Jack

Tell Your Own Family Story!

2012-01-29T14:38:00.000-06:00

Everyone who knows me knows that I love to tell a story. I get all nostalgic at the drop of a hat and the memories come flooding in. I used to think it was just really old men who sat and told stories to audiences that really didn’t give a hoot but who would sit and politely listen and grin and nod through the pain. But now, I have realized that those stories are just as important as Washington crossing the Delaware or President Taft trying to get his fat hinney out of a White House bath tub.

I have asked my eighth grade Arkansas History students to write their family stories. Our curriculum encourages writing skills and the subject begs for recording it as local history. They treat the assignment like a kindergarten vaccination. They have to write a five-paragraph essay about anything (anything appropriate) every other Friday. I want them to understand that they have a story to tell just as much as I do. The assignment goes much farther than just doing what the state department tells me to do. I want the kids to understand who they are. I want them to actually sit and visit with their parents and grand-parents and listen before it is too late and those voices are silent and they realize too late that they have no memories. Stories are everywhere!

These kids cannot fathom the thought of not having a cell phone available at all times. Not every child has one but it is few who do not. I remember when we didn’t even have a phone in the house. Now, my wife and my four children have their own. And who remembers the rotary dial phone? Imagine today’s kids having enough patience to dial seven or eleven numbers while waiting on the dial to spin around. Is there any doubt why our kids have attention deficits?

I remember riding to Fort Smith from Huntington while standing in the front seat nestled into the side and shoulder of my father. My seat belt was his quick arm that shot out like a lightning bolt whenever the brake was touched. I can recall laying on the back dash, enjoying the sun and watching the cars behind us as we traveled to visit family in Oklahoma. “Don’t sit too close to the door or you could fall out!” “Stop jumping from the front to the back seat! You’re gonna break your neck!” I have never said that to my kids.

On homemade go-carts or a bicycle made from spare parts, we never ever considered a helmet. Brain damage was not a fear. Dragging a neighbor in a red wagon that was tied to my bike with a length of rope was not such a big deal. He’d yell "put the brakes on!" which actually meant "PANIC!" because there weren't any brakes. We stopped ourselves by turning into the ditch and wiping out. It was fun. My kids? They wear helmets at the dinner table. You know, just in case they fall off their chairs. We jumped homemade ramps, biked down steep country dirt roads and never thought that we were living on the edge. Helmets were for football players.

The only childproofing we had was my momma’s hand across our backside and that ugly skull and crossbones sticker on hazardous cleaning products. Child proofing also involved putting chairs in front of things. My sons were protected by lasers and titanium padlocks at an undisclosed satellite location.

I remember playing in the city park at home. We had an old metal swing set with green and yellow paint. My favorite thing to do was to swing as high as I possibly could, higher than the top bar. I also liked to jump off, mid-swing. I usually landed on my feet, but not always. I landed in good, dirty dirt too. No safety measures like cedar chips or those rubber shreds were available. If I got hurt, mom painted the scrape with merthiolate while I yelled and tried to blow the sting away. She never considered calling a lawyer and try to sue the city, the manufacturer of the swing and the workers who put it there.

And do you remember seesaws or teeter-totters? I haven't seen one in years. We would ride and sing “Teeter totter! Teeter totter! Bread and Water!” (yeah, I am old!). It was fun to slam down hard and watch your partner raise up off of the other end. We kept a close eye on each other in case the other kid decided to jump off and make us whap our cabooses hard on the ground. Tell your kids about your playtime!

The thing I remember most about growing up was that we would eat a bowl of cereal or toast in the morning for breakfast and then leave. I cannot remember if we ate lunch or not. We wandered across the neighborhood aimlessly. We would get neighbor kids to come out and wander with us. We build dams in ditches to slow the water. We caught crawdads and turtle without ever so much as hearing the word salmonella. As a 9 year old, I was walking on dirt roads alone. Napping in the yard beneath trees and never had the fear of being stolen and ending up on the back of an Acee milk carton.

My students tell me that their parents don’t have stories but I dare to disagree. Everyone has a story. We may not have saved Timmy from the well like Lassie. We probably haven’t saved a stranger with life-saving first aid. But you all have a story. And you need to share it with anyone who will listen. And if no one else will give you an ear, come talk to me at the museum next Saturday. I will.

AND NOW, A HISTORY LESSON

2012-01-22T23:24:00.000-06:00

Sharpen your pencils. There may be a test later.

If you were in the market for a watch in 1880, would you know where to get one? You would go to a store, right? Well, of course you could do that, but if you wanted one that was cheaper and a bit better than most of the store watches, you went to the train station! Sound a bit funny? Well, for about 500 towns across the northern United States, that's where the best watches were found.
Why were the best watches found at the train station? The railroad company wasn't selling the watches, not at all The telegraph operator was. Most of the time the telegraph operator was located in the railroad station because the telegraph lines followed the railroad tracks from town to town. It was usually the shortest distance and the right-of-ways had already been secured for the rail line.

Most of the station agents were also skilled telegraph operators and that was the primary way that they communicated with the railroad. They would know when trains left the previous station and when they were due at their next station. And it was the telegraph operator who had the watches. As a matter of fact they sold more of them than almost all the stores combined for a period of about 9 years.

