Tag: 1950s

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Born On A Mountain Top In Tennessee…


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

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Thoughts From the Cactus Patch on Christmas Eve


So now the Cowgirls have lost 2 in a row but somehow remain in the playoff mix. I’m not sure who is making the rules, but these wimpy-assed, jive-dancing morons shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a playoff game. Wonder if Jerry Jones, their Arkansas Hillbilly owner will be talking shit after the holidays. ” I feel like this is the year we go all the way.” Same crap he says every year. No, Jerry, not until you sell the team to a real owner, like maybe Mark Cuban or that rich gal in Vegas, or hopefully, Elon Musk. Then Elon could put old rummy Jones in one of his capsules and put his rickety ass into orbit and turn his carcass into a Starlink internet satellite. The Cowboys have made me hate football.

Now, the Deer in Yellowstone have a Zombie disease. I guess that explains standing in the road as a timber tuck smacks them while they stare at the headlights. The disease is spreading. I saw some people in Walmart that had it. They shuffled through the store in their pajamas and fuzzy house slippers filling their basket with crap they would never use. There were four young guys that breezed by me with two carts full of HD Flatscreen tele’s. When I got to the checkout, they were arguing with a checker, demanding a receipt for the TVs they were stealing so that they could return them for a refund if anything went wrong. Yes, there is an entire gene pool of these people out there.

I hope to get through the Christmas holiday without any news about Taylor Swift. Let us hope she marries that knuckle-dragging football guy and gets knocked up in record time so we don’t hear from her again for at least nine months or so. The poor baby will likely need auto-tune to cry in tune. An overheard interview with her boyfriend, the football jock;” football…been…very…good…to…me. Who dat blond is with them long legs and that screechy voice?

When I was a pre-teen, back in the 1950s, I discovered comedy records via my older cousins. Red Fox, Rusty Warren, and my favorite, Brother Dave Gardner. Brother Dave was on his way to becoming a certified, glorified, and justified Baptist Minister when he found booze, cigarettes, sex, and comedy. Lucky for him, most ministers act like comedians when standing at the pulpit, so he carried that onto the stage and was a hit. His records were legendary and would make anyone pee their pants from laughter. Brother Dave wouldn’t be welcome in today’s world; he was too politically incorrect. He would also be deemed a racist for imitating black dialect. But Dave was from the south, so this was how things were back then. I miss Brother Dave. My cousins also introduced me to Cherry Bombs, burning ants with a magnifying glass, starting fires with lighter fluid, shooting people with a bow and arrow, Steve Allen on late-night TV, cussing, homemade Tacos, beer, cigarettes, cigars, grass, beatniks, church ladies, water balloons full of urine, eating Doodle Bugs, stuffing crickets up my nose, shooting spitballs with a sling-shot, BB gun wars, sharp knives, riding Honda motorcycles late at night in Poly, Jack Kerouac, Sal Paradise, and other unsavory characters. My wife, Momo, says I would have become a juvenile delinquent if I had stayed in Fort Worth. She is right.

I caught Willie Nelson’s 90th birthday celebration on the tube last week. First of all, why was it held in LA at the Hollywood Bowl? I bet the folks in Austin went crazy because it’s Willie’s homeland. Willie isn’t in good shape, but it’s good to see he can still sing and pick on Trigger. When I was a wee-one, sometime in the early to mid-1950s, my father was a country musician in Fort Worth, Texas. He played all the joints in town and then some, always coming home late at night, worn to a frazzle. He and Willie were friends in music. Willie and his friend Paul English, his drummer, made the rounds, setting in with the house bands or friends that were playing. He was also a DJ and sold vacuum cleaners during the daylight hours. Either Willie was down on his luck, or his wife may have kicked him out for a while, but he wound up sleeping on our couch for an extended period of time. He seemed happy and was the perfect, polite guest. My mother couldn’t help but like him. After the third or fourth week, she was itching to reclaim her couch and her privacy. She gave my father the ultimatum: either Willie moves on, or you move on together. My Dad broke the news to Willie, who was understanding and moved on to another sofa somewhere in Fort Worth. He and Dad remained friends for life. I was under five years old, so I don’t remember much of it, but I do recall him and my Dad playing music in our living room, Willie on an acoustic guitar, and my Dad on his fiddle. A friend of mine who lives in Austin summed Willie up perfectly; he’s morphed into an elder statesman, somewhere between Will Rogers and Walt Whitman. It’s going to be a sad time in Texas when Saint Willie takes the last trail ride.

