Granbury Texas

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Getting The Skinny…

/ Phil Strawn / 12 Comments

Gravy The Clone Dog

I dropped by Whataburger a few mornings back for a Taquito and O.J. I’m still not comfortable calling frozen orange juice OJ, considering what Simpson did, but sometimes I still do.

Sitting in his usual booth was Mooch, with Gravy, the clone Chiuauia of Giblet, strapped to his chest in the child carrier. There was an order of biscuits and gravy sitting in front of him with one bite missing. Gravy the dog had a bit of gravy on his little chin, and Mooch looked like he had lost his prized hog. He also appeared to have lost weight. I sat down with my aromatic Taquito and asked why he wasn’t eating. The smell of fresh eggs, sausage and a lucious tortilla wafting around us as if we were in a five star resturant. Gravy stared intently at the tatar tots.

” He says, Mrs. Mooch put me on those GPL-1 drugs, and I don’t have an appetite anymore, for nuthin. They’re gummies and taste real good, so Gravy likes them too, and now he’s not eating, and we’re both looking like Oprah, all skinny and bony.” I will admit, the dog looked worse, bulging eyes, that Ozempic face, and Mooch looked like he had been vacationing at Dachau.

” That clone cat, Here Kitty Kitty, is so skinny she crawled into a Dr Pepper bottle, and I had to call the fire department to get her out. I’ll tell you, we are wasting away here. My wife says she is going to audition for Taylor Sheridan’s new show, and has to have that Hollywood Ozempic look to get a part: the only part she could get now would be a corpse.”

He’s right, everyone in Hollywood looks about to die at any moment, and they are shooting themselves up and gobbling those pills as fast as they can get them from CVS or their favorite pharmady in Tijuana.

I wanted to be sympathetic with him, but my Taquito tasted too darn good, so I gobbled away as he drooled and tears ran down his cheeks. The dog passed out.

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God’s Wisdom Works In Quiet Ways: A Young Man’s Journey Begins

/ Phil Strawn / 8 Comments

Bad relationships were always the same: they started starry-eyed, then grew wary, then became shaky, and ended in a flurry of fleeing.  This had been the young man’s life for years. His siblings were as trapped as he was. Bondage has many forms. There was no way out except through the back door, and on to somewhere, anywhere. But once that door closed behind him, he was homeless, and the dark of the night enveloped him like an evil blanket.

A new town, a new state, a new boyfriend. How many had there been in his mother’s life? His father had been purposefully absent for a long while now.  He and the boy still spoke a few times a year, but he had moved on, and his mother was still fighting her inner demons, hoping to find the right man to be a provider, or perhaps a father for her children, but the same wrong choices produced the same results. Now, another move from a failed relationship was in process, back to their home state.  He couldn’t stomach leaving his high school, his friends, or his church.

His Church Youth Pastor, a man of Christian principle and a solid father to his children, all high school age themselves, offered the young man a place to stay in their home until he graduated: a temporary solution to a frantic problem. The offer was genuine, and the Christianity and camaraderie in the home were what the boy needed, craved, and sought. His journey to God began in desperation, as he needed to distance himself from peers who were leading him into dark places.  He needed to be loved and helped in his lowest times.  He accepted the offer from the pastor; his mother, once again, moved, leaving him with nothing but a few clothes and deep feelings of abandonment. It was a multi-act play that kept repeating itself.  He could have collapsed and withdrawn into himself, but the other teens in the family, the pastor, and his wife refused to let that happen.  They were not wealthy in money, but the wealth they held and offered was spiritual guidance, and that mattered more than dollars.

The boy’s parents were not citizens; neither of them was legal to live in this country.  They made poor decisions that adversely affected him and his siblings. He had no driver’s license, no car, no money, no job- just existence, the loving family that gave him refuge, and his church, which strengthened his soul. Dreams of someday were always there. He was an artist, blessed with a talent. One day, he might discover a way to put this blessing to use.

Many of the older congregants worried about the young man.  Some knew only snippets of his story; a few knew more, but the worry and the need to help him were always there. Odd jobs were offered that put cash in his pocket. It was while he worked with plants and the earth that he discovered his love for living things. His time with the Pastor and his family was nearing its end.  School was over, a new year was beginning, and it was time to move on and make a life for himself. He had often thought of the military as a way to kick-start his life; now it was a real option sitting flat on the table: pen in hand, papers to sign, many tests to take, and then on to serve his country. He made his decision and will soon be a United States Marine. His life will change forever, for the better, and he will never forget the people who gave him that encouragement and chance.