This was all arranged by "Richard", who was a telegraph operator himself. He was on duty in the North Redwood, Minnesota train station one day when a load of watches arrived from the East. It was a huge crate of pocket watches. No one ever came to claim them.

So Richard sent a telegram to the manufacturer and asked them what they wanted to do with the watches. The manufacturer didn't want to pay the freight back, so they wired Richard to see if he could sell them. So Richard did. He sent a wire to every agent in the system asking them if they wanted a cheap, but good, pocket watch. He sold the entire case in less than two days and at a handsome profit.

That started it all. He ordered more watches from the watch company and encouraged the telegraph operators to set up a display case in the station offering high quality watches for a cheap price to all the travelers. It worked! It didn't take long for the word to spread and, before long, people other than travelers came to the train station to buy watches.

Richard became so busy that he had to hire a professional watch maker to help him with the orders. That was Alvah. And the rest is history as they say.
The business took off and soon expanded to many other lines of dry goods.
Richard and Alvah left the train station and moved their company to Chicago -- and it's still there.

YES, IT'S A LITTLE KNOWN FACT that for a while in the 1880's, the biggest watch retailer in the country was at the train station. It all started with a telegraph operator: Richard Sears and his partner Alvah Roebuck!
(found on the Internet)

IS IT TOO COLD FOR A YARD SALE?

2012-01-22T23:11:00.000-06:00

With the exception of our couch in the living room, my house is furnished in, what I lovingly call, “Early American Yard Sale.”

My dining room table belonged to Shelley’s great-grandmother. She was a half-Choctaw Indian married to a half-Choctaw Indian. She was born in 1887 in Indian Territory and married very young. This oval, claw footed, solid mahogany table was a hand-me-down to her somewhere around 1900. It was passed down to Shelley’s mom and then to Shelley. The varnish was all bubbled up and the claw feet were worn so badly that you couldn’t see stain on it at all. The buffet was given to me. They match, almost. Our pantry cabinet was purchased at a school auction. It was once a closet from the old agriculture building and was in pieces. A few well-placed nails and a fresh coat of paint made it a pretty cool piece of furniture. I made Shelley a cabinet to put her cookbook collection. It is made of reclaimed wood taken from a hog barn in Mansfield and two old four-paned wooden windows.

Our bedroom is no better. The desk I am working at right now is a junk purchase from the school probably fifteen years ago. The dresser is from a yard sale that my mother went to maybe thirty years ago. I made the bed frame we sleep on but the head board was taken from a sharecroppers two-room shack on the property of the old Choctaw Brick Company in Mansfield. These old houses were slave quarters during the mid-1800s. The son of one of those slaves was an old black man named Louie. He lived there all of his life, even after my brother-in-law and sister bought the property back in the 1960s. Louie died there. The old bed sat in a rotting building until the footboard was rotted from being in the elements for decades. I got the tall headboard and refinished it after we married and can’t bear to part with it.

Shelley and I used to go to auctions for fun on Friday and Saturday nights when we were first married and lived in Conway. There was one sale in particular that was held every Saturday night. It looked like an old barn from the outside. The big wooden door would be raised to allow everyone in. One the left side of the barn were bleachers that were similar to the ones in the Lavaca Old Gym. Maybe fifty tables filled the middle of the barn with everything imaginable. The right hand side was the business office and kitchen. There was a very old lady who cooked there and sold dinners. And what great food she cooked! Beans and cornbread and sweet tea were my favorites but she made homemade soup and chili that would make you forget the auction. WE NEED SOMETHING LIKE THAT AROUND HERE! Not the food, the auction.

We would sit there until the wee hours, visiting with other buyers, and getting the fever of the auction. Shelley would get music boxes and old costume jewelry. I would get tools and pretty much anything that caught my eye. We were on the lookout for an old Hoosier kitchen cabinet. Those are the ones with the wooden top that had a flour bin beneath the shelf with a rolled top that covered it down to the porcelain countertop. We saved every penny, even doing without our auction foods until we had enough to bid when one would eventually come up for sale.

One Friday, we were at an antique auction at Pickles Gap, just north of Conway. There was a beautiful Hoosier cabinet and we sat and stared at it for half the auction. Bidding was light and we had it until someone decided at the last minute that they needed it worse. Outbid, we sat there as they quickly sold it to the lady from parts unknown. A couple of items later, they offered an old Edison crank phonograph. It was beautiful! Knowing we didn’t have the money, room or even a need for an old record player, we weren’t really interested. That was until no one would bid on it. I started the bid low and almost had it at $25. Then, you guessed it, someone started bidding late. It was just then when there was a commotion with the men moving the old Hoosier cabinet. The crowd gave all of their attention to the trouble and I bid $75 on the player. No one else flinched when the auctioneer slammed the hammer down and yelled “Sold!”

Like a couple of kids with an allowance burning holes in our pockets, we went on to buy a large wardrobe closet with a secretary desk in the center. Later, before the end of the auction, several people announced that they were waiting on the phonograph to be sold. The auctioneer told them that it was sold already. When they found out they had a fit! When they found it had sold for only $75, they were about to get rowdy. It was great. Then we moved those huge pieces of furniture to our one-bedroom trailer house. Cozy.

