Editor’s note: Occasionally we publish an advertorial here on Real Texas blog and here is the explanation. Sometimes, seldom, very occasionally, rarely, once in a while I turn in to an old softie and get a message from a youngster trying their hand in the PR business or maybe an agency of some kind and publish their work as they are trying to expand their business by saying good things about those who hire them to do so. I have no doubt that Sonterra Storage is a great place to store your excess items and I have used such places in the past. So…there you have the reason for this blog post….it came from a young lady named Noemi Laurio and I wish her and her client -Sunterra Storage nothing but the best forever and ever.
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]]>Do you remember where you were on September, 11th, 2001, at 7:46am? I do, and many of you do also….
David was teaching his History Class and I was asleep. I woke up and looked at the TV. I thought David had left one of his action movies on, but as I watched, the news station was reporting live. I saw a plane crashing into one of the Towers and a huge ball of flames come out the other side. I couldn’t believe what I was watching….I sat up in bed and turned up the volume….even the newscaster was in disbelief as he was reporting what we were watching.
Then as I watched another plane was coming onto the screen and headed right for the other Tower….it slammed into the 2nd Tower! Smoke, fire, and dust was everywhere…the newscaster gasped and couldn’t even report the news. Unbelievable! It was at that moment when everyone watching knew we were under attack….by persons unknown.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen what seemed to be a long time, but really wasn’t, both towers tumbled to the ground! I mean tumbled to the ground…only dust and no structure.
I called David’s classroom and tried to put into words what just happened. David reassured me that the Towers were built with tons of strong steel and would not totally fall to the ground. He calmly explained that he had actually been in the World Trade Center and had dined at the restaurant at the very top. “It’s very strong and won’t fall down”, he assured me. I was screaming at him, turn the TV on! There are NO MORE TOWERS!
Later that day, I received a heartbreaking phone call from my dad in Arizona. He told me that a dear family friend had just gotten a job with an insurance company and was in one of the towers for an orientation. He had been out of work for a long time and was so proud to tell my dad that he finally found a really good job and was heading to New York for orientation and that he’d catch up with him soon.
We both cried….
Over the phone that day, my dad repeated to me a story that I had heard hundreds of times at dinner parties. He liked telling the story of how I came to own my first dog which happened to be an expensive Bird Dog.
I was only 5 years old and my dad was going to take me Dove Hunting…I’m an animal lover and didn’t know a thing about guns, hunting, nor did I have any interest in going. He told me that our friend Gary Bird was training a puppy to be a Bird Dog and that I could probably play with him. That was exciting to me.
My dad had polio as a boy and wore braces and used crutches. The reason I’m telling you this is because it sets up the scene of this story. My dad hunted from the back of a pickup truck sitting in a chair in the bed. Sam, the puppy was on the ground with Gary, who had been working with him for a couple of weeks on retrieving dummy birds. Someone had the bright idea of letting me try to shoot a dove. They briefly showed me how to hold the shotgun, which was bigger than I was, and as they were pointing way off into the distance and telling me what to aim for…I saw a bunch of Doves right above us and before anyone could stop me, I shot straight above us…the shotgun knocked me on my butt and I started crying for more than one reason. Not only did the shotgun almost take my arm off, but later on, the little pellets where coming straight down on top of us and they burned like crazy.
My dad was yelling at me, Sam the bird dog was so scared he hid under the truck and Gary was laughing so hard as he was rolling over under the truck.
After a while, everyone settled down except I was still in pain and crying. Gary came over to tend to my arm. He explained after the fact, why they were pointing in the far distance, and then why I shouldn’t shoot the doves overhead. Fine time in telling me that the pellets would come straight back down and that there were so many of them. I had little burn marks all over my arms and legs; a bruised up shoulder (it was amazing that I didn’t dislocate it) and my ears were ringing so loud that I couldn’t hear anything.
Gary told my dad that he was the proud owner of an expensive house dog, a family pet named Sam. I was so happy because I thought that he was giving Sam to me for all the pain I was going through. My dad explained that now Sam would be gun shy and would not be a good hunting dog. That was fine for me, even though I didn’t know how much a ‘Pet Hunting Dog’ cost!
Sam and I were like brother and sister. We did everything together, I cooked pretend food for him and he would sit in a chair in my playhouse and eat. I would dress him up and we’d play house. He was the best friend ever.
We slept together, ate together, played together and were never separated. He had 11 cats we had adopted that he watched over. Yes, 11. He was such a great dog and never had to retrieve a bird in his life!
He lived to be 13 years old and it hurt so much to lose him.
My parents would have dinner parties and Gary would come to them. He’d play with Sam and of course he and my dad would have to tell everyone of how Sam became my best friend.
Like Sam, my friend Gary was gone in a blink of an eye. For days my dad would call to let me know that he hadn’t heard from Gary’s wife. We were all hoping that maybe the group had taken a morning break and that he stepped outside the towers to get a newspaper or to check in with his wife or call my dad, hoping that he wasn’t in the Towers. As time passed and we didn’t hear from him and we knew….
Each year as the bell rings and they read the names, I get a chill when they say Gary Eugene Bird….I know exactly where I was when I lost a dear old friend.
Now 20 years later, I remember…
I will never forget.
There are a good many fellow veterans who will never forget also.
God Bless America.
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A Real Texas Christmas means a lot to us all
The muchachos and ninas all speak with a drawl.
There’s a mixture of Tex-Mex in all that we say
And at this time of year we might holler olé.
Feliz Navidad means a lot to us here
But we don’t have a sleigh and all those reindeer.
We do have our friends and we’re ready to hear
Those magical words that Christmas is near.
In Real Texas we’re special each and every one
In the way that we act when the work day is done.
When we leave we say “bye” or some “Adios”
You can bet on a real friendly greeting from us.
As that holiday time gets some closer each day
The baking at Christmas reminds us of home
And the food Mammacita is going to fix
We’ll clean off our plates out here in the sticks.
Guajalote’s all gone, that’s the turkey to you
We ate that darn bird ‘till we just couldn’t chew.
Our language is mixed; but we know what to say
We just talk and the words come out all sorts of ways.
Now Thanksgiving’s gone and Christmas is near
And the cowboys have gathered in all of their gear
For a few days of rest and a lot of good cheer.
It’s Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas to you
In this part of Texas those are some of the few
Of the words that you can hear from our Real Texas crew
As those holiday bells are beginning to chime.
For it’s nearly Christmas, Yep it’s almost time
The excitement is building, they almost can’t wait
for the kids to see Santa, It’s gonna be great
for familias to gather in a grande tamalada
to make Christmas tamales, and some enchiladas.
Christmas is special anywhere that you are
but a Christmas out here is the best sort by far.
Out here in Real Texas, with our neighbors and friends
We celebrate the season-best wishes we send.
The future is bright here at this time of year
We visit with friends that we all hold so dear.
The gifts we exchange are not always from stores
It’s the things that we do, for each other and more.
So Feliz Navidad to you one and you ‘all
with a Real Texas accent and Real Texas drawl.
We wish you the best that the season can bring
It’s ‘mucho prospero’ and everything
Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas
—-David Werst 2020
]]>Here is a quote from my new friend Kelly Cohen:
What do you want to do this year?? Climb mountains? Swim long distances? Triathlons? Sail? Dive? Archery? Run? Ride? Dance? Race kayaks? Whatever it is, the only difference between YOU and me is that I dream it, train for it, and then go do it!!! Decide what you want to do in 2020-2021, leave all fears and excuses behind, and make it happen!!!…..Kelly Cohen
I first heard of Kelly from my friend Frank Cohen who generously tries to help me hit a golf ball better. He is a scratch golfer here at Tapatio Springs near Boerne, Texas and can often be found after a round of golf helping me and others who are ‘challenged’ by various aspects of the game from putting to hitting their drivers. Kelly Cohen is a fitness instructor who loves the outdoors and puts together fitness related activities ranging from hiking the Texas Hill Country trails and state parks to mountain and trail biking, kayaking, horseback riding, Iron Man training and competition coaching. Just about everything fitness or outdoor adventure related.
Oh, and don’t think your adventure outing has to be something spectacularly hard and difficult. In the middle of October, she emphasized that “Fitness can be FUN!!” She and her client participated in a 13.1 masquerade mask half marathon in San Antonio at JW Marriot Resort; a 2.5 hour kayaking adventure at Medina Lake, and a 25 mile hilly bike ride to Camp Verde, between Kerrville and Bandera. Her comment on all that activity? “My kinda weekend!”
I scheduled a short (for her) trail hike on the upper trail here at Tapatio Springs and right away knew it would be a favorite activity for anyone staying at the fabulous Tapatio Hill Country Resort. Being new to this area and a flatlander from West Texas, I wanted to know more about where I live now. Our group was four ladies…..and me, a 70 something would-be golfer with two knee replacements and a wife who loves to cook. Make your own connections on that one….