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Ask A Texan: Did Cylasporia Get Put Into Our Food Chain by A Pissed Off Dr. Fauci or Did The Terrorist Do it?

/ Phil Strawn / 6 Comments

Did Fauci Put This Crap On Our Lettuce For Revenge?

A Mister Tom T. Soreass, from Wormdance, Michigan, wrote to me on a Walmart receipt that he and his whole family have come down with explosive diarrhea and the Cyclospoia bug from eating sprouts and iceberg lettuce from the local Walmart. We have it here in Texas too, but we drink whiskey and beer, and it helps kill the buggers.

Tom T. Mr. Texan, you have got to help me here. The family ate our salads the other night from Walmart, the kind they put in cute little clear plastic cartons that cut you to pieces when you try to open them, with a pouch of surprise dressing, and now we are crapping all over our once-nice-smelling home. Lucy, my wife, has about three hundred candles and incense burning, and the plumber has been called twice to unclog the toilets, but I never knew kids had so much crap in them. My kids could fertilize a farm in Somalia with the amount of human waste exiting from their sore little behinds. Lucy and I are suffering as well, as are the hounds, the chickens, the hamsters, and both cats. Our doctor gave us some pills but they don’t do a darn thing, were dying here, third house in the cul-de-sac, with what was once a nice yard. Our neighbors are no help; they don’t want to catch it from us. I think that little rich-assed turnd, Doctor Fauci, or the Rag Head Terrorist in Iran put all this stuff in our food chain. Help!

The Texan: Mr. Tom, I feel your pain. I had a touch of it a few weeks back from a Taco at Taco Bell. I lost ten pounds in two days, but at least my clothes fit better. Mexico uses human waste as fertilizer, and it’s possible that Fauci could have organized a clandestine attack via the hundreds of little secret squirrel labs he has all over the place, and yes, a Rag Head Terrorist could have also put it there, but it’s likely the unhygienic growing practices of the farms in Mexico that are the root problem. I’m sending you a case of that pink stuff and some cherry bombs to keep you occupied while you’re in the bathroom. Did you know a cherry bomb can blow up a bathtub? Fill it with water, light the bomb, and toss it in. It cleans the whole bathroom in a few milliseconds. Add Listerine to the bath water for smell and disinfectant. Dig some holes in the backyard for the kids and show them how we used to do it. They have their phones, so they’ll be ok. Keep in touch, The Texan.

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Just So You Know…

/ Phil Strawn / 5 Comments

A Few Things I Did This Week That Make Sense To Me

The Texan before I gave up smoking

I deleted my Substack account. I found out that being contacted by people I don’t know with idiotic, maniacal rants from people on a keyboard that I would ever care to know outside of social media is not for me. It was supposed to be a site for serious writers to submit their short stories or articles, but it is really X, Bluesky, and Facebook hidden in a different format. Political hate, pure hate, impure hate, giddy hate, ignorant hate, and liberal white woman hate against us white guys who write are the worst kinds that I have found in my research. Socialism, communism, LGBTQ+ism, Muslimism, you name it, they are all there. So adios MF. Get a damn job and stop posting filtered or fake selfies of yourselves in fake places made with AI. No one under thirty years old has any real friends anymore; everyone they know is an AI-generated figure on their phone.

For now, I will keep my Notes From The Cactus Patch on Facebook because it publishes there automatically, and many of my old high school friends and the few family members who still speak to me follow it. I may or may not keep X; it does the same, but damn, people are flat-out Street Rat-crazy and evil on that platform. WordPress is where I will stay, even with all of its faults and liberal happiness engineers, who are a bunch of folks in India sitting at a keyboard figuring out a way to steal your identity and sell it to the Dark Web. I know, it happened to both Momo and me. We now have a service that watches and catches everything, and it is not Lifelock, but much better: meaner, with actual humans named Guido and Luiggi who will go to their home basement and break bones, or worse. The owner of the service is related to the lateTony Saprano.