We found a sale barn in Roland that had old stuff we liked. We continued our dates there until our twins were born and our time became more precious… especially quiet time. Now, I find treasures at yard sales. I don’t need anything. I can’t help it but I buy almost every old picture frame I see. Kerosene lamps and blue porcelain pans and basins are guilty pleasures too. I need an intervention. What I really need is a yard sale!

One of the greatest pleasures ever was, before I married, when I would go to estate auctions. Occasionally, entire living room or bedroom sets would not sell and I would pick them up for just a few dollars. I stored them in my dad’s old smoke house until someone needed it. I remember once when a family had a house fire and lost everything they had. They were so happy when my dad and I pulled up in our old truck with a complete living, dining room and bedroom set for them. Paying it forward, I guess.

It won’t be long until the flowers start blooming and the Winter gives up and lets Spring arrive. People around Lavaca will come out of hibernation bringing their priceless treasures with them. Tables will be set up and the sales will begin once more. If I happen to come to your sale, please help me. Please, hide all photo frames and kerosene lamps. My garage is too full now. My wife would probably leave me if she could only get to her car. But if I have a sale, bring a truck.

SLEEPING AT THE FOOT OF THE BED

2012-01-04T22:09:00.000-06:00

My house in Huntington was, at best, shelter. Sure, it kept the rain and morning dew off of your head but it was a lousy deterrent from wind and cold. But it was home.

The floor plan of our home was an elongated U shape. The living space and my parents bedroom, along with the only source of heat, was on one side of the U and my bedroom was on the back of the farthest end of the other side. In the summer, an oscillating fan unsuccessfully kept me cool as I slept with my head in the window by my bed as I prayed for a passing breeze. But in the winter, that same window would have sometimes two inches of ice hanging from the sill over my head.

On those nights, I was blessed to have my mother help me prepare for the coming igloo. I would pull up a sheet, a yellow non-working electric blanket with matching yellow stain trim, and a quilt. My mom would come in and put another quilt on top which included the world’s heaviest wool blanket known to man. On top of all of this was a government issued wool army blanket. Literally, I could not turn over. You had to make certain that you used the bathroom before this started or you were doomed. It was especially sad before we had indoor plumbing.

Yep, those quilts saved my life. Here’s a definition for you: quilt/kwilt/ Noun: 1. A warm bed covering made of padding enclosed between layers of fabric and kept in place by lines of stitching. 2. The only thing keeping you from death in Arkansas.

In our living room, we have a tall ladder standing beside our fireplace. Each rung of the ladder has a quilt hanging over it. And they all have a story. Every quilt on the rack, with the exception of one, was made by a member of our family. My mother quilted two of them for our wedding present twenty-five years ago. There are quilts representing our grandmothers and great-grandmothers. The only one that wasn’t lovingly made is a quilt I won in a contest that was made in the 1880s. It is called a Crazy Quilt because there is no pattern: pieces are sewn just to make a cover. Necessity for the times.

I have a wonderful quilt top from my grandmother James. She died in 1954 but her daughter gave me a quilt top she left to her. The pattern is cut from pages of an old Sears Roebuck catalog from the 1920s. I love the back more than the front.

When company would come to our house, a great dilemma would be where to put guests for the night. My three cousins and I would have to sleep in one full-sized bed. There wasn’t enough room so we would be put down laying sideways across the bed. With the four of us in one spot, it was murder. If you were in the center you burned alive. If you were on the ends, the kid at the opposite end would pull the covers too far and leave you to the elements.

When my parents and I would visit family out of town or out of state, I was always put at the foot of my parents bed. You were either kicked silly, cut by razor sharp toenails or you would fall to your doom off of the end. It was never a good experience. But it sure beat a blanket on a hard floor.

Little Jimmy Dickens recorded a song that my mom used to sing occasionally called “Sleeping at the Foot of the Bed.“ I searched for the lyrics because I couldn’t remember the words. Here goes:

“Did you ever sleep at the foot of the bed when the weather was whizzin' cold?
When wind was whistlin' around the house and the moon was yeller as gold?
You give your good warm mattress up to Aunt Lizzie and Uncle Fred
Too many kinfolks on a bad night and you went to the foot of the bed.”

“I could always wait till the old folks ate and eat the leavin's with grace.
The teacher could keep me after school and I'd still have a smile on my face.
I could wear the big boys' worn out clothes or let sister have my sled
But it always did get my nanny goat to sleep at the foot of the bed.”

That song could have been my anthem when I was a kid. But, having lived through it, it has made wonderful memories. Twelve years ago this month, the big ice storm brought down all power lines and heat as well. The six of us in our family piled into our bed and, with a couple of twin mattresses, we camped out for a couple of days. We had so much fun we stayed that way for several more days. I hope then never will forget the time we spent together.

My sons won’t sleep at the foot of the bed. They wedge between me and their mom and, without fail, put a boney little butt in my back until I would move to the foot of the bed myself. Sometimes your past comes back to haunt you but by now I have grown pretty fond of the bottom of the mattress. Mostly because, just like my cousin, I pull the quilt off of them and leave them in the wind.

HAPPY 2012!

