Tag: Books

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It Was Sixty Years Ago Today…The Beatles Taught Us All To Play


Sixty years ago, on a Sunday night, the Beatles invaded America, and I watched in glorious black and white as they captivated every teenager in the country. The next morning, I told my mother that there would be no more haircuts and that I needed an electric guitar and amplifier. At this point, I had been playing guitar for two years on an old Gibson D 45 and was ready to take the leap into electrified instruments. I took extra vitamins and found a few special exercises to generate hair growth. It was a painstaking process.

Halfway through my school year, my family moved to Plano, Texas, and I was befriended by my good pal, Jarry Davis. He and I both had that special itch to play rock music. He knew a drummer and a sort of bass player, and I took on the lead guitar duties, playing a Japanese electric with six pickups and twenty knobs that did nothing. We called our band The Dolphins, later changing it to The Orphans, which sounded a bit tougher and fit us because of our long hair and general surely attitude; we were not the Monkees.

My rock n’ roll journey started on that February night and lasted until 2019, when my band, The American Classics Band, retired our setlist. Not a bad run of it.

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January Dispatch From The Cactus Patch


Don’t Look At That Sun..You’ll Go Blind

I’m ready for the Eclipse in April. That’s me back in my 3-D days. I walked around for months wearing my cheesy glasses. Everything looked better in the beautiful hues of red and blue, so I saved them in my Roy Rogers lunch box with the original Thermos that held my cold Ovaltine and kept it cold for half a day. How did it know? I figure these specs will work just fine for the Solar Eclipse.

The Beat Goes On…And On

My father’s late cousin, Mail Order Preacher, Little Jimi Bob Fender of Fort Worth, Texas. He started out playing that “Devil music,” rock-a-billy, and jive-assed jumping-around stuff out on Jacksboro Highway. After getting knifed a few times, then shot up real good by the jealous husband of some old hairy-legged gal, he glammed onto religion and started the “Church Of What’s Happening Now.” He had the rocking-ist church music in Texas, and many of the great musicians, such as Delbert McClinton and Willie, stopped by on Sundays to jam. As you can see, he was a snappy dresser. Dig that guitar and that blue suit.

When It’s Round-Up Time In Texas

Back in the 1950s, long before there was the Dixie Chicks, there was my late 14th cousins’ trio, “The Texas Fried Pies.” They played most of the grocery store openings, school assemblies, parades, Tupperware parties, Avon get-togethers, rodeos, The Fat Stock Show, and select funerals. Left to right: Peach E. Keen on the doghouse bass, my cousin Apple Coreby on the banjo, and Cherry la’Tartness on the squeezebox.

The Gospel According To That Person of The Year

Good Lord, help us, please. Now she has her own religion and a bible? It was bound to happen, given she has around ten million young zombie followers. I read from a former swiftie-cult member that when she turned 21 years old, her brain hit reset, and she became a normal woman and started listening to George Strait. There is hope.

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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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“Things That Keep Me Awake On A Sunday Night, But I Forgot To Write About Until Monday Night”


Jeez-al-mighty, the radicals have kicked Joe Bee to the curb. He is officially a useless old man that has outlived his pecker. Willie Nelson said it first, and he should know; he’s much older than JB and has access to better weed.

With Joe Bee soon to be in the memory care home, that cute dancing Latino congress girl from New York is now free to roam the hallowed halls of Congress and possibly the White House acting like Castro’s daughter while bossing everyone around. But, of course, Jill ( not a doctor) Biden doesn’t give a street rat’s ass if she does; she got Joe Bee to sign everything over to her, even Hunter’s laptop and collection of ancient Mayan crack pipes.

Since a handful of NFL games were canceled, ratings are up!

My wife and I thought we had the Omicron. Watery eyes, coughing, tearing up, a snotty nose, then we realized we were watching The Sound of Music. I’m better today.

Senator Manchin just bitch slapped the radical Democratic party. He saved the country, the economy, and every God-fearing citizen that lives here. Hats off to Mr. Manchin. The only thing that would be sweeter would be for him to sucker punch Pelosi while she’s drinking her Gin and Tonic ice cream float.

I visited our local on the square bookstore today; I purchased a Christmas gift for my wife. It’s a hometown place with a great assortment of the latest books, hot tea and biscuits, and friendly folks. The business was great, and the place was packed to the walls, and not one person was looking at their phone. Imagine that.