The hiking group met at the Tapatio Springs golf pro shop and walked briskly past the driving range where I hoped none of my golf buddies noticed I was already lagging behind with 3.999 miles to go. We followed a golf cart path that leads to The Ridge subdivision at Tapatio and then cut through some brush to the upper trail. I kept up fairly well and the ladies were nice enough to take it easy and not completely run off and leave me alone with the snakes and coyotes who were probably laying in wait for me.
It’s not like I am totally inexperienced. I had hiked through mountains in the past…..like 40 years ago…..and have actually climbed Wheeler Peak in New Mexico just outside Red River. It’s the tallest peak in New Mexico. But did I tell you earlier it was 40 years ago?
Kelly casually mentioned she reached a very high point on Mount Everest at a well known base camp before terrible weather forced her group off the world’s tallest mountain. Then she told of her desire to conquer Wheeler Peak….in the winter. She has climbed it several times in the past. It was July when I climbed and there were still quite a few large, long, and deep snowdrifts along the wilderness trail leading to the peak. I mean hundreds of yards long and wide snow accumulations in the middle of summer. Winter must be a continuous snow storm higher on the mountain near the popular ski resort. Mount Everest has to be several higher notches than that at a minimum.
After watching Kelly for just a while, I have no doubt she could climb that or any other mountain summer or winter probably doing flip-flops along the way. She led our little group carefully through some the rougher areas on the Upper Tapatio Trail, stopped at appropriate times for ‘some’ of us to catch our breath, and pointed out areas of interest and possible shortcuts should we need to get off the trail in a hurry and go back down. The hike was a little less than 4 miles and there are other trails in the area including a Lower Tapatio Trail. It was fun and you should try it some time.
Fitness and adventure related activities can be booked online by contacting her at her Facebook page ‘ Kelly Loves Fitness ‘. I mentioned my age and alluded to my fitness level so be advised Kelly can lead your group no matter what your definition of adventure.
On her Facebook page you can get the sense that Kelly really loves fitness and she loves providing a safe experience for everyone who wants to enjoy an outdoor adventure. Here is what she had to say about a weekend in October last year:
It’s true.. I love fitness.. just about any kind of movement makes me happy… this weekend golf, running, Yoga, cycling and swimming… whatever you choose, do it with gratitude and a smile.
Kelly never saw me as I was huffing and puffing trying to keep up with those ladies on Tapatio Springs Upper Trail, and it’s a good thing she didn’t turn around ’cause there were times I was grimacing and not exactly smiling……but I was grateful to be out there with such a fun group.
She takes clients from the flatlands out in West Texas to the DFW Metroplex, and from Houston to Connecticut and points in between. She even coaches Iron Man Competitors in some serious racing circles. Get your friends and have an adventure with Kelly. You will enjoy it bigly.
I’m David out in Real Texas
…..Grateful and smiling at knowing people like Kelly
When a Real Texas good ole boy or girl talks about a drive-in of the past, you should know that they are probably talking about a drive-in movie or a drive-in hamburger/beer joint.
The drive-in movie theater you might remember if you grew up in my hometown would have been the Shooting Star drive-in. At the same time, there were several drive-up hamburger/beer joints in my home town including the Steak House and the Reagan Drive-in. There were more, those are just two I remember in that town. Another I remember was on the outskirts of Taylor, Texas. Me and a kid named Tony Franzene were all of 16 or 17 or so and sat there enjoying a good many cold ones during the course of a pleasant afternoon.
We are not talking about a Sonic of modern day times or a drive through Micky D’s or Burger King. We’re talking about a drive-up place like several in San Angelo or your home town, in days gone by….beer joints that served hamburgers, fries and onion rings….and ice cold beer or sometimes even root beer, and bought it up to your vehicle.
You are probably not thinking about a drive -in/drive-up church. That might be the last thing you would think about.
But in recent days, I’ve seen on TV where a sheriff and his deputies were giving tickets or threatening to give tickets to worshippers who drove their cars up and had church in the parking lot of the church building. The mayor of Louisville had ordered such action. Those attending were apparently gonna be charged with breaking the quarantine law, even though they stayed in the vehicles with only close family members who lived in the same household. They were more than 6′ away from other vehicles….obviously….being in their vehicles. I my own-self thought a few of those folks in their vehicles with their heads down mumbling words looked mighty suspicious. I doubt that sheriff is going to be sheriff next time an election rolls around….dang lawbreaking church people. They are among those who said the Mayor can deem a liquor store essential, but a church Easter Service is non-essential. He’s probably going to hell for that for sure….BTW-a judge canned the mayor’s decision calling it harassment of the worst kind.
If you live long enough, you might have seen and heard nearly everything, but there apparently are a few surprises left. If you are seeking Salvation at a Drive-in/Drive-up church, just be sure to keep your social distance to avoid the Coronavirus….. and if you want to be ‘one of the first’ to simply slide the car into a space out in the parking lot and listen to your pastor with all the latest technology….you may be too late. Those lawbreakers in Louisville were too late to be ‘one of the first’ to attend church at a drive-in.
‘One of the first’ is the key phrase in this essay – –
In fact, they were almost 70 years too late. I remember it – I was there.
And no, that was not back during the Spanish Flu pandemic.
Big Lake, Texas may have several other “firsts”, and we have seen some strange things out in Real Texas, but one ‘first’ those folks probably can claim is having the first Drive-in, or Drive-up church. I remember it. It was a little white ‘L’ shaped building with what we would call today a raised deck built on to the front of the building. There were stairs leading to the deck or platform very reminiscent to the announcer’s stand at the Big Lake Little League field and other similar baseball fields across the country from Pecos to Louisville. As I understand it, It was those announcer’s stands at Rodeo arenas and little league baseball fields where those Presbyterians back then got the idea. It was sorta like the photo above, but higher up and more boxed in looking….like an announcer’s stand.
The preacher would walk up the stairs to the platform so all might see him, and inside the little white building, the pianist would play to a loudspeaker like the Little League announcer plays “Centerfield” by John Fogarty. You remember, “put me in coach, I’m ready to play…today”
It was there in that dusty parking lot where I had my first experience at ‘sleeping in church’. Those Presbyterians who attended services there would drive up and park in the dusty lot in front of the building and wait for the services to begin. When the sermon began, I would generally drift off to sleep in the back seat. It was similar to a drive-in movie like The Shooting Star in Big Lake and the many drive-in movie lots in small towns across Texas. The unique drive up/drive-in church was located in the general area of the airport in Big Lake, a little east of the airport building and a few yards more east of where my old airplane hanger is located. Bet that hangar is still there…
My dad wrote a history book of Reagan County along with Ruth Cope and Gussie Edens. According to that history book, it was on March 29, 1949 that the First Presbyterian Church, USA in Big Lake was organized with twelve charter members and got started with that drive-in church. Cafe operator B.B. “Jeff” Kelly gave the church their first building and the members and volunteers improved the building which was moved on location. It had two classrooms and a kitchen. Since there really wasn’t enough room inside, they decided to establish a drive-in type arrangement. Brilliant!
Now this was long before Joel Osteen or John Haggee had their mega churches. There were no TV cameras, but this little drive-in church grew and prospered for three years. They had Sunday school inside the building on Sunday mornings and church services on Thursday evenings. The preacher’s name was Rodney Gibson and he drove in from San Angelo each Thursday for those three years. During that time, services were cancelled only twice. Once when Rev. Gibson’s car broke down between Mertzon and Barnhart and once when the lake filled up due to heavy rains. The little church was located in a low spot just off the highway and inaccessible.
Rev. Jack London arrived later as the permanent pastor and the building was remodeled and services were moved indoors. I remember attending VBS (Vacation Bible School) there as a child. My sister Beth played the piano at some of the church services.
Several years later, the congregation built a new building on east Sixth Street in Big Lake. They did not know where the money was coming from to build the church building. One Sunday, church member L.L. Farr III surprised the congregation when he walked in with a huge $15,000 check from his employer Senator William Blakely, owner of the Rocker b Ranch in Reagan and Irion Counties. The building still stands there to this day. Blakely, a hard drinking, hard charging lawyer/businessman changed lives that day. He also changed lives when he bequeathed the huge ranch, now covered in mega-producing oil wells, to the Shriners International, a Masonic organization, who operate the famous Shriners Children’s hospitals. The income from the ranch has generated hundreds of millions of dollars to help children at no charge to them.
Miracles do happen in strange ways. Blakely might be the only lawyer/politician in Heaven just for giving that ranch to the Shriners. Did L.L. Farr’s request for help of his little church spark some good deed later on down the line? Of course we will never know. My good friend Richard McReavy told me a day before he died that “God has a plan.” Did this little drive-in church play a small role in providing a spark in part of that plan that ended up helping so many others?