2012-01-04T21:58:00.000-06:00

When the clock struck midnight this past Saturday on December 31st, people all over the world cheer and wish each other a very Happy New Year. For some, this event is no more than a change of a calendar page. For others, the New Year symbolizes the beginning of a better tomorrow.

There is something about a new beginning. A chance for a new start is never a bad thing. Like shaking an Etch-a-Sketch, we wish we could erase the mistakes for the past year and use the blank screen before us to do things we never dared to do before.

I have always made New Year’s Resolutions. I am very serious about changing some of my habits every year and find this time of year to be a new start of a new me. I promise to not overeat but I am still fighting a refrigerator full of food from Christmas. It would be a sin to let it go to waste.

I promise to exercise but by the time I get my pants on, I am completely worn out. The sidewalk is covered with fallen leaves and needs to be swept. By the time I got a rake and made it through the garage, I had found a half dozen other projects that needed attention. After digging, pulling and boxing stuff up, I had lost all interest in the sidewalk. The wind should take care of it anyway. A really stiff wind could take care of the garage too, but I wouldn’t have a house after a breeze that strong.

So this year, I am making New Year’s Resolutions that I know I can keep. It is said that if you find a job that you truly love then you will never call it work. I like that. So here goes:

1. I am going to eat anything I want. If I want dessert before the supper table is set, I will have it. My plan is to gain as much weight as possible. I am making arrangements to pick men that I don’t like to be my pall bearers. I only want four of them. If this goes as planned, they will remember me for many years to come. They can blame me for their bad backs, their hernias and bad knees. I am asking that the front gate be locked at the cemetery so they will have to tote me from the front fence to my burial plots in the back. There should be at least two rest stops before they hit fresh dirt.

2. I am going to watch mindless television. How many hours of SpongeBob can a person watch without sticking a screwdriver in their own ear? Jersey Shores and Real Housewifes will be quoted like scripture by this time next year.

3. Buy senseless merchandise. Just this week, there was an infomercial that offered a wonderful vegetable slicer for only $10. But wait! If I had ordered within the hour, they would have doubled my order absolutely free. Just pay extra shipping and handling. I don’t have a vegetable slicer. I don’t have a vegetable either. Especially since I am resolved to eat only the foods I want. There is no need for expertly sliced tomatoes or zucchini. But, I do need that little robot that mindlessly stirs your sauces and gravies. If I had two of them, they could fight to the death in a skillet of sugar syrup.

4. I am planning to let my lawn grow. It will make my wife very happy since she does the mowing anyway. Maybe I can get one of those cute little fainting goats to eat the grass and weeds? Then, for kicks and giggles, I will yell off of the front porch and watch the little fellow keel over. Too bad I don’t have a steep pitch on the property. When little Billy passes out, he would roll to the other side of the yard. Went he wakes back up TADA!, new grasses. Repeat as necessary.

The truth is, if I made these resolutions, I wouldn’t keep them. Maybe I am on to something here. Reverse psychology! Actually, I do need to lose weight, watch less television, watch my purchases and take better care of my wife. But it is also true that I don’t need a new year to do what is right and what I need to be doing all the time anyway.

The black-eyed peas, fried potatoes, hog jowl and cornbread were delicious on Sunday. They were a welcome sight after a week of old Country Crock bowls of Christmas dressing, green beans and sweets.

May 2012 be the first of the best years of your life! Remember to love your neighbor. Take care of your family. May God Bless us all with happiness, health and peace and, as always, an old butter bowl full of leftovers in the fridge.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

2011-12-25T19:53:00.002-06:00

Y2K, 9/11, Bird Flu, Justin Bieber, 2012, ...I say bring it.

With 2012 quickly approaching, many are turning their attention to the ancient Mayan calendar. According to the chiseled stone, the Mayan’s prophesy that December 21, 2012 will be an end of the ages. Not necessarily the end of the world, but an end of the age: a new cycle. Before we panic about something a bunch of dead Indians said a millennia ago, let’s arm ourselves with knowledge. (This would be a good time to visit the restroom or for you to go get a beverage. Settle back. Class is in session.)

The Maya lived in subtropical Mesoamerica (or between the two American continents) in parts of the countries that are now Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize, Honduras, and the Yucatan peninsula area of Mexico. The culture of the Maya developed between 2500 B.C. and A.D. 250. The Maya lasted for about another 700 years until around 900 A.D. before suddenly disappearing as a major force. Most of the great Mayan cities were abandoned near 900 A.D. Nobody knows why! By 1450 all major cities were completely abandoned, religion became less and less important just like art and architecture. So I guess maybe they loaded up the truck and moved to Arkansas. I have seen them shopping at Walmart, I swear.

Discovery Channel shows their cities reclaimed by the Amazon Rain Forest with the best of what is left becoming tourist attractions. For a few pesos, you can climb the steps of the sacrificial temples and pyramids where they once ripped the still-beating hearts from the chests of their adversaries. Streets that once ran with the blood of warriors are now filled with vendors selling lemonades, cocoa-flavored drinks or necklaces of beads and bright feathers.

The Mayan men were, at their best, 5’8 inches tall. Their height wasn't the unique thing about their appearance. Filing their teeth so sharp to points and having your eyes crossed was attractive. What would people today think? Wearing loads of jewelry and everyone having tattoos was considered hip. (I tell you, I have seen them at Central Mall, walking up and down the place with their pants sagging to their knees!)