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A Christmas Lesson Remembered


In 1955 I was six years old and received a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. Looking back, I was probably too young for such a weapon, even though it struggled to break through a cardboard target. Attitudes then were different about what a boy should have and be exposed to. There was no “toxic masculinity,” or confusion about what was between our spindly legs; boys were boys and girls were the way God made them to be, something my neighborhood buddies and I would appreciate in later years.

I asked Santa for the rifle, and behold, the old gent delivered, just like the one Ralphie got in “A Christmas Story.” A few of my friends also received the same air rifle. We were now armed and ready for war against the Germans or even the Alamo revisited. My parents, typical of the times, saw nothing wrong in me having a gun. My father, a veteran of WW2 knew them well and wasn’t about to raise no pansy-assed kid. Try that these days, CPS would be knocking at your door within the hour.

My grandfather, a veteran of WW1 volunteered to instruct me in the finer points of gun safety and marksmanship. He fought in the trenches in Europe and knew his way around a weapon or two. I didn’t know more than that about his war days, it was all a bit secretive.

Before Christmas supper, we drove to Sycamore Park for the first lesson. Forest Park was but a few blocks away, but he felt we needed more land around us in case a BB took a wrong turn. He retrieved a few empty soup cans from the trunk and placed them on a log about thirty feet away. I loaded the rifle and waited. Grandfather showed me how to hold the gun, site my target, and squeeze the trigger. I missed all the cans and wasted most of the BBs in the tube. I was down to maybe a dozen or so and still hadn’t hit my target. He wasn’t impatient with my lack of marksmanship but felt it was time for some hands-on instruction. He took the rifle, shouldered the stock, aimed, and knocked every can off the log without missing one shot. I was beside myself with envy. Here’s my old grandfather shooting like Buffalo Bill. After he handed the gun to me, I proceeded to miss every can until the BBs were gone. Time to go home.

Walking back to the car I told him that maybe someday I would be able to shoot as well as him. I was a kid and blurted things out without thinking, so I said “Grandad, did you learn to shoot like that in the war?” We were almost to the car when he said, ” Yes I did, but shooting soup cans off of a log is different than shooting a man.” I didn’t understand what his answer meant; too young and blissfully ignorant.

That lesson was more than an old man showing his grandson how to hit a soup can perched on a log. It was the best life lesson I ever received.

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Christmas Is Time to Recognize Family. Right?


I received two emails a few days ago; one from Family Search and the other from Ancestry, both genealogy websites. I’m more well-connected than I thought.

It appears that on my mother’s side of the family tree, I am related to Belle Starr, the infamous female outlaw, Cheif Quannah Parker, the famous chief of the Comanche Nation, and son of Cynthia Ann Parker and Peta Nocona. My great-grandmother was on friendly terms with Quannah when she lived on the Indian reservation and before she met my great-grandfather, Love Simpson, who was a Cherokee and a Deputy U.S. Marshall for the Indian territory in Oklahoma. My grandmother would often hint that maybe they took a few long walks in the misty moonlight and things may have gotten out of hand. She also possessed an old ratty-assed wig and would pull the thing out ever so often and show it to us kids. She said it was Chief Parker’s long ponytail after it was cut off when the soldiers arrested him. We believed every word of it. It gets better. I am also related to the infamous Texas outlaw killer, John Wesley Hardin. For some unknown reason, Bob Dylan was intrigued with outlaws and killing for a while, so he wrote a song about Hardin. This was before his Nashville days. I’m waiting on that royalty check, Bob.

I had no idea that Davy Crockett was in my family tree, yep, also on my mother’s side. That explains my over-the-top childhood obsession with the Alamo, flintlock firearms, long sharp knives, and coonskin hats. I would have been picked for membership in the “Sons of the Alamo” lodge if I had known this forty years ago. Captain Kangaroo, Buffalo Bob, and Shari Lewis are also cousins; so that makes Shari’s puppet Lambchop a family member too. Howdy Doody is not mentioned, nor is Mr. Greenjeans, although he was my favorite.