The Presbyterians later gave the first drive-in building to Bethel Baptist Church in Big Lake, who had obtained a former ‘Dinner Club’ establishment located on highway 67 in the area of First National Bank, Big Lake. The Bethel folks moved the former ‘Club’ building and then added the Presbyterian building to their own to enlarge it all. Strange, but true.
Maybe those few folks in that first drive-in church in that little oil field town were a small cog in the wheel of life and part of the plan my friend said he knew was true.
I’m David out in Real Texas
…where strange, but true
things might just happen according to a Plan
P.S. I’ll bet that Louisville Mayor and sheriff will soon know that cars parked in a church parking lot for an Easter Service are more essential than a liquor store.
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The very last New York Times to be set into type using molten lead was on July 2, 1978. My uncle John Etheridge, composing room foreman for The Dallas Morning News, also oversaw the computerization of the iconic Texas newspaper about the same time, using a Tal-Star computer system to compose classified ads.
I vividly remember going to The Dallas Morning News to see where he worked and I was flabbergasted. Where we had one old decrepit looking Linotype machine in our little country weekly newspaper, the mighty Dallas Morning News must have had 50 of Otto Merganthaler’s invention on an upper floor whirling and clanging away, some with typesetters sending ‘keys’ of type to the molten lead and then the machine spitting out a “line-of-type” instead of an individual typesetter having to hand set that line-of-type using a composing stick, I have seen it done both ways many many times.
You see, the town I grew up in was somewhat isolated and looking back on it, my folks were not blessed to be in a high paying profession. They were not ‘unlearned’, it was just a fact that being owners of a country weekly newspaper was one of the low pay, high hours professions in our town.
After experiencing and seeing first hand the work that went into a weekly newspaper I had other ambitions…..I subscribed to ‘the grass is always greener’ theory of life when growing up, so it was my ambition to become a pumper in the oilfield. They got up early, made rounds of their wells, and then hit the golf course around 2:00 – 3:00 in the afternoon and drank beer and played golf until dark. Or that is what I observed back in the day.
My ambition to play golf and drink beer until dark never did happen back then. Or ever, dern it.
My brother and I grew up back in the days of a hot metal country newspaper and it was a a lot of work. Hard work. And kinda like being a farmer’s kid, it was often a family workhouse with each family member responsible for a part of the operation. The newspaper was printed on Wednesday and then much of the moveable type had to be ‘thrown back’ to be used the next week, and it all started over again.
In my column writing days, I explained that having a weekly newspaper was kinda like being a nympho-maniac…..as soon as you got finished, it was time to do it all over again.
My parents took a week off before the Christmas holidays. I just don’t remember the occasion, but after much preparation they were off, not to be around for the next Wednesday. It was very rare for that to happen. Only once if my memory is correct.
It was during that time, that week that my brother and I put out an issue of our family newspaper, The Big Lake Wildcat by ourselves. My brother was 4 years older than me and I was probably 13 or so at the time.
My brother died on December 6th of this year and this story is of one week back in the day when we worked together for a common goal under somewhat intense pressure. If we had not done what we did, the entire town would not have had a newspaper that week. And that is back in the day when reading the newspaper was an important weekly event.
It turned out very successful and we were proud of our brotherly, joint effort to the day he died a few weeks ago……Here is the story of that brotherly effort back in the days of a hot metal country weekly newspaper.
As kids, my brother and I learned early to ‘throw back’ type into the large wooden, segmented trays some people buy now at flea markets to hang on the wall and store their knick knacks on. Each small boxed in area in the tray held specific letters that had been hand set, adjusted with specific sized leads and slugs and brass spacers. The slot for the “e” letter was the largest as every printer and ‘printer’s devil’ (term for the young apprentice printers and helpers) back in the day knew it is the most commonly used letter of the alphabet. I readily took to that task and it was on Saturdays that I most often went to the newspaper shop to make sure the grocery ad and a few other ads had been thrown back into the type cases.
We grew up knowing the names of differing fonts, the difference between serif and sans-serif fonts, points and pica sizes, leds, kerning, and the thickness of leads and slugs. There was Franklin Gothic, Americana, Goudy, Garamond for really wide word effects, and Times. There are lots more we used and knew the names of; there are just too many to list here. I have an over 100 year old book about 7 inches thick with literally hundreds of examples of typefaces.
In this computerized world of ours now, all one has to do is highlight a word, click on a sidebar and scroll down to the selected type font wanted and click on the desired font. Not so easy for us back in the day. We had to find the font, hand pick letters out of a tray full of individual letters, and place it exactly and precisely in the composing stick….letter by letter. There was a groove built into the lead letters to indicate the letter was turned the proper direction…..remember, were reading it all backwards and upside down.
We knew how to use a composing stick, tighten a series of quoins to keep the combination of letters and 6, 8, and 10 point spacers inside the chase and how to ever so carefully carry the larger chase over to the old flatbed printing press. The chase full of type had to be positioned exactly, precisely correct for printing. It would have been cataclysmic and catastrophic if we had ever dropped it and “pied” the type, spilling it into a big pile and having to start over.
Every letter had to hit with sufficient impact to print properly, a kiss, and after taking a proof – printing a few copies and inspecting the results, some letters had to be leveled by placing a small piece of paper under them and re-locking and using a printer’s plane to tamp down everything and make sure all were printing crisp and clean. There are many more terms we used that are specific to the industry and we were amazed when the first MacIntosh computers came out that those engineers had employed old printers to make sure the programs used for typesetting still used our terms. Leds, em space, en space, points, picas….and so much more.
It was a craftsman’s work, and back then, as now, the everything had to go right.
As I grew in size, I was promoted by shop foreman Rudy Etheridge, no relation to my uncle, to operate the ‘Hell Box’ to cast cuts for the ads. I had to stand on an old wooden ‘coke box’ to use the Hell Box. That involved melting used lead blocks called pigs and old linotype slugs to a certain molten temperature and carefully pouring the melted lead into an asbestos reverse artwork, called mats, to make newspaper advertisements. The asbestos artwork was provided by a firm named Metro and they also provided large 18×24 inch or so catalogs with art details depicting clothing, shoes, cars, refrigerators, and common items for sale in any store. During Christmas, the Metro books had plenty of snow scenes, tree scenes, carolers, church steeples and other similar artwork.
I learned to separate the dross or trash that rose to the top of the molten lead from the more pure lead underneath, how to judge the temperature of the lead by sticking a dry piece of paper in it and seeing if it burst into flame or not, and also how to make sure the asbestos art and accompanying cardboard was dry, devoid of moisture to prevent explosions of molten lead shooting toward the ceiling. There was a time when first starting out I noticed Rudy back away from the ‘Hell Box’ while I poured molten lead into the form, only to have it gurgle, then explode, coating the ceiling with droplets of molten lead and me with pockmarks of droplet sized burns on my arms.
After being cussed out thoroughly and given an impromptu safety lesson by Rudy, it rarely happened again. The fact that molten lead is really hot is not something modern journalists learn sitting at their brand new monitors in their air conditioned buildings.
There were plenty more lessons I learned from Rudy Etheridge and watching my dad. My brother was four years older than me and I don’t remember him in the back shop as much as me, but he was gone off to college and the Air Force after a time. He was smarter than most and was probably doing something at the shop much more complicated. It was a scary thing that my parents went off for this very rare week’s vacation and left us with the newspaper. But, my brother and I and a drunk Linotype operator successfully got out that week’s issue after at least one sleepless night. My brother had to hand-set a complete grocery ad after the local store had unexpectedly changed hands and the new supervisor wanted to announce the week’s offerings with a big splashy ad.
It would have been a piece of cake for my dad, but he was not there. I was appointed to meet with the new area manager at 13 years old. I took some metro books and a large sheet of broadsheet newsprint and pencil-sketched the ad as he wanted it, complete with starbursts around the most prominent specials at the top and middle of the ads as well as an anchor space at the bottom. My brother then tediously hand set the entire ad. I poured the starbursts from my hellbox and mounted them on printer’s furniture to just the correct and critical height. Rudy had retired year or so before, but he had taught me well.
We both worked through the night. I prepared the regular ads, mounted them on printer’s furniture to the correct height and used the metal router to erase burrs and casting marks. I prepared the press, inked it up and kept the drunk linotype operator going. I even made one trip to the liquor store and explained my situation to proprietor Ike Chaffin about the guy refusing to work without a drink. Ike packaged up and delivered a pint of something cheap and awful smelling to the linotype operator who was delighted. He passed out early in the night on a stack of broadsheet newsprint. When it came time to actually print, I dragged the linotype operator off the newsprint into a large cardboard box to keep him off the ink stained floor.