Eleven years ago, the world was going to come to a stand-still. It was Y2K. The catastrophic glitch in computers that did not allow the change of the date of 2000 was supposed to cause wide-spread disaster. Cars would not start due to their computerized engines. Electricity would go off. Food would be scarce. Jets would tumble from the sky. Gasoline would be unavailable. Our socks wouldn’t match. Everyone and their brother was stockpiling bottled water, bags of rice and beans, cans of corn and green beans. Chaos and anarchy would break loose at the stroke of midnight. So I stood on my porch on New Years Eve. I stood there with my cars filled with gasoline, clutching a can of Green Giant and my son’s BB gun and watched in the darkened skies, searching for falling airplanes. Dick Clark called the countdown “10, 9, 8...” and I waited. Neighbors came to their doorways. “Happy New Year!” Dick yelled. The lights didn’t flicker. The blinking signals of a jet sailed quietly across the midnight sky. Slowly, almost disappointed, we went back into our homes. We ate beans and rice for the next six months.

When 9/11 happened in front of our very eyes, we were shocked and shaken. Just like the communist scare of the 1950s, we looked for a Muslim radical behind every rock. The kids at school were afraid that Lavaca would be attacked after watching the disaster befall Washington D.C and New York City on live television. I assured them that the radicals wanted to make a big name for themselves and that no self respecting terrorist would be welcomed back to the Middle East bragging that he had blown up the world’s tallest beer can silo. Once again, I filled my cars with gasoline and started gathering bottled water and cans of vegetables.

So, back before the time of Jesus Christ, some ancient Mayan stone mason carved out some decorative designs on a rock. Now, 2000+ years later, we have run out of rock. Movies are being made. Television documentaries are now filling the air waves. All because some chiseler didn’t get a bigger piece of stone. I wonder. What if they not pay the guy so he stopped his work in the middle of the job? Is there another continuation of the calendar on the back of the rock? Is there another calendar block in the back room of the pyramid? Has anyone taken the time to look? As advanced as we are today, we even have to flip the page on our home calendar occasionally.

And the thing that rips the rag off of the bush to me is this: If they were so stinking smart about the future, why did they not see the demise of their own civilization? Wouldn’t you think the smarty-pants that predicted the end of time might also think their own end was equally important?

Mark it down. I believe that something will happen on December 21, 2012. It’s the Winter Equinox and galaxy gazers tell us that there will be a strange alignment of planets and stars. That makes me think that maybe some natural disasters like tide changes or even an earthquake may be in store for us. Gravitational pull and all that. Or Obama may get a second term.

Today, I fear no Mayan. I won’t give into the hype of a missing tribe of ancient, dead, Godless Indians. Unless the Lord doesn’t need us first, that is. So I will see you on December 22. And I won’t be having red beans for dinner.

CHRISTMAS IS THE WARMEST TIME OF THE YEAR

2011-12-25T00:22:00.000-06:00

But it wasn’t always! I may be getting senile but didn’t it used to be freezing at this time of year? I know I remember having snow during the Christmas break from school. The snow would be up to a foot deep in our front yard. I remember that well because I was the one who would have to clean off the front sidewalk. The old square-pointed shovel was the tool of choice to clear the long sidewalk from our house to the street so my dad could get his paper and across the street to the mailbox.

But it doesn’t snow like that anymore. The last good snow I remember was in 2000 when the snow and ice stopped this part of the world from moving. It was also the time when they put a ‘recovery charge’ on our electric bill to cover the damages to wires, poles and other incidentals. Come to think of it, we are still paying that recovery charge! Wow…it takes so long to recover!

My father was certain that the Russians could control our weather. He blamed the Russians for everything. Is it too cold or too hot? The Russians did it. Price of gas goes up? The Russians did it. Is your mashed potatoes lumpy? That’s right…the Russians. We even built a bomb shelter and stored food in it to prepare for the advancing Soviet hordes.

It was thirty-eight degrees outside this morning. I went to church on Sunday without a jacket. My sons are still wearing shorts. What we need is a nice, cold blizzard! Think about it! The busy world around us would come to a stand still. Our families would be closer since they couldn’t get outdoors and be at the mall. Hundreds would flock to CVs to stockpile milk, bread and bologna for the long haul. The economy would be boosted. Families would be closer. And we could finally justify paying that recovery charge for the past ten years.

When Garrett Lewis, Channel 5’s weatherman, predicts a chance of snow, you can hear the traffic start to get heavy as local citizens flock to our CVs Grocery across the street. Before Vanna White steps out on the Wheel of Fortune, there is not a drop of milk or a slice of bread to be found in the entire store. I know because I am over there too! There are people yelling and poking, cussing and fighting, pinching and scratching. I hope I didn’t hurt anyone.