Did anyone pay attention to the defeat of most of the Democratic Socialist Party candidates? Most of them got their pansy ignorant commie butts handed to them in a Red Mao grocery bag. And now, that smiling-Commie Rat Bastard Mayor in New York City wants his favorite goat, excuse me, I mean his wife, to have a security team the size of President Trumps when she visits her homeland of whatever the hell it is over there in Muslim land. They had better pack extra hay and oats for her meals. Within a few months, that demon has turned one of our great cities into a third-world shit-hole equal to Mexico or Somalia, and the entire state of Michigan is lost: might as well nuke the state and be done with it. There, now I feel better. Have a good day, and God Bless Texas and the Alamo. I wish Paul Harvey were still around.

The Texan

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AI Has Ruined Writing, And Will Eventually Get Around To Us

/ Phil Strawn / 10 Comments

I recently joined Substack, a supposedly writer-friendly site. I may be leaving it as soon as today. AI has taken over the site and flags most everything written on there as AI-generated or assisted. I put a few of my stories from WordPress on there, and it was immediately labeled AI-generated: I’ll call bullshit on that one. Many of you, like me, have read the great authors over the years and remember their writing, so yes, we might be influenced by their ability to weave a story. There are only so many words and ways you can use them, and AI has taken everything into a database that thinks it knows best. So, why write at all? Is the day of writing over for the non-educators? I say that with a bit of menace in my mouth. I took a poll a while back at Half Price Books and found that most of the writers who are selling are women, past and present educators or professors of whatever, and spit out garbage. Gone are the days of Wolfe, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Welty, Stein, and others. Amor Towles may be the exception, but there aren’t many. At this point, I am pondering whether I should even bother.

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Ask A Texan: The Summer of the Dog Days Is Upon Us

/ Phil Strawn / 18 Comments
The Texan

Is It Really This Damn Hot In Texas, Or Did I Accidentally Set Myself On Fire With A Cherry Bomb?

I recently read that only two of the original members of The Grateful Dead are still breathing, which is a feat in itself considering all the drugs and other things they ingested, not that they remember any of it. Now, are they ‘truly grateful they are not dead quite yet?’ Old musicians are the biggest whiners. Springsteen is now a competent politician and is glad to tell you about his breakdown, when he isn’t trying to remember which chords to play on his out-of-tune Telecaster, which doesn’t say much for him, since there are no competent politicians and he is no musician. He can’t sing anymore, not that he ever could; hell, even Bob Dylan sounded better than him, and at least Joanie could harmonize with Bob, and The Band did all the heavy lifting.

I was outside for a short while yesterday and came back in with brown, crusted skin akin to homemade bread left in the oven a few minutes too long. It was 106 degrees in the shade, and 138 degrees in the sun. My hair is at least two shades whiter thanks to the sun bleaching. Momo believes I suffered a mini-sun-stroke, or something similar, but it’s actually early onset Dementia, or Oldtimers, and my neurosciencetist comedian doctor gave me some cute little pills to take care of it, says in two months I’ll be 25 percent better as long as I continue to play my instruments, which stimulate my brain and keep me focused on something other than sitting by the window and waiting for the postwoman to deliver the junk mail. I asked him if, if I upped the dose, I would be 50 percent better in four months. He has a nice laugh and drives a Tesla. Momo is a retired RN, so she knows he’s full of shit.

Now I sit in my music room, play my mandolin all day, and write nonsense on my computer. Soon, I will embark on my podcast adventure using my Garrison Keillor whisper voice combined with the folksiness of Walter Brennan talking to Pepito about driving the tractor through the living room of the farmhouse. Of course, being a Texan, you won’t be able to understand my accent, so I’ll attach a scrolling screen of the words I speak for those of you who don’t speak Southern. How in the hell did Terry Southern, Larry McMurtry, and Truman Capote ever make it through life with their Southern affliction? I believe Taylor Sheridan would appreciate my unique vocabulary in one of his many TV shows that are filmed around our town.

My buddy, Mooch, is turning 80 next month, and wants he and I to get together for one last songfest on our guitars. He can’t remember the lyrics, I can’t remember the chords, and neither of us can carry the heavy equipment, and our drummer is reduced to playing Ricky Ricardo bongos (without Lucy), so it is bound to be entertaining. We had our rock days back in the sixties, so it deserves one final suck on the oxygen tank and a geriatric version of Inna Gadda Da Vidda, Wagon Wheel, and Blackbird.

Catch you on down the road. The Texan

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The Weather And Old People

/ Phil Strawn / 30 Comments

I don’t know what it is about us as we age, but the weather fascinates us.