Family Search, the site run by the Morman Tabernacle Church, and choir, says that on my father’s side, I am related to our first president, General George Washington, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Waylon Jennings, Will Rogers, Wild Bill Hickock, Buffalo Bill Cody, Billy the Kid, Doris Day, Mary Martin, Tiny Tim, Roy Rogers, Ray Charles and a fifty-fifty chance, to Rin-Tin-Tin and Sasquatch. Damn, son, now that’s a list. I’m getting a big head just writing this.

My mother always told me that our family goes way back and has lots of closets and skeletons. My father, always said that his family has a whole scrapyard of bones and is bat-shit crazy on top of that. Now I have to figure out how to tell my friends about my relations without sounding like a deranged liar.

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The West Texas Wooly Booger


My grandparent’s farmhouse front porch was made for storytelling. It wrapped around half the old home and was covered with a sturdy roof so we could sit out during any weather. Summer or winter, after dark, under the moonlight or stars, it was fertile ground for swapping yarns.

My two long-deceased uncles, Bill and Jay, were the best liars and yarn spinners I have known. I am proud to have inherited, to some degree, their ability to recount and or mold loads of total chicken crap into something believable.

Christmas Eve of 1957 found our family visiting the Santa Anna, Texas farm. The weather that day was mild with thunderstorms expected in the evening. In Texas, Indian Summer often shows up at Christmas time leaving us kids sad because Santa won’t have any snow for his sleigh. We assumed he could still land on rocks and hard dirt, or we wouldn’t get any presents while at the farm. My grandfather cut down a small Cedar tree in his pasture, and my parents brought some of our home ornaments, or we would have been treeless and nowhere for Santa to put our gifts.

After supper, some of the family would gather on the front porch to listen to our two Uncles spin their eloquent yarns of life growing up on a farm in rural Texas. Uncle Jay carried the metal Coleman cooler full of ice and Pearl Beer to the porch, and Bill rolled some cigarettes and brought out a pack of Red Man Chewing Tobacco. The stories wouldn’t start until the third or fourth beer was consumed. Uncle Bill said beer is a required fuel for any storyteller to practice his craft.

The lightning to the Northwest was flashing behind the Santa Anna mountain. Uncle Jay remarked that it reminded him of shells exploding miles away at night while he was onboard a battleship in the Pacific. That was the first time he mentioned his time in the war to us kids. We wanted to know more, but he changed the subject. We were years away from him sharing those times with us. The conditions on the porch were perfect. My cousins and I sat around our uncles in a circle, waiting for the first word.

Sitting at the opposite end of the porch, my granny piped in, ” Jay, did you ever tell the kids about the Wooly Booger’s?”

“The what boogers, “my cousin Margurite squealed. No, they had failed to mention them.

Uncle Jay took a swig of Pearl, looked at the lightning, and in a hoarse whisper said, “We got West Texas One-Eyed Wooly Booger’s right here in Santa Anna, and they are partial to eating kids.”

There, it was out. First, it was Pole Cats, then Coyotes, Bobcats, Feral Hogs, Rattle Snakes, Copperheads, and the giant Mountain Boomer, and now One Eyed Wooly Boogers. Sum bitch, everything around this farm wanted to kill us kids; no wonder we were a nervous wreck and lost weight every time we visited. At that moment, I was ready to go back to Fort Worth. At least there, I only had to worry about getting smacked by a car while riding my bike to school.

Uncle Bill chimed in: ” I saw one about forty years ago. I was sleeping on the screened-in porch with my dog, Giblet when one of them got through a hole in the screen and jumped on my chest. It was the size of a house cat with one big red eye in the middle of it’s skull. I was paralyzed with fear and couldn’t move; I guess the big red eye hypnotized me. Old Giblet killed the critter, and Granny took a picture of it with her Brownie camera. Then, we buried the little demon in the back pasture. I hear tell that they are attracted to the smell of nose boogers, which kids usually have a lot of. They go for the nose and chew it right off of your face, then the ears and eyeballs if you don’t die from the nose wound. I happened to have a cold that night, so that’s why the creature tried to get me.”