Our James family Christmas party was this past Sunday at my niece’s house in Fort Smith. The bank thermometer announced that it was a tropical 62 degrees. I was filled with memories of Christmases past with my entire family still with us. The smell of the food my mother had been preparing for days. The stereo playing Christmas music and the flavors of cakes, pies, dressing and a hot pan of rolls played with my senses. My mother would hum along with the music and the clatter of dishes and pans seemed to keep time with the songs. The presents that were carefully wrapped the night before are now open and the debris of torn tissue paper and boxes are already in the trash and the presents are returned to the tree to show visitors what all we have received. My father would be in his recliner. His big feet in white socks were in the way as he read the paper and held his reading glasses with one hand where they had been broken years earlier. Both of my sisters would arrive with their families and the noises would be happy chatter of “thank you” and “look what Santa got for me!”

Dinner would have everyone so full that pants would be unbuttoned and everyone sat around visiting with loved ones and remembering those who had gone before us and talk of hope for the future of those still here. Mom would drag out a long linen table cloth and cover the table full of food while several of us would gather dirty dishes and napkins. All of the leftover scraps of food were scrapped from the plates into a large bucket which Dad would eventually take to feed to the hounds out back. Some would leave promising to return for leftovers later in the evening after a nap.

Naps are the greatest after a big Christmas dinner. When we were kids everyone needed a nap. My mother and her sister would put me and my cousins to bed. We would have to sleep crossways in the full-sized bed to make room for everyone. If you were in the middle of the bed, you would smother from warm bodies crammed on both sides. If you were on the ends, you froze because the kid on the end would pull the covers off of you. Just as everyone settled down there was always the middle kid who decided to go to the bathroom and the whole process would begin again. George Green told me that he and his brothers slept like this all the time. He recalled that he was 18 years old before he was able to sleep in a dry bed!

Those days are over. Our family is scattered. The members who once bound us tightly are now celebrating our Saviors birth with the Savior Himself. But those of us left still gather to share memories, a plate of goodies prepared carefully with love and tie the strings a little stronger so we will remind ourselves that we are still family and still bound by love.

So, as Christmas approaches, I wish you the love of family and friends, a table filled with plenty, and the warmth of the birth of God’s only Son Jesus. May that Love cover you like a blanket and keep you safe all year long. And, just in case your coconut cake falls or your gravy has lumps, remember…it was probably because of the Russians. Merry Christmas from Jack, Shelley, Joshua, Jacob, Caleb and Noah! The whole James Family!

Christmas Memories for $100, Alex.

2011-12-25T00:07:00.001-06:00

It’s Christmastime. The very thought of Christmas brings a range of emotions to people. It is remembered as a time of joy and sharing, gifts and giving, church and carols. For some it is a time of sorrow and sadness for lost loved ones, for memories of poverty or even abuse. Christmas has always meant something very special to me.

I suppose that the very basis of what made Christmas so special in our house as I grew up was the fact that it was celebrated for so long. The house was decorated with lights across the length of the exterior but the inside was just as adorned. The roofline was dressed out with large lights of assorted colors, some blinking and some not. Mom would save the small pie pans from Chicken Pot Pies. (Pot Pies were always on sale at 5 for $1 after Thanksgiving at the Country Boy Market. We ate them every year so Mom would have ten new tins for the holidays.) Mom would stick the lights through a hole she made in the center of each pan and they would create a reflector much like the reflector on the old kerosene lamps inside. The remaining sections of the porch posts were wrapped in gold colored garland that allowed the colors to glitter in the night. Scattered mock orange, nandina and scrub holly bushes were covered with lights that beautifully denied their ugly daytime appearance. And the Christmas tree shown brightly centered in the living room window for all to see.

Not only was the house decorated with beautiful colored lights, but the inside was decorated as well. The Christmas tree, decorated to the hilt, proudly displayed strands of lights but also the assorted ornaments and decorations my parents has accumulated over the years. There were glass bulbs from my Grandma Goff, pine cones proudly painted and presented from kids and grandkids, and, as always, a birds nest for good luck. Dozens of cards hung on the walls, words of glad tidings and cheer from friends, family and neighbors we had known and had met in the forty-plus years that they were married. Special candy dishes were filled with hard candies but especially the hard ribbon candy that only came out during the holiday season.

The dining room table was covered in Mom’s best linen table cloth. It was bright red, her favorite color and centered in the middle was a bowl of fruit, if money allowed, or a plaster-of-paris log she had made years earlier that was fitted with a ceramic squirrel and a cup that held fake poinsettias or holly branches. The living room tables were covered with freshly starched, hand-made doilies that were her pride and joy. A simple Nativity scene replaced the Siamese cat lamp on the television.

Beneath the tree, in cheerfully colored paper, lay boxes of gifts. We knew what they were already. Christmas was the time to replace the worn blue jeans that had been purchased at the beginning of school. Months of playing in dirt and climbing trees had rendered the material near indecent by Christmas break. If we were lucky, shoes could last until Easter when then Christmas clothes would just about give up the ghost. Socks, underwear and a few surprises rounded out the rest of the tree.

It wasn't just about getting lots of stuff; it was about families getting together. Christmas albums or the radio was played on the stereo night and day. Neighbors brought by cookies or homemade breads and candy and stayed for a cup of coffee and a sample of their own seasons offerings. People who were once ‘stand offish’ would suddenly wave or yell a greeting as you walked by. Store windows began to reflect the change of attitude as well. It was like a dead world suddenly came to life on December 1st.

