, leaving me sitting in the grass in my super shame.

The next morning; miraculously recovered, I am sent out to play with my pals. Walking through the back gate, I noticed a bit of my super cape hanging from under the garbage can lid. My super days are over.


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Exploring the Beat Generation: Kerouac and Cassidy’s Road Trip


Jack Kerouac

Two Catholic boys, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy, are on a road trip by car across the American West to find the meaning of life. The badlands of New Mexico held all the secrets that New York City would never have. It could be a great book are a movie. But, as it turns out, it was a book first. What could go wrong?

It was 1947, and half the country still lived in a Norman Rockwell painting, and the other poor souls struggled with keeping food on their table and a decent job. The war was a few years ago, and the scars were fresh and raw. As the movies would have you believe, not everyone had the good fortune to live in New York City and shop at Macy’s. The Hollywood boys covered everything in Fairy Dust and Unicorn Piss, and the commies were coming to your neighborhood. The two young men sensed the growing change and needed to find the “real America,” the wide-open, gritty, in-your-face, working man culture that made their country run on regular gasoline.

“On The Road” was published in 1951. The author, Jack Kerouac, a French Canadian American who didn’t learn to speak or write in English until he was six years old, became an instant literary celebrity and a reluctant prophet to the “Beats,” which would become the “Hippies” in the 1960s. He tolerated the Beats and the new intellectuals because he helped birth them, but grew to despise the Hippies before he died. He wrote many times that he was sorry they found his books and used them as their warped ideological, drug-addled bible that led to the near destruction of his beloved country. The “beat generation,” another term he loathed, wasn’t meant to survive past 1960. The writings and musings made no sense after 1959. He believed everything had an expiration date.

Ginsburg and Burroughs kept the plates spinning; the publishing cash and the adulation were too strong to walk away. So Kerouac moved on and became a drunkard and pillhead. Fame, and all that came attached, was not his bag.

The only comparison to the book that I can think of would be the “road” movies of the 1940s. Two pals and a gal road-tripping to Nirvana. Kerouac would have been Bing Crosby and Cassidy a bi-polar Bob Hope with his girlfriend a sluttish Dorothy Lamour. But, of course, their adventure was adults only. Weed, booze, Minga Minga, and foul language would not have made it with old Bing and Bob.

The two main characters, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, were the essential bad boys before it was cool. Their names alone were enough to make you buy the book. Every teenager who read it could easily place themselves in their universe for a while. Who knows how many ill-fated trips the book influenced?

My cousin and I toyed with the idea. First, to California and back to New York, then home to Texas in his Corvair; then the effects of the pot wore off, we ate a cheeseburger and shit-canned the plan.

James Dean was a disciple, as was Marlon Brando. They wore bad boy cool like a soft leather jacket. The movie boys jumped on it. “Rebel Without A Cause” and “The Wild Ones” sent parents screaming through their middle-class neighborhoods with hair ablaze. Ozzie and Harriet doubled down. Pat Boone turned up the heat. Art Linkletter had a meltdown. The fifties were dying before our eyes.

I may revisit “On The Road” again. It sits on my bookshelf, aging like wine, and needs to be jostled.

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Understanding Cicadas: My Summer Adventures with Little Buzzy


Little Buzzy

Yes, Dear Hearts, Summer Is Upon Us…

It will happen any day now. Zillions of them will crawl from their dirt bungalows, dust off their wings, slick back their hair, and proceed to make us miserable with their obnoxious song. Cicada’s are God’s way of shaking his “no-no, you’ve been bad” finger at us.

In the 1950s, it seemed the little critters were everywhere in our Fort Worth neighborhood. Cats loved to eat them, dogs like to crunch them, and us kids captured them for fun. Tie a kite string on their leg and fly them around like a model airplane, and then blow them up with a Black Cat firecracker. Such fun. Nothing was quite as freaky as an angry Cicada buzzing in your hand.

One summer evening, as the family sat in our backyard, drinking iced tea and listening to the buggy orchestra, I put my pet Cicada, “Little Buzzy,” down the back of my mother’s shirt. No one in the family knew she was such an accomplished acrobat.

The educated experts say the insects appear in seventeen-year cycles, then die off and reappear seventeen years later. Who are these experts, and when did they start keeping track of the bug’s appearances? What if a few miss the die-off or stay too long in their hidey hole and mess up the entire show? That may explain why we heard them every summer in the 1950s; confused Cicada’s.

I’m looking forward to sitting on my patio, a nice tumbler of Irish whiskey in my paw, and listening to the sounds of my childhood.