The real work was that grocery ad. My brother kept plugging away at it through the night making sure every word was spelled correctly, spaced correctly, kerned correctly and justified left, right or center. It was a masterpiece worthy of Da Vinci. We walked around the chase full of type, leads, slugs, brassies, admiring it from every angle. Looking for typos, finding none. After tamping it down and making sure it was all level and tight, we gingerly picked up one edge of the chase full of type, probing for weak spots. There were none.
It turned out perfect. My brother and I had worked all night long. Building that grocery ad was very precise work down to every last detail. We hit the deadline right on time. It was a very good if not great pre-Christmas grocery ad. The new store manager was happy as was his boss who had to deal with a 13 year old printer’s devil to place his full page, hand set ad.
We were proud, my brother and me. I have to say it was a heck of an accomplishment for two kids to have done. It was a Christmas week to remember in the best possible way.
I’ll turn 71 this Christmas Day. Seems hardly possible. I have since had few triumphs greater than the time my brother and I got the newspaper out and on time for our town.
My parents and brother have all moved with their spirits to that great print shop in the sky. I am a 4th generation newspaperman. I still have a copy of a newspaper published by my great-grandfather in Sherwood, Texas in 1901. It’s old and brittle, faded yellow, but very legible. The ink used then was strong. Indelible.
After me, there will be no more former printer’s devils who grew up noticing the difference in fonts used in the old days by true craftsmen. Those few of us left from the old days see and notice strange mixtures of fonts and composition by amateurs who easily press a few buttons and turn out garish flyers for a neighborhood garage sales.
Old Otto Merganthaler would surely sputter and curse such printed materials.
Now, Christmas present day and future has shown printing technology for the masses. Most new folks and students using their computers have no idea about typography and the perfect composing stick full of hand set type or a hot lead slug ejected from Otto Merganthaler’s Linotype machine. they know nothing of the subtleties of kerning letters so they fit together properly when formed into words.
I love the new technology……I’ve seen all phases of it from hand set type, to linotypes, intertypes, Compugraphic photographic typesetters, voice dictation, and more. I was amazed when Don Comedy told Rick Craig about sending a photo over a phone line from a Tandy Computer and the photo printed out on the other end. What? Was it possible to do something like that? Through the air?
Yes. It’s great. Wonderful. Any kid can do it now. You can too, but it wasn’t always like that.
So at 71, my ambition is still the same. It just took me a while to get there. I’m gonna move to a golf course and play golf. I may still write a little from time to time. But I will always remember how my brother and I set that grocery ad, got the newspaper out and in the mail, and the satisfaction that came with it. When I see the Christmas ads……I’ll always remember…..
In Memory of
1945 – 2019
Here is a Christmas poem I wrote a few years back:
A Real Texas Christmas means a lot to us all
The muchachos and ninos all speak with a drawl.
There’s a mixture of Tex-Mex in all that we say
And at this time of year we might holler olé.
In Texas we’re special each and every one
In the way that we act when the work day is done.
When we leave we say “bye” or some “Adios”
You can bet on a real friendly greeting from us.
As that holiday time gets some closer each day
We start thinking of reindeer and maybe a sleigh.
And the food Mammacita is going to fix
We’ll clean off our plates out here in the sticks.
Guajalote’s all gone, that’s the turkey to you
We ate that darn bird ‘till we just couldn’t chew.
Our language is mixed; we know what to say
We just talk and the words come out all sorts of ways.
Now Thanksgiving’s gone and Christmas is near
And the cowboys have gathered in all of their gear
For a few days of rest and a lot of good cheer.
It’s Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas to you
But out here in the West those are some of the few
Of the words that we know we can say at this time
As those holiday bells are beginning to chime.
For its nearly Christmas, just a few days left
‘till the boys and the girls get their special requests.
And a visit from Santa, that jolly old elf.
Who will bring them the gifts to put on the shelf.
Christmas is special anywhere that you are
but a Christmas out here is the best sort by far.
Out here in Real Texas, with our neighbors and friends
We celebrate the season-best wishes we send.
The future is bright here at this time of year
We visit with friends that we all hold so dear.
The gifts we exchange are not always from stores
It’s the things that we do for each other and more.
So Feliz Navidad to you one and you’all
with a Real Texas accent and Real Texas drawl.
We wish you the best that the season can bring
It’s ‘mucho prospero’ and everything
Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas
We say with a tip of our hat in a Real Texas way.
Yes, he wore a cowboy hat. Yes, he wore boots all his life. Yes, he drove a pickup truck. And yes he was polite to a fault…..if he liked you.
Richard Boggs was the epitome of a true son of West Texas. Country down to his bones. Hard working. Few words. Good sense of humor. Truck Driver. Rancher. Dog lover. Hard drinking and hard living in his younger days.
He died last Tuesday at the age of 85. That’s a goodly number of years, but we often joked together how in the heck he managed to live in to his 80’s was a wonder. I think I told him last time we talked, “You have no right to be alive at 85 years old.” We both laughed, knowing it was true. We talked to each other that way, still do with some of my friends.
Richard grew up in a grocery store his parents owned near the town of Santa
Rita in Reagan County, not far from Texon where the famous Santa Rita No. 1 oil well blew in and changed West Texas forever. He talked often of his fond memories of the store, the customers who came in, and the friends he made as a child. His father had been badly injured in an oil field accident and a Big Lake Oil Company executive gave his dad the money to start the little grocery store to support his family. The store prospered.
The family later sold the store and operated a small ranch near Best, Texas also close to Texon and Santa Rita. Richard grew up doing ranch work and helping his parents.
In his younger days, he liked to hang out with his friends in the bars and honky tonks of old San Angelo, some of those bars being places you would not go unarmed or without some equally big friends. One place he remembered over by Producer’s was called “Blood and Guts”. Not it’s real name, but there were plentiful knock down drag-outs and gun shots there. Boots & Saddles club, Lonesome Dove over by Producer’s Livestock, Blue Moon close to where where the NAPA store is now, and one of very his favorites, the Red Rooster.
Did I mention big. Richard was always big. He was born big. In his prime, his belly hung well over his belt buckle and I’m not sure his head would fit inside an NFL lineman’s football helmet.
Case in point. He and Dean Milsap, another big, Big Lake resident, sauntered into the famed Big Texan restaurant in Amarillo and walked out victorious having demolished the 72 oz. steak challenge with all the fixin’s, well within the time limit. Those are the only two persons I have known personally to have actually accomplished that feat. Yes, they ate free that day. Richard and a few of his friends were banned from numerous all-you-can-eat buffets in San Angelo, West Texas, and beyond in his lifetime of truck driving, eating, and general carousing. Once, when they were leaving an Asian Buffet, the lady ran up to them and said, “You no come back…too much, you eat too much.”
Back when I lived in Big Lake, where there is usually no lake at all, Richard and his good friend August Teschendorf stopped their vehicle on 12th street when they saw me out in my front yard. August Teschendorf was a very scary looking individual almost as big as Richard, who once commandeered a bus full of A-rabs in Libya while working in the oil fields there. August explained to them the virtues of growing up in Texas, and the oil field towns back in the 1950’s. After a while, August had the entire bus singing “The Stars at night, are big and bright, (clap, clap, clap,clap) Deep in the heart of Texas.” August decided they were not singing with enough enthusiasm and encouraged them to sing louder and to clap at the proper time. I’m sure when they looked at August with his bulging biceps forged by wrenching rods by hand on pulling units, and one eye cocked off to the side, they quickly became eager to sing with enthusiasm. In their prime, Richard and his friends knew no fear. August was Richard’s very good friend and he became a friend of mine also. They invited me to go with them that day and due to a serious sense of foreboding, I declined their invitation, which probably saved my life.
Despite a fast Mercury car of his youth and his life in trucks on the road, Richard survived through times of plenty and times of hardship. He is about the only person I know who has literally pissed over a million dollars right out of his big old body. He told me all about that too. In other words, he drank it all up and pissed it out. He inherited some valuable stock of an oil company and after setting up his mother in an assisted living place in San Angelo, he tried various businesses. He had many thousands of sheep in feedlots, a fleet of trucks for shipping cattle and sheep, part of a racetrack in San Angelo, leased land near Belton, good food, and whiskey and women. And by the way, Richard is not the only man I know to have done the same thing back in the day…..But Richard had a brave side as well as being a survivor.
He survived his days of hard living. And he was brave in doing so.
He told me the story of when he quit drinking.
He woke up one bleary morning and reached for the bottle that was in its usual place on his night stand. He unscrewed the cap and started to take a long swig to get his morning started.
But he didn’t take that first drink of the day that morning.
He told himself there was already one drunk in his family. His father. And he did not need to add to the misery of his mother. And he did not drink that day. Or the next day. And that stretched into weeks and months and finally, many years passed that he did not take that first drink of the day.
It’s a totally brave thing to do.