It was hard to be humbug with Christmas specials on every channel…both of them. You couldn’t escape shows like "Frosty the Snowman", "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (narrated by Burl Ives), "The Grinch That Stole Christmas", and of course, "Charlie Brown's Christmas".

Local churches would sometimes come by and sing Christmas carols just off of the front porches. Our family would walk to the door and listen or even sing along. Dad would walk out and shake hands with everyone while mom would hug the women. Cheerful tidings were spread around before they walked across the yard toward another house. If it had only snowed, it would have been a Currier & Ives moment.

It was in the 1960s when my mother bought an artificial tree. It was made of aluminum tinsel on long silver colored sticks that bloomed into a spread on each end. She covered it in only red ornaments. A round plate on a rotating wheel light revolved slowly illuminating the tree in white, red, blue, and green. It was beautiful but it wasn’t a Christmas tree. I think my mom liked it because it would glow much brighter when that tree light did its thing (and didn’t shed sharp barbs of needles into the rug). After a couple of years, our cries for the fresh tree won out and we went out to find the perfect real tree.

Like every kid, I have trouble recalling a single present that came from under that tree but I will always remember the feeling that my home gave me as I grew up. The love that was shown, the care that was evident and the peace those memories bring to me are my wishes to you. May you have a Christmas that your family will remember happily for years to come.

ATTENTION CHRISTMAS SHOPPERS!

2011-12-25T00:00:00.000-06:00

Warning: This column has some spoiler comments that may not be suitable for younger readers! Use caution when leaving it on the counter!

So many people can bend your ear for an hour as they remember a wonderful Christmas from their past. They reminisce about how when the family was all there, that the turkey was moist, or how they got the wagon, BB gun or doll that they had always wanted. Or they can visit for forever about how bad it was back in the day: all they got was nuts and fruit, (or cheese, in my case), a horrible crocheted hat from Aunt Mollie, or a tie that blinks in time to Jingle Bells. But where’s the fun in telling your daughter “I stepped on a woman’s head at WalMart to grab that doll for you!”

When the supper table is cleared after Thanksgiving, people start their engines like a NASCAR event. People are already in position outside Best Buy, camped out in tents so they can grab a television because they only have four at the house. They sit and play games on portable systems waiting to go buy more games on portable systems. People lined up for 6-8 hours before the stores even opened all over the country. In one city, a man died in the floor while Target shoppers stepped over his body for bargains. One man was trampled by shoppers trying to get a $2 waffle iron in another state while in yet another store a woman pepper sprayed the early shoppers, grabbed her goods and scooted.

My wife and son were early shoppers this year. But they were civilized. They went to get a cheap television for my son’s room at Walmart. But, unlike others, Shelley called to check if it was a free-for-all or if there were plenty. This store gave out cards guaranteeing that you would get the item without having to trample people like General Sherman on his March to the Sea. My wife bought two lawn chairs and they sat in a deserted aisle until the store pulled the TVs out of the back and then came home. Gotta love the south.

I worked at WalMart when I was in college. The money I made in the summer paid for a hunk of my tuition in the Fall and Spring semesters. I worked during the Christmas season only one year and knew that it wasn’t paying me enough to face the masses of insane shoppers. It was when the Cabbage Patch Dolls first came out. Stores all over the nation were sold out. Our store was sold out as well. The manager came back to me in shipping and receiving and announced that we would be getting over 100 of the dolls on a truck that day. We were to put them in the toy department 15 at a time until they were gone. Word got out instantly and the store looked like a stock yard on auction day. The pharmacist threatened to quit on the spot if we didn’t sell him two of them first. Crazy. We drew straws to see who was taking the dolls out of the doors for fear of our very lives. The smarter ones of us used little known doors to the store floor but none of us made it to the toy department with even one doll. We were down to around 25 dolls and this poor stocker drew the final run. We loaded all of them on a flat, four-wheeled cart. I patted him on the back and he shoved open the metal doors into harms way. I am not kidding a bit when I tell you that it looked like when you feed a handful of dog food to hungry fish in a stock pond. I was watching when a woman, easily in her 60s, dived over the back and shoulders of the poor stock boy leaving him humped over the handle of the cart at the waist while piranha women used him as a step to the merchandise. When the carnage was over, he was taken to a nearby walk-in clinic. I have hated those dolls since that day.

Here is the spoiler: It was Christmas Eve and I wasn’t very old at all. I was busy preparing my note to Santa. I had moved an old stool to the front room by the tree and arranged several cookies on a plate by a small glass of milk. Everything was just right when my Dad walked in from the back door. He took a long look at my work and disgustedly said, “Don’t tell me you still believe in that crap son?” The room spun. I muttered the only words I could think of and said, “uh…no…I guess not…” and then stumbled toward the hallway and my bedroom in the back of the house. I sat on my bed for a few minutes in deep thought and decided to go back and make sure I had heard correctly. I stepped out of the hallway into the living room just in time to see my Dad sitting in his recliner eating a handful of cookies and enjoying some stolen milk. I guess I knew the truth about Santa before then but I was covering my bases just to make sure. But boy howdy, a parent can sure kick a slat out from under you sometimes.