Momo and I watch the weather every night. Even if it’s raining, we want to know if there will be more rain or when summer will actually start frying our brains when we go outside. It’s been raining here almost every day for almost three weeks, and more is coming, so I guess the El Niño thing really works.

Momo did her Girl Scout Indian Rain dance in April, and I’m sure that set it all in motion. I’m talking big rain, 2-3 inches at a time, flooding, winds, tornadoes, hail, water rescues, the whole enchilada with extra sauce. She worries that I watch too much news, but it’s crap; I watch only for the weather forecast. I told her it’s better than sitting by the window watching for the mailman to deliver our junk mail. My late, late grandmother did that for twenty years, and then one day she won some stupid prize and got a big check, so I guess it was worth two decades of watching the mailbox.

We spend most evenings, after Wheel of Fortune, on our covered back patio, safe from the rain and hail, sipping a libation. Lately, our resident Road Runner has been in the backyard more than usual, looking for frogs and lizards. He came up behind my chair and probably would have jumped on my shoulder if Momo hadn’t moved. They are large, curious birds that kill Rattle and Copperhead snakes to feed their young, or just for fun, so it’s a bird you don’t want to piss off. The Indians in the area say that if one lives on one’s property, one will always be snake-free and have good luck, so play the lottery, which Momo does. I guess that’s why Dodge named their most popular muscle car back in the ’60s’, The Roadrunner, with a 440 Hemi.

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Ask A Texan: The Lines In The Sand Are Drawn, And It’s 1933 And 1938 Again

/ Phil Strawn / 13 Comments

Advice From A Texan That Listens, Watches, And Learns From History

In 1931, as the sunlight cast long shadows across the Asian continent, Japan’s invasion of Manchuria marked the first stirring of trouble that would engulf the Pacific and all of Asia in the dark embrace of war. Seven years later, in 1938, the boots of German soldiers marched into Poland, igniting the fierce, relentless path toward war in Europe. With sinister determination, the Axis powers wove their tapestry of aggression, plotting to dominate and reshape their corners of the earth. At the same time, the unwary world stood on the precipice of chaos. The USA wanted no part of either party of aggression; It’s not because of neutrality or isolationism, we were in the midst of our own soup pot of misery, the Great Depression, which took America to its knees and shook the unshakeable into a fearful corner.

President Roosevelt had a vision, not one draped in golden accolades or celebrated with lavish banquets, but a steadfast resolve to steer the nation back to unity, offering hope and livelihoods to millions of hard-working citizens striving for a better life, or to bring back the comfort of the one that had vanished in the winds of the Dust Bowl.

Hitler drew a red line in the Atlantic down the west coast of the UK, and Japan drew the same line encompassing China and Manila, with Hawaii being the jewel that would put them closer to the United States.

Hawaii had thousands of Japanese who had immigrated, or were born on the island, who were fiercely loyal to their mother country and the Emperor, and the island was teeming with spies who reported back to Japan. We now call them sleeper cells. Germany had the same in most major cities in our country, mainly on the East Coast. We were in grave danger, just as we are today, but the countries are different, and harbor the same sinister ideology. Our homeland is infiltrated with insurgents that are loyal to Islam only, and their ideology is to take over our soil and put us on a prayer rug.

Jews were persecuted in Europe, but the United States had been doing the same for decades, only in a more evasive and gentler way. Iran and the Arab countries hold a mission to wipe Israel off the map of the world, and all the Jewish people that live there, and the United States, because of friendship and Christianity, is now included. Their goal is the same as the Nazis’, mass extermination of anyone who doesn’t bow to their ideology.

You can call me a racist, a hater, or anything you wish: I consider myself an American patriot, and can say with all confidence that the Muslim religion, like the Nazi movement in Europe and Japan in the 1930s, is not one of peace; it borders on being a radical, demonic ideology more than a religion, but it’s well-organized and sweeps entire countries into its bag of deception and hate.

We hard-working Christian Americans have allowed the demonic enemy to come to our shores and take over entire U.S cities, imposing their radical culture on our citizens. They are succeeding in changing our culture, as they have in France, England, Ireland, and most of Europe. Tribalism via empathetic immigration has taken the white Christian culture of these countries and turned them into Islamic strongholds. You will find more mosques than churches. This is the one thing that Hitler or Hirohito couldn’t accomplish because they had no willing Americans to support their plans.