To do without that comfortable old friend who had been with you since you were a teenager. His drink of refuge from a sometimes cruel drunken father, and unflattering remarks. His drink of refuge for having a large body. He told me of having to help his father remember which fence post was a favorite hiding place for a bottle. Richard put a cap on his bottle. And he survived, and to me, he was a brave man for having survived.
As a truck driving man, he also survived being on the road for so long and well over a million miles. He hauled cattle, vegetables, sheep, and hides to a place in New Jersey. He ran a feedlot for a wealthy man who trusted him with millions of dollars worth of cattle. His personal vehicle was a flat bed one ton pickup. He had a bully club, for checking tires he said, and a sawed off 12 gauge shotgun in the back seat somewhere. I don’t know how he could find it if he needed it quickly. Like so many other single old guys, old truckers; he also filed all his paperwork, receipts, work orders, letters, and bills paid and unpaid, on his dashboard along with spit cups and empty Copenhagen tins. What did not fit on his dashboard, was further filed in the backseat or floorboard of his pickup.
As a young reporter, I often heard of accidents and truck drivers cannot avoid some accidents. The odds are just not with them. Richard’s last accident was one I witnessed myself. He was stopped to turn into the Dairy Queen in our town and was rear-ended by a pickup pulling a horse trailer. The impact separated the frame from the body of the truck and after a very loud noise of metal grinding metal, Richard’s truck came to a halt. After the impact and dust and dirt, there Richard sat behind the wheel of his truck, but no wheels….the truck body had been separated from the frame and flew forward and came to a screeching, spark flying halt. Richard sat there dazed behind the wheel. I parked and approached him and he was just stunned, with a death grip on the steering wheel. I accompanied him to the emergency room to be checked out and after he was examined and pronounced ok to go, helped him home. He had other accidents on the road, but that one I saw first hand and it was stunning.
We worked together around my house in Sherwood, Texas. Sherwood is just outside of Mertzon and is smack dab in the middle of West Texas where the people are the salt of the earth. The crystal clear Spring Creek was right in my back yard. Real Texas, I call it. My house had the cool clear Spring Creek right in my back yard. It was a place you would never willingly leave. A place on the planet I called paradise because of it’s beauty, the people of West Texas, and Mertzon/Sherwood in particular. My house was located less than half a mile from where my great-grandfather operated a weekly newspaper in 1901 called The Irion County Advertiser. Oliver Francis Werst. I still have a copy of that newspaper. We were going to live there for the rest of our lives in the paradise of West Texas.
When Ramona and I went out on the town in San Angelo, Richard came and babysat with our animals. The animals included two dogs, a cat, a flock of chickens, and a large bobcat. At that time, Bobby the bobcat lived in the house. Many a night we came home very late and in the light that shined through the bottom floor glass door, there sat Richard with the bigger dog Bowie at his feet and Starbucks, the smaller dog in his lap, asleep in the office style chair. He was devoted to the dogs, Bowie especially since he was the larger dog and helped us on our outside projects. We always referred to Bowie as his dog as in “Do you know what your dog did today?”
We were in Austin when Ramona got sick with an abdominal pain that quickly turned serious. I drove like a madman to San Antonio to Audie Murphy VA Hospital and we left there 87 days later. She had numerous intestinal re-sections and barely made it. All the while, Richard kept everything going at home and all but moved into the downstairs office. He was the best of friends to us and when she got stronger, Ramona made sure he kept his weight up.
Turns out, big ole rough talking, truck driver Richard was a momma’s boy who as a child, really paid attention to his mother’s recipes and cooking. He suggested many of his mother’s favorite dishes she cooked for him and we all tried to replicate some of them, including her famous coconut cake that took three days to make properly. Some items were hard to get from stores in West Texas back then, and Ramona had to order coconuts from Florida. She got them in and then we had to figger out how to open a coconut. Richard used a screwdriver, his pocket knife, and a sawzall to get his coconut open. I just used a 10lb. sledge hammer. Let me tell you I have since learned there are better, and much easier ways to open a coconut, but being two west Texas boys, we just had no experience with the dern things back then.
Richard and I fancied ourselves handymen and together, we built several projects around the house. He would come over around 9:00 after getting his coffee shop duties done there in Mertzon and we would work building chicken pens, a greenhouse, and remodeling “his” room downstairs. We would work until Ramona called us in to feed us a late lunch, then quit for the day. He worked for food and the fun we had and since he had some actual skills as opposed to my almost zero skills in building things, we were all happy with that arrangement. I’m sure he thought my college educated self was the dumbest guy in Sherwood.
His main paying job was as a babysitter for the doggies and the bobcat. We didn’t pay much, but it supplemented his meager income. He would’ve done it for nothing. Not many people would take care of a real bobcat, but Bobby knew it was Richard that fed him on many an occasion and he tolerated Richard as well as he did anyone.
We knew that Richard could be counted on as a loyal friend, willing and able to help us anytime we needed help. And Vice Versa. If he needed anything, we were there for him. He often brought us a pot of fresh cooked beans. He always said they didn’t have any ‘wind’ in them. I just wished we had a bigger car for him to borrow when his old truck broke down and he drove Ramona’s car for a couple of months. He barely fit in that car. Took him a while to extricate himself when he parked it.
Richard and I went to numerous funerals in West Texas together. Like me, he knew folks from all over in our hometown and the adjacent towns. It was Richard that said after one particularly well attended funeral, “I really enjoyed that.” I knew exactly what he meant. Funerals out in West Texas, Real Texas, are social events as much as anything. Funerals are a time when we gather to say goodbye to old friends of many years.
So now, we say goodbye and Godspeed to Richard.
He was a (1953) RCHS classmate of my sister Beth and Ann Schneemann and others of old Big Lake. He has been my friend for many years even though he was a good decade and a half older than me. He was a Master Mason of Lodge 1203 AF&AM of Big Lake. I am a member of that same lodge.
Richard was country down to the bottom of his boots. A loyal friend. A good person. Brave in fighting his own demons. Good company. Loved dogs. Didn’t try to be somebody he wasn’t. Had lots of money. Lost all that money. Loved his daughter, grandchildren, and family.
I knew him back when he was somebody. I also know and remember him when not so many others remember him.
Richard Boggs, one of the good guys of this world.
A true son of West Texas if there ever was one.
Richard was family and joined us often for Ramona’s cooking. She was learning to cook ‘Gourmet’ food and is writing cookbooks and trying out the recipes on us. Here are pictures of some of the meals we enjoyed together…
Richard’s Special Birthdays…
Joe David came home for a week and I had a cooking marathon…
Richard and David built me a beautiful GreenHouse…
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I sure do love the Christmas season and have fond memories of the music, foods, some presents received and given, time spent with family and friends, Church services and traditions. It’s a time and season to be grateful and the more Christmases I celebrate, the more grateful I am. For me, gratitude is an acquired condition which only came to me through the years after I had slowed down some to realize how truly blessed I am.
Plus, my birthday is on Christmas Day.
It’s a special day to celebrate a birthday. No, I never felt slighted on my birthday, I was usually happy to receive gifts of any kind, no matter to me that some were ‘combined’ for both my birthday and Christmas.
I have some great Christmas memories and let me tell you a story about one of the smartest teachers I have ever known, the director of my 5th grade Christmas musical. Only my classmates from way back in the day will remember parts what I’m telling here….and I’m almost sure some of my memories are true!
It was the 5th grade musical which was coordinated by that smartest of teachers named RA Wallace. His name was RA. Not R.A. as in Robert Allen or some other name….just RA
He was, without a doubt, one of the smartest teachers ever.
Mr. Wallace was an old bachelor who lived in a teacherage up on Mississippi Street next door to the Proffitt’s. Mr. Proffitt was the Sheriff of our county. Most of us back then were feral kids and just roamed the town and neighborhoods until dark when we were supposed to be home. TV’s were a rarity in those days, but RA Wallace had a TV and a few of us would gather there at his house whenever Bonanza came on. We just laid around in the floor and Mr. Wallace had his easy chair and we all watched Little Joe and Hoss Cartwright. Mr. Wallace would smoke cigarettes and grade papers while we watched TV and marveled at how strong Hoss Cartwright was. Then we would leave.
Mr. Wallace could play the piano and thus, he was in charge of the 5th grade musical. All us 5th graders would gather in the auditorium several times a week in December to learn the songs and rehearse. There were several leading roles in the production and the songs had a choir of 5th graders with a few talented kids chosen to act out songs on stage while the songs were being sung. One of the songs featured Mommy kissing Santa Claus where two actual 5th graders were to kiss each other on stage. In front of the crowd. It was to be an exciting event……and maybe someone from my past can remind me who the lucky couple was.
One student was lucky enough to be chosen to play Frosty the Snowman. Mr. Wallace, that smartest of nearly all teachers present and past, constructed a Frosty the Snowman figure out of chicken wire and covered Frosty with cotton and white tissue paper, complete with rolled wire arms, a snowman’s body, and a hat. There were no top hats to be found in West Texas in those days.