My cousin Jerry, even in the dark, was pale as a baby’s butt; he had a winter cold and a big-time snotty nose. He was a goner, and I had to sleep beside him on a pallet on the screened-in porch. I would be the second to get it.

I slept with my Daisy BB Gun and Cub Scout camping knife for the next few nights. I wasn’t going down without a fight.

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The Boys and Girls of Summer


On the third day of summer vacation, the euphoria of no school for three months had lost its sparkle. Our gang of sweaty-smelly boys spent most of the day sitting under our neighbor, the Mister’s Mimosa tree, drinking grape Kool-Aid and eating home-baked oatmeal cookies baked by our mom-mentor, Mrs. Mister. Saturday couldn’t get here fast enough; that was the first day of official practice for our second-year little league team, “The Jets.”

This year, as a group, by a special vote in Skipper’s garage, we decided to let Cheryl and Ann play on the team, putting Freckeled Face Bean and Georgey on the bench for a few innings. Mr. and Mrs. Mister were in agreement; the girls were better at catching fly balls. In 1957, teams didn’t award participation trophies; it was all about winning the game. Cheryl played some last season, and we put Ann through the try-out wringer at recess. and she passed every test, so we will be the first and only team in the Fort Worth Little League system to have two girls on a boy’s team. We “broke on through to the other side” and didn’t know what we had done. I believe our assistant coach, Mrs. Mister, was secretly proud, being a former Air Force officer and ball player herself.

Saturday arrived, and our practice time on the diamonds was at noon, right when it was cooking like a griddle at a balmy 98 degrees. Mr. Mister worked with our two pitchers, and Mrs. Mister took the rest of us heathens to the field, hitting flys and grounders and yelling at us when we messed up. Ann and Cheryl caught every fly ball, and me, at shortstop, only missed two grounders and tosses to first. It was going to be a good season. Georgy and Bean sat on the bench, sulking. I guess I would, too, if I lost my spot to a girl. We were kids, but back then, even boys were a bit manly men, only smaller.

After practice, Mr. Mister told us that the coach from the Trimble Tech area team had been spying on us, hiding behind the concession stand and taking notes. It was a known fact that any team from that area of Fort Worth would be known as ” the hard guys.” We figured he was scouting out whose legs to break if they caught any of us out of our neighborhood and alone.

Our first game was a week later, and damn if it wasn’t the “hard guys” team. We watched from our dugout as they warmed up, fearing the worst. The pitcher had a five-o’clock shadow and arms so long that he left knuckle furrows in the infield dirt. Most of their team was a head taller than us and had to be old enough to drive. These guys can’t be Little League? Many had likely spent time at the Dope Farm or jail; they had all the markings of experienced delinquents. Their coach was a walking mugshot. We were doomed and knew it.

Bottom of the seventh, and we were down by two runs. Skipper was throwing his hardest and slipping in some calculated peppered pitches Mr. Mister had taught him. The “hard guys” weren’t even swinging hard, and all their balls went to the fence line and a few over it.

Our coach, Mr. Mister, suspected something for some reason and asked the umpire to examine their bats. The umpire was equally suspicious, so he grabbed a few of their bats, pulled a pen knife from his pocket, dug out a wad of wood filler, and emptied four large ball bearings into his hand. The little mobsters were using fixed bats. He then checked their cleats and found all of them to have been filed to a sharp edge. He confiscated their bats and shoes, making them play in sneakers or barefoot. He gave them a beat-up Rawlings bat to use. They were caught, and the crowd of parents booed them into the next county. After that, they couldn’t buy a ball past second base, and we scored three runs and beat them. Strike one up for the good guys. Mrs. Mister informed us that their team had been dissolved a few days later, and the players were suspended. Their coach was likely on his way back to Sing-Sing.

The rest of our season was memorable. Our two girls got a write-up in the paper, along with a cute picture. Skipper got bonked in the forehead and missed four games, and Freckled Face Bean caught a case of Polio and was out for the season but expected to make a full recovery. We missed the championship by two games, but hey, it was a great season.