Today, our country is full of enthusiastic, pliable, young, overeducated students and liberal professionals who are willing to aid Islam in dissolving our constitution that was declared in May, 250 years ago. America had better wake up and take up its call to arms. The lines are once again drawn, and now we have more enemies to see their task through.

We are staring the past in the face before us, and we damn well bond together and keep what our founding fathers so lovingly gave us.

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A Day In The Life Of An Old Retired Rat Hunter

/ Phil Strawn / 22 Comments

As some of you know, I had, and now, still have a Rodent, Rat, Mouse, or something more vile living within the depths of my wife, Momo’s, favorite thing: her hot tub.

We’ve removed most of the foam from inside, found the tubes the little critter chewed to obtain water, and have a friend who is a plumber who plans to replace the damaged parts in a week or so.

Now the Hantavirus, or the Black Plague, is going around, Good Lord Almighty, another pandemic? Mouse poop is going to wipe out the country?

Those folks on that tour ship must have ingested some in their Ceaser salad while gorging at the buffet. There is a substantial amount of Rat poop inside the hot tub, so there must be more than one, possibly a family with relatives.

I did the inhumane, unthinkable, and poisoned the little Rat with some guaranteed tasty and effective bait. Yesterday, he was lying down, breathing hard, and in a spot I could reach with my wife’s Martha Stewart Cooking Tongs. I figured he was about to go to Ratland, so I would wait out the expiration, but this morning, he or she has vanished. It’s unlikely a Rat Rapture happened, so he is either deeper in the tub or has crawled away to croak in a more natural and serene setting in the woods that surround my home.

My cousin and I used to sit in my grandparents’ barn and shoot the Rats with our Daisy BB Guns, killing a few now and then, but developing a keen eye for shooting fast-moving targets. Now I’m back to square one: find the Rat, dig more foam, put on a Hazmat suit, and finish vacuuming up the foam pieces and the Rat poop. I’m seriously considering having someone haul the tub away, Rat and all, or purchasing a 410 Shotgun and gettin er’ done.

I

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Ask A Texan: Ozempic Is A Pain In The Butt

/ Phil Strawn / 13 Comments

Real Good Advice For Folks That Don’t Have Any Brain Cells left….

The Texan

This Texan received a request for help written on the back of a Walmart bag, the new ones made from paper. Mr. Weemus Weesley of Sore Rabbit Foot, South Dakota, says his wife is abusing Ozempic in the worst way possible.

Mr. Weesley: Mr. Texan, there ain’t nobody in our town that knows nothing about nothing. My wife, Luella, is a bit overweight. Well, some folks say she just has big bones, but she is honestly just a bit overweight, as are most women her age during menopause. Most of the weight is in her buttocks. I had to butter up the door jambs to the bathroom just so she could get in there for a shower. Her Doctor gave her a script for this new weight loss stuff, Ozempic, but she is deathly afraid of needles and passes out after I give her the first jab.

Some influencer on social media said she could inject this stuff into a blueberry and put it up her behind like a suppository. So she tried it. It was working for a while, and she wasn’t eating two gallons of Blue Bunny ice cream a day, but then she stopped losing weight everywhere except in her buttocks and her hands and her feet, and now the rest of her is still a bit heavy, but her ass, feet, and hands are the size of a little kid’s. She’s going through two or three pounds of Blueberries a week, and now I don’t have any to put in my yogurt, and she has this little gimlet ass, hands, and feet about the size of our six-year-old granddaughters, who refuses to come visit because Luella looks like some weird alien from those 1950s scary shows. She’s so freaky looking, I can’t even take her to Walmart at midnight when no one is there except folks in their jammies. Any ideas on this one?

The Texan: Well, Mr. Weesley, I’m almost out of words on this one. I’ve seen the pictures of the Hollywood crowd, and they all look like “The Night of the Living Dead,” staggering around with folks helping them to walk. This might be a good movie for her to watch. I believe it’s on Amazon. Take those Ozempic pens and squish all the juice out, then fill them with liquid Miralax, and change her ice cream to Bluebell. She might still be a bit overweight, but she’ll be regular and happy. This is just a phase these women are going through. Oprah will look like her old, chubby self once she stops the Ozempic. I’m sending you a case of liquid Miralax and some cherry bombs just to cheer you up.