The all-knowing, all seeing, and very wise Mr. RA Wallace instructed the lucky student to “Come to Life” and dance around only at the very right moment in time when the song was being sung by that 5th grade choir. Until then, the student inside the wire cage comprising Frosty was to remain completely still and seemingly inanimate. The talented student-actor could see out of the wire Frosty eyes and hear the choir, but was otherwise immobilized and unable to interact with the other students for a considerable amount of time until the musical’s very last moments.
The musical was a huge success as far as 5th grade musicals go. There was the very climactic moment where Mommy and Santa were surprisingly caught kissing by the kid, and it seemed like the boy doing the kissing lingered just a little too long instead of a brief peck on the cheek. Frosty ‘came to life’ at just the right moment and the boy immobilized inside the wire frame danced around with abandon right on cue. The choir performed superbly and the entire 5th grade cast felt like broadway stars on the little stage with the dusty, long dark blue velvet curtains. Those parents and grandparents in attendance clapped with enthusiasm, and the kids beamed. Mr. RA Wallace and the other teachers were duly congratulated and then all probably collapsed in a heap on that last day before the holidays.
I have come to realized in my later years just how wise Mr. RA Wallace was in his casting choices for his starring rolls. He had some kids who were actually talented perform solo songs with the choir joining in. The ‘kissers’ were no doubt popular youngsters, and Frosty must have been the proverbial horrible discipline problem child of the entire class. That incorrigible child was to be enclosed in a wire prison for the duration of the performance, unable to move or get out and cause any disruption in the production.
Put that mischievous kid inside a chicken wire enclosure and he could not pinch the kid next to him. He also could not ‘accidentally’ bump a kid off the back riser in the choir, gleefully knock over an entire row of kids like bowling pins, or somehow take the place of the kisser of the cute girl during the Mommy is kissing Santa Claus song. That kid, the bad kid, could also not put anything in Frosty’s pipe and have it explode on stage, cause anyone to do anything embarrassing during the play, or even manifest inappropriate bodily functions in a crowded area.
That kid was me. David Werst. And it was only years later when employing similar tactics with students did I realize the intelligence that Mr. RA Wallace had shown during the 5th grade musical. What a genius! Isolate that kid, tell him he is performing a great starring role, and possible even wrap him in chains, with his feet encased in concrete.
Simply brilliant, Mr. Wallace. He must have been the smartest teacher ever.
That’s my Christmas story of the year. My fellow 5th graders from back in the day will have to help me remember some of the cast of characters as I have killed off most of my active brain cells since those days back then.
Next year, remind me to tell you of the time I was traumatized in the 3rd grade by little Pam Daugherty when she noticed I was painting my plaster of Paris Santa Claus bright green. I am probably scarred for life by that experience. Oh, the horror……
Yes, it IS a Wonderful Life and a wonderful holiday season.
Merry Christmas to all.
Here’s a Christmas poem I wrote a few years back:
A Real Texas Christmas means a lot to us all
The muchachos and ninos all speak with a drawl.
There’s a mixture of Tex-Mex in all that we say
And at this time of year we might holler olé.
In Real Texas we’re special each and every one
In the way that we act when the work day is done.
When we leave we say “bye” or some “Adios”
You can bet on a real friendly greeting from us.
As that holiday time gets some closer each day
We start thinking of reindeer and maybe a sleigh.
And the food Mammacita is going to fix
We’ll clean off our plates out here in the sticks.
Guajalote’s all gone, that’s the turkey to you
We ate that darn bird ‘till we just couldn’t chew.
Our language is mixed; we know what to say
We just talk and the words come out all sorts of ways.
Now Thanksgiving’s gone and Christmas is near
And the cowboys have gathered in all of their gear
For a few days of rest and a lot of good cheer.
It’s Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas to you
But out here in the West those are some of the few
Of the words that we know we can say at this time
As those holiday bells are beginning to chime.
For it’s nearly Christmas, just a few days left
‘till the boys and the girls get their special requests.
And a visit from Santa, that jolly old elf.
Who will bring them the gifts to put on the shelf.
Christmas is special anywhere that you are
but a Christmas out here is the best sort by far.
Out here in Real Texas, with our neighbors and friends
We celebrate the season-best wishes we send.
The future is bright here at this time of year
We visit with friends that we all hold so dear.
The gifts we exchange are not always from stores
It’s the things that we do for each other and more.
So Feliz Navidad to you one and you’all
with a Real Texas accent and Real Texas drawl.
We wish you the best that the season can bring
It’s ‘mucho prospero’ and everything.
Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas
We say with a tip of our hat in a Real Texas way.
Most Real Texans of any experience……actually I mean those with at least a little age on them, will know when I mention Kinky, I’m not talking about aberrant behavior. Well, not in the way some of you are thinking…..
I’m simply talking about the one and only Richard “Kinky” Friedman. I ran across Kinky
on a bright Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago at the annual Book & Arts Fest held in Boerne. There were 48 real, hardworking authors in attendance along with Kinky. He also works hard, is a real author, and songwriter, and has made a name for himself nationwide. He also has led a life of aberrant behavior although that is not how he came by the name of Kinky. Seems like a friend of his, Chinga Chavin, noticed he had kinky hair and the nickname stuck. Kinky and Chinga co-wrote that classic country song, Asshole from El Paso (to be sung to the tune of Okie From Muskogie). “I’m proud to be an ……” well, you can finish the rest of the song. That, by the way, is the kind of aberrant behavior or irregularities I’m talking about. He is just an irreverent soul and does not really care what you think about him. Not everyone who acts like this is my kind of guy, but Kinky is….sorta…..my kind of guy. A little different, irreverent, non-conforming, cheeky, sassy, resistant. All of that describes him and others I like in the best sort of way. Kinky fits the description.
Boerne is only about a 15 minute drive east down highway 46 from mi casa and we go to Boerne so often, we might as well just move closer to save on the gas bill. Most of the time Ramona just wants to load the dogs up and go to Mary’s Tacos for a breakfast burrito (my terminology). She shares her burrito with the dogs….I don’t share, even when faced with extreme shaming tactics and stares. The dogs are very well fed and are simply beggars.
By way of more information on my terminology: I have yet to succumb or submit to some people’s claim that a breakfast burrito is a taco. You and I both know what a taco looks like. Just think of Taco Bell and how they put lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese in a taco shell and you get the idea…a taco is a taco.
I will have to say that Mary’s Tacos/burritos are almost as good as those made by Pearl Ramirez at her little one room burrito place she ran from her back yard in West Texas. On the other hand, you just don’t get very many bad tacos in South Texas, either. I do freely admit that Mary’s makes a very elevated Burrito/taco. Ramona loves to watch the team at Mary’s all working together like a symphony, each section adding to the perfect taco.
It’s easy to see why the organizers of the Boerne Book & Arts Fest invited Kinky. He is a genuine Texas character living in a state plumb full of characters. He lives fairly close to Boerne over in Kerrville, about a 30 minute drive. If you are driving to his little rancho stay on highway 16 throught Bandera past the Sonic and Bandera Electric and he is down the road a ways on your left. It’s also close to the home of Utopia Animal Refuge where they, and Kinky, have saved over 1,000 older and abandoned dogs from euthanasia. He must have a good heart even if that heart is totally warped. I believe he will get to Heaven even if he is Jewish for his kindness to animals and the downtrodden in life. However, he told someone he might not want to go there if he can’t smoke cigars. He is kinda like Tanya Tucker who does not want to go to Heaven if they don’t let cowboys in…
He also has written a number of books and songs including:
Kinky Friedman has a different sense of humor and God help me, I do love it so. Those books and songs prove beyond a doubt he is irreverent. Meaning he shows a lack of respect for some people or things, or some ideas that are generally taken seriously by others. Like religion. Or politics.
I was running late and I walked the sidewalk toward Main where Kinky was already putting on a show for the people gathered outside at the Main Plaza and Gazebo. It’s a perfect gathering place and the folks in that German town have a lively and well-attended market place there nearly every month. I parked at the end of the long block back by Peggy’s restaurant. We often park there and eat our Burritos/tacos. As I approached, I saw there was a smallish crowd listening as Kinky was strumming on his guitar singing a song I’m sure he wrote. In the past, he and his band, Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys, performed across the state and beyond. They might have filled up that park area to the brim with plenty of attendees back in the day, but not this day.
As I walked to the gazebo area the only song I actually remember Kinky’s band singing was a John Prine/Kris Kristofferson song about Jesus. One of the lyrics was as follows: “Jesus was a Capricorn, he ate organic food.” Things are a little blurry from that time in my younger life when I must have heard that song. Don’t know why that has stuck with me all these years. Must be because I am also a Capricorn. I must be a lapsed Capricorn. I still read the actual printed newspaper every day, but don’t remember the last time I read the horoscopes. I’m also just as sure that during those days way back when, me and Kinky and a few others often tried to disqualify ourselves from ever serving on the U.S. Supreme Court as measured by democrat standards.