The Misters gave the team a backyard cookout a few days before school started. Parents, siblings, dogs, and the whole shebang crowded into their backyard. At the end of the party, with fireflies drifting around us in the summer evening, our team gathered in a circle for a moment of recollection. We had been so wrapped up in months of baseball no one noticed that we all had changed. The school fat was gone, replaced with dark suntans and sinewy arms and legs. Baseball was our game, America’s game. At that brief moment, as we stood in the dark, silent, we were the boys and girls of summer.

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Texas Lore And Legends


The Jackalope

I first learned of the “Jackalope” from my late Uncle Bill Manley. Summer nights on the porch of my grandparent’s farmhouse were ripe for spinning yarns and swapping lies. Uncle Bill was a masterful storyteller; my cousins and I were young and ready to believe anything he dreamed up.

The Jackalope is part Jack Rabbit and part Antelope and is a staple of Texas lore; is it real or a yarn? No one knows for sure, but many have claimed to have seen one, Uncle Bill among them.

After three or four ice-cold Pear beers, he begins his recount.

His voice lowers an octave; he leans over, rests his elbows on his knees, and begins,

” Back in 1948, when myself and the missus were visiting down from Chicago to this here farm, I was looking for my doggy that escaped the screened-in porch. It was almost dark, and I was walking through the back pasture, making my way into a grove of Mesquite trees, and there it was, sitting, chewing on a big blade of Johnson grass. He was a big critter, about the size of a big old lazy dog. His horns stuck up like a West Texas Antelope, his eyes glowed ruby red, and his pupils were yellow like a big summer squash. I was scared the varmint was going to gore me with those big horns, but I stayed real still and began to talk to the critter. I knew it was a Jackalope right away. The more I talked, the critter seemed to like what I was saying, and it began inching closer to me. I went on for a while, and when I took a break, the varmint was right next to me, looking up at my face with those crazy eyes. Then he did something funny; he nuzzled me with his head, and not knowing what was up, I reached out and scratched him behind his long ears. He made a funny sound, sort of a cat purring. I knew we were buddies now.” Wow, what a story! My cousins and I were delighted; we wanted more, so I asked, ” Uncle Bill, what happened to the Jackalope?”

Uncle Bill always had a dramatic end to his tales; this one was no different. He takes a giant slug of his Pearl Beer and says,

” There was a pack of wiley Coyotes roaming around the farm making a ruccus and killing Granny’s chickens. I went out hunting them one night and found the Jackalope all chewed up over behind the hen house; the Coyotes got him. He put up a good fight because there was two dead Coyotes laying beside him, all gored up from the horns. I took him to the taxidermist in Brownwood and had his head mounted, and that’s him hanging on the wall of the Biscuit Cafe.” Twenty years later, I stopped at that cafe, and the Jackalope was still there.

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Just A Little Off The Top, Please


If you were a kid in the 1950s, there is a good chance you had to endure the “home haircut.”

My father, also known as “Mr. Cheapass,” became a barber almost overnight. A friend had given him a pair of worn-out electric barber clippers, and he saw a way to save that $1.50 flat top haircut I received once a month. My mother, bless her heart, tried to intervene and save her only son from the humiliation of the shearing, but the old man won the battle, and I found myself sitting in our kitchen with two phone books under my butt, just like the real barbershop.

No cape, no tissue around my skinny neck, no talcum powder, no Lucky Tiger Hair Tonic, just a worn-out towel with a clothespin holding it in place. My mother sat at the kitchen table, misty-eyed, crossing herself despite being a Baptist.

My father tried to act like a “real live barber” by making small talk, asking me about my baseball team, the weather, and my dog. It didn’t work; I knew I was in for a massacre.

He didn’t know which guide to use, so naturally, he picked the wrong one, flipped the switch, and tore into my nice, thick seven-year-old hair. Gobs of dark hair were spilling onto the towel and the floor. My mother sat there with a shocked look on her face. The more he buzzed me, the worse it got. Finally, he removed the guide and put the clippers on my scalp, rendering me bald except for a tuft of hair in front for the application of Butch Wax.

The deed was done. I was scalped, mutilated, disfigured, and humiliated. Lucky for me, it was summer, and by the start of school, I would have a normal head of hair. My father was rather pleased with his handiwork and strutted around the house for an hour or so. I happened to catch my mother tossing the clippers into the garbage can in the alley the next day. When school started, she took me to my regular barber and paid half the buck from her grocery stash.