There were a few folding chairs under a pop-up canopy in front of the gazebo and not all of the seats were filled. I settled into one with a line of sight so as to watch Kinky perform and possibly get a photo. There he was with his cigar in hand strumming his guitar entertaining the sparse crowd. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon and I put the collar of my shirt up over my neck to protect it from the sun, which was bright on that October afternoon. No sense in getting my neck any redder than it already is, was my thought.
As Kinky strummed his guitar, I was reminded that he can’t really sing at all. But, neither could Ernest Tubb and ole Ernest is one of my all time favorites. I never held not being a great singer against Kinky. Or Ernest Tubb or Willie for that matter. Instead, I listen to lyrics a lot of the time. I truly believe a lot of the artiste’s are talented poets. Maybe Kinky fits into that category.
Kinky wore his signature black hat and black longish coat. As I listened to him sing and watched him, I could not help but notice his coat as it hung on the shoulders of an older man. The voice was almost the same as I had heard on TV and on the radio. Strong, funny, and he is still full of it. It, as It is known in the best kind of way.
Hmmmn. I mused. Kinky might not the draw he once was, if he ever was. At least not in these parts. Maybe he was more popular back east, or in Austin. But still, I wanted a chance to meet him and contribute to his cigar fund by purchasing a book or a CD from him. Plus, I wanted to see if he was still as full of b.s as he ever was. Maybe the old Germans of Boerne are too conservative to listen to a worn out liberal like Kinky. I debated with myself to show him the text I had just received from my U.S. Air Force Veteran wife that Judge Kavenaugh had just been confirmed by a 50-48 U.S. Senate vote only minutes before. I decided to not ruin his day.
Turns out, my news of the newest member of the Supremes might not have been horrible news for Kinky. He has said in print that these days he is more of an independent than a democrat and may even be a republican in some instances. Well hell’s bells. That is news worth repeating.
Also, as I shifted in my chair to help my back some while listening to Kinky at the gazebo I noticed he was putting on some age. As in getting old. Dang. He’s only four years or so older than me, I thought. But, I don’t smoke cigars….or anything else in many years. Maybe I’m not ageing as much as Kinky seems to have aged. All in all, he’s in good shape for the shape he is in. Still sharp of mind, still an entertainer. He is a genuine, original Texas version of Mark Twain or Will Rogers in my mind.
I’m guessing a younger generation of Texans simply do not know that in his day he was a semi-big deal. He ran with the hip crowd. The in-crowd of Austin and New York liberals and the likes of Willie Nelson, writer Molly Ivins, Texas Land Commissioner Jim Hightower, Governor Ann Richards, the Texas Observer folks, and assorted liberal types from all over. He is/was personal friends with Don Imus of radio and TV disc jockey fame and Kinky was a candidate for Governor of this Great State in 2006. He gathered up just over 12% of the vote. Came in 4thin a 6 person race. I’ve seen worse showings. He was also dang near elected Texas Land Commissioner. He was a contender. But, he still turned out to be somebody.
At the book-signing tent after his short performance, a man much younger than me bought a book and as Kinky was signing it, the younger man said, “I voted for you when you ran for governor.”
“This would be a better place if I had won,” replied the Kinkster. He supports the full legalization of marijuana and investing more in prison reform, education, health and border security. He thought the issue of legalization is a states rights issue. He supports higher pay for teachers, lowering the dropout rate, and more wind power. He supports more Texas National Guard units on the border to stop illegal immigration and wanted to partner with the governors of New Mexico and Arizona to be more pro-active on the border. He said, “we can’t wait for the federal government to solve our illegal immigration problem.”
On the issue of abortion he hedged his bets…., “I’m not pro-life. I’m not pro-choice. I’m pro-football.” He also supports gay marriage stating, “They have the right to be as miserable as the rest of us.” Kinky has never married.
His campaign slogan on why he should be elected: “Why the hell not?”
His idea of stopping illegal immigration and drugs coming from Mexico was pure genius. It was known as the 5 Generals plan. He proposed to give Mexican Generals from the five Mexican states bordering Texas a few million dollars each as a gift for their personal use and enrichment. Then, he would deduct from those millions, $10,000 for every illegal who got across the Texas border. Do you think those Mexican Generals could stop a caravan coming from wherever?
Many of my fellow newspaper folks wondered how many illegals would make it across the border with all that money at stake. Our collective editorial opinions: Problem solved. No wall? No problemo!
I bought one of his books after his short performance and talked with him a bit at the tent. He stood up next to me while one of his helpers took our photo. The book was “Heroes of a Texas Childhood.” It’s about some folks you may have heard of including fellow Kerrville resident Ace Reid, Willie Nelson, Mollie Ivins, Barbara Jordan, Audie Murphy, and more famous Texans.
Back in the day, people would buy just about anything Kinky wrote, just to see what the
next outrageous or witty thing would come out of his mouth or his mind. He had a hard-bound book on the table with a $50 price tag. It’s called “The Kinky Files.” I didn’t buy that one but I heard him say when those few copies are gone, that’s it. He guessed you might be able to find a copy on eBay.
Kinky is a real writer too. He’s an actual novelist with several detective novels to his credit. Most of his novels were deemed by critics to have been well written and most of the books featured a fictionalized version of himself as a crimefighter with plenty of his witticisms and doses of Jameson’s Whiskey. He also wrote a column for Texas Monthly for a couple of years. Kinky often decried the ‘wussification’ of Texas and Texans. I agree.
Some people still wonder what will come out of his mouth. As I read his little book that evening, I enjoyed remembering characters such as Ace Reid. A personalized cartoon of his hung in our kitchen when I was a kid growing up. He drew it for my folks who were in the newspaper business. I remembered along with Kinky many characters, especially Jake and Zeb, who appeared in Ace Reid’s calendars and newspaper cartoons.
Kinky wears an older man’s clothes now, but his spirit still glows brightly. He still sells his songs, his books, and his ideas for Texas and beyond. He still enjoys a Montecristo No. 2 cigar, apparently several times a day. His humor is still funny, to me at least, and he is still one of those characters who continue to make Texas the Great State it is.
He signed my book….”To David, from one great Texan to another.”
That’s Kinky. A Real Texan if there ever was one.
I’m David still out in Real Texas
…..Wherever I find it
]]>Whew! I just had the best Real Texas peach cobbler ever made last night complete with homemade vanilla bean ice cream served in a bowl that had been slightly heated. The peaches came from our own trees, hand picked at just the right moment in time, hand peeled with a damn sharp knife from Germany, and freshly baked into that cobbler. Additionally, this cobbler had Ramona’s famous pie crust made with Tequila both the delicious crust coating top and bottom. I have to tell y’all the blend of those peaches off of the trees in our yard, along with that heavily vanilla bean infused ice cream was: The. Best. Ever.
The ice cream flowed over the peaches and the pie crust and melted into the juices that created this unbelievable crescendo of flavors that is guaranteed to tantalize Texans for generations.
The pie crust was firm and cooked well-through, the peaches were amazingly sweet, and the home-made ice cream was better than Bluebell. It was perfect. I could have passed on at that moment and been perfectly happy. I finished that bowl, let it rest on my stomach, laid my head back on the back of my recliner and waited for the rapture.
In Texas there are varieties of peaches that transcend all others from those lesser states. Those exceptional peaches are called by a couple of different names, but generally, they are known as Fredericksburg peaches. They could also come from Stonewall or just as generically hail from the Texas Hill Country.
Those succulent, sweet tasting, peachy peaches are further subdivided into freestone and semi-freestone referring to the peach pit. I guess all peaches have a peach pit, it’s just that the the freestone peaches split apart easier and the pit comes out freely, or releases much easier, free-er if you will, than the others. In the Fredericksburg/Stonewall area, the semi-freestone peaches ripen around June 1 and the freestone peaches are best in mid June or so.
Our peaches here at the hacienda are of two varieties which I simply call the early tree and the late tree. One has peaches that ripen about three weeks earlier than the other tree. If a sneaky Texas freeze comes along and snips the buds off that early tree, we still have that backup tree to provide for us later in the year. Very handy.
Our peach trees here in the Texas Hill Country are mighty good. We are located 52 miles from Fredericksburg and 15 miles west of Boerne. It’s a little place out in the country with Bandera just north down the road and San Antonio 15 minutes to the south. Conditions must be just right here because the two peach trees have provided us with some of the very best peaches I’ve ever had the pleasure to enjoy.
But they may not the the best I’ve ever had….Let me explain
As sweet as my two peach trees and the Fredericksburg/Stonewall peaches are, they are not the sweetest, juiciest, or most divinely tasting peaches I’ve ever had. That honor goes back to a particular peach tree of my youth.
Back in the days of my attendance at Jr. High which included 6th, 7th, and 8th grades, most all of us walked to school. We were free-range kids before free range was cool. My walk took me down the ally between Pennsylvania and Maryland streets, turning right with Clarence Morrow’s beautiful back yard on the left and Jeff Kelly’s house on the right. From there, it was up 8th street past Dick McReavy’s house where he operated his electrical contracting business. Rolls of wire and supplies were spread out in his back and side yards and carport, and more supplies filled the back of his red and white pickup truck. The door was open to his truck. Always. He just never closed the door when he parked.
Up in the next block I made my way past where my first grade teacher lived, Mrs. Nunn and her kids, Sherrie and Brenda. I was friends with someone in nearly every house I passed and to this day am friends with them. I finally hit Depot street (now Main Ave.) where I usually met with my friend Clark Colvin. Clark had two older brothers and one older sister. Bert, Bruce and Rora. Clark and I usually stopped briefly at a small rickety garage behind his house next to the alley, then it was just a half block to school from there. Clark was not there that morning, but there was a fresh cigarette butt in the dirt, so I knew he must have gone on before me. I stepped into the alley and walked a few steps along side the concrete block wall at the Mann residence. Sam and Theo Mann. Parents of Tunkie and Kenny Mann, two big strong guys who were in high school.
For some reason, I looked up and shining between the branches just over the concrete block fence that guarded it, was the biggest, most magnificent peach I had ever seen. It had to be as big as a baseball and perfect in every way. There were other peaches in this tree, but that peach was obviously better looking than all the others.
My gaze of adoration was rudely interrupted when the bell rang for first period classes. I was lusting after Theo Mann’s prize peach and the harsh sound of the first call to class startled me back into reality. The school bell could be heard for many blocks away, but it was particularly loud and irritating at just half block’s distance. I took off at a run to not be late and face the wrath of junior high principal Frank Horton. Frank Horton once told me and Clark Colvin as we stood at attention in front of him that he “had handled men under fire on a battle ship and he could damn sure handle us.” I believed him and just the memory of his words spurred me on. I grabbed at my books as I picked up speed to beat the tardy bell.
My mind wandered all through the day trying to figure out how I was going to get that wonderful peach from Theo Mann’s peach tree. There was the wall that had to be scaled. There were the two brothers who had to be located and avoided as well as the family dog who must have weighed 150 pounds. Sam Mann was also an imposing figure I had seen drinking with the other men at Lefty’s Pool Hall. Then there was Mrs. Mann. She always seemed so regal and elegant out tending her roses and their prized blooms. All were factors to be considered when planning my mission on how best to get the magnificent peach.
The actual theft of the peach was fairly easy. I used a coat hanger bent just right and mounted on an an old broom stick. I enlisted Clark Colvin and we positioned a wooden box to gain elevation. Clark used a hoe end to hook the limb and draw it closer. I nabbed the peach just right and it was mine.
Did I share?…..not even one bite and I have to say that particular peach grown in the barren wastelands of West Texas by Mrs. Theo Mann was the sweetest peach I’ve had ever….and since. It was watered by very alkaline, almost brackish water we all drank and thrived on back then. It must have been the tender loving care shown to that tree by Mrs. Mann that made it so tasty.
I’ve had the best single peach ever grown in the known universe. Last night I enjoyed the most stupendous Texas peach cobbler served with home-made vanilla bean ice cream. And, if you go to Fredericksburg, Texas for your peaches, I recommend going almost to Stonewall and sampling some of Jamie Vogel’s 3rd generation peaches grown on his family orchard. In the back room, his mom and some of the older ladies from the area are sitting around a big ole table peeling peaches and talking about the old days……Jamie says he’s the only grower around who hires ladies to sit around a table and gossip and trade family stories and keep his mother company.
It’s peach season, y’all.
I’m David out in Real Texas
….Having one more helping of Ramona’s peach cobbler and ice cream.
Here is your Gift:
There is none better and yes, I am an expert.
This will be just one of the fantastic recipes in her cookbook: Real Texas Recipes……by Ramona
Here is the recipe written by Ramona:
David loves Peach Cobbler! Last year I went through bags and bags of my frozen peaches from our trees trying to perfect a recipe. I tried the crust and the technique of pouring hot boiling water over the crust; I tried a homemade biscuit crust; I tried a cake-like crust, you name it I tried it, but it just never turned out like he liked it. He kept saying something about a place named Underwood’s Cafeteria in Brownwood having the best crusty cobbler – – then we argued about whether it had a bottom crust, thick crust, but each time I made it, I told him, let me practice on just the top crust to perfect it first. I just couldn’t get the top crust crispy.
One day, a year later, I was talking with a friend and asked her the difference between a Peach Pie and a Peach Cobbler…the answer was the crust could be just a little thicker and enjoy the extra juice from the peaches, don’t try to thicken!!! The light bulb came on and I said, so it’s really just a rectangle or square Peach Pie and don’t thicken the filling! My friend and I both laughed…
I came home and made my Tequila Pie Crust and using a rectangle baking dish, rolled out the bottom crust, filled it with the Peach filling and topped with another layer of crust. I made a thicker rolled up crust for the edges and there it was!
The result: Perfect and so delicious.
When he had his first bite, David said, “This is it! You’ve done it. this is better than Underwood’s Cafeteria.”
I do believe I saw a bit of peach juice sliding down his chin as he was bragging on my umpteenth try at making peach cobbler with just the right crust….And you tee-totalers don’t worry. The tequila that works the magic in the pie crust has the alcohol burned off in cooking.
Tequila Pie Crust
12 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter
1/2 cup Vegetable Shortening
1/4 cup White Tequila (Don’t use Gold Tequila)
1/4 cup Ice Water
3 cups All-Purpose Flour (and additional for dusting counter top)
2 tablespoon Sugar
1 teaspoon Table Salt
Tequila Pie Crust
Cut unsalted butter into 1/4” pieces, chill in freezer 30 minutes. Place shortening in freezer to chill for 30 minutes. In a measuring cup, cut shortening into 4 pieces. .
Place Tequila and water in separate measuring cups in refrigerator to chill for 30 minutes.
In a food processor, add ¾ of the flour (1/2 cup remaining), sugar, and salt, pulse until combined, approximately 2 – 3 pulses. Add the chilled butter and shortening over top of flour mixture. Pulse until incorporated and the mixture begins to form uneven clumps with no remaining floury bits, approximately 15 seconds. Scrape down work bowl and redistribute dough evenly around processor blade. Sprinkle remaining flour over dough. Pulse until mixture has broken up into pieces and is evenly distributed around bowl, 4 to 6 pulses.
Transfer mixture to medium bowl. Sprinkle Tequila and water over mixture. Stir and press dough together, using stiff rubber spatula, until dough sticks together. Dough will be very sticky.
Divide dough into 2 pieces. Place dough onto sheets of plastic wrap and flatten into 4” disks. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour. Before rolling dough out, let it sit on the counter to soften slightly, approximately 10 minutes.
Lay dough on generously floured counter and sprinkle top side of dough generously with flour. Roll dough 2″ larger than your 8 x 8″ square baking dish. If dough begins to stick, just pick up and sprinkle more flour, same as the top of dough. Loosely roll dough around rolling pin. Place the baking dish under the rolled dough and gently unroll dough over the baking dish. Let excess dough hang over the edge. Place plastic wrap over the crust, leaving the dough hanging over the edge and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile roll out the other piece of dough just a little bigger than the square baking dish. Place on the backside of a baking sheet.
Roll out all of the scraps of dough into a square 1/4″ thick and slice into thick 1″ strips. They don’t have to be a certain length, or a certain amount. Just use up any extra dough. Place on the backside of the baking sheet and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
While crust is in the refrigerator, make the Peach Filling.
Peach Cobbler Filling
8 cups firm but ripe peeled, sliced peaches
¾ cup granulated sugar, plus 2 – 3 tablespoons sugar, divided
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, thinly sliced
Preheat oven to 425F degrees.
In a mixing bowl, toss together peaches, sugar, flour, salt and nutmeg.
Place mixture in the crust-lined baking dish, and tuck chilled dough trimmings into the center and sides of the filling, scattering them throughout. Top with butter slices. Moisten rim of dough with water and slide flat pastry crust on top. Press edges of dough to seal, and cut a few 1-inch slits in top crust. Sprinkle with sugar.
Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 375F degrees, and continue to bake until crust is deep golden brown and filling begins to bubble through slits, approximately 30 to 40 more minutes. Cool cobbler on a rack until warm. If desired, serve with lightly sweetened whipped cream or ice cream.
I also make a homemade Vanilla Bean Ice Cream to serve on top of the Peach Cobbler.
Enjoy – Ramona Werst
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