The season isn’t worth celebrating if you are only into the newest toy or game and brightly colored ribbons and bows. It’s the season of gifts for sure but the greatest gift has already been given. Love each other, be kind to a neighbor and don’t wait until December to do it.

WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE

2011-12-24T23:50:00.000-06:00

What do Tarzan, the Swiss Family Robinson and Jack James all have in common?
If your answer is loin cloths, seek immediate counseling. I am talking about people who had a tree house!

It is every kid’s dream to have a great tree house or fort of some kind. There is something extraordinary about having your own space, maybe high up in a tree, with its foundation secured between tree branches. A tree house combines all things children love: climbing, outdoors, trees, fun, imagination and a great sense of security.

The evolution of a fort began for me with simple sheets tossed over dining chairs. Old bedspreads covering the tops of strategically placed high-backed chairs made a room upwards to three feet in height. The spaces beneath the seats were places to store weapons, snacks or a treasure. Move over the coffee table, pull a quilt over it and you have an entrance tunnel. We spent hours constructing and repairing the castle. Finally, after my parents had enough, it was all torn down and the pieces returned to their rightful spaces.

I built a really sweet fort in the bamboo and reeds in the vacant lot behind our house once. By tying them together, I created a cathedral-style fort that was virtually invisible until you walked up close to it. All the kids in the neighborhood wanted to be in it. That is the real joy of having a clubhouse: other people want to be a part of it.

My father build a really wonderful tree house for me when I was around ten years old. He was truly a Jack-of-all-Trades! He salvaged lumber for some projects from an old burned house at the end of our street earlier. After he had saved the lumber he wanted, he gave in to my pleading and constructed me the best tree house ever. It was built in an old mimosa tree that had stood beside our home for years. The branches went out perfectly to the four corners of the earth. And this wasn’t just a tree house, it was a two-story tree house! A homemade ladder went straight up from the ground through the first floor and into a cut out in the floor of the second story. Each level had a couple of window holes that allowed us to look out from the highest points. He was sure to put one window facing toward our house and another toward our grandmother’s down the block. Above the second floor the ladder extended up to the open roof where he had made a rail and placed a couple of planks from the two narrowest sides. A crow’s nest or Widow’s Walk…only the very best forts had them.

It was here where we played pirates and cops and robbers. It became a castle where the lovely damsel in distress waited in the watch tower as we, the valiant knights, fought to rescue her from the evil black knight. We didn’t have real swords or even a girl to play the part of the damsel so we had to use our imaginations. In our Medieval battles, we catapulted the fighters in the castle with walnuts, horse apples or whatever we could find. If one of the fighters were actually hit and started crying, the wars stopped immediately to calm the wounded before my mother or grandmother heard the wailing.

There was a family down the street on the next block that had several boys who were the town bullies at the time. They had a sister and she was even more mean than they were. So, in case of emergency, my Dad hooked up an old 1949 diesel truck horn to a car battery and placed it on the second floor. At the first sign of trouble, we were to make the connection and blast the horn. This alerted not only my father, but every neighbor within two blocks.

Like every kid since creation, we grew tired of the tree house eventually. We turned our attention to bicycles and long walks on dirt roads across Huntington Hill and the valley below. Some of the older of us gave our attention to the neighborhood girls. The tree house became a playhouse where we could pretend to be married and the other kids were our children. Young, stupid and innocent, the times never allowed us to take advantage of the situation.

We got bigger and felt no need for the alarm any longer so my oldest cousin pushed the old car battery from the top floor to the ground below. It snapped that big old battery into two even pieces. Battery acid poured from it until it was drained completely. Being honest children as we were, we hid it from my dad so he could save his voice and not get those big blood vessels going in his forehead.

If we had told him immediately, things would have been different. The acid killed the old mimosa. Dad figured it out and ceremoniously cut down the dying mimosa with the tree house still attached. We were blessed that most of the words he was using couldn’t be heard above the roar of the chainsaw. But I could still see that blood vessel standing out of his red face.

Tree houses aren’t for kids anymore. I looked them up on the Internet recently and there is barely any mention of them for kids. It is the going thing now to build entire houses in the top of trees. Hundreds of thousands of dollars can be spent now to once again live and play in your own fort. And just like when we were kids, they want the nicest one possible so the other kids will want to be a part of it.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every child had a special place to escape and to dream, whiling away hours in fantasy? In the tree house, I could daydream away my troubles, ignoring the responsibilities of being a kid and watch the wind-blown branches swaying to and fro, imagining that I could save the world. But I now have my damsel and she no longer needs rescuing. But I truly believe the world would be a better place if we all used our imagination and got back out into our back yards.

What do Tarzan, the Swiss Family Robinson and Jack James all have in common?
If your answer is loin cloths, seek immediate counseling. I am talking about people who had a tree house!

It is every kid’s dream to have a great tree house or fort of some kind. There is something extraordinary about having your own space, maybe high up in a tree, with its foundation secured between tree branches. A tree house combines all things children love: climbing, outdoors, trees, fun, imagination and a great sense of security.

The evolution of a fort began for me with simple sheets tossed over dining chairs. Old bedspreads covering the tops of strategically placed high-backed chairs made a room upwards to three feet in height. The spaces beneath the seats were places to store weapons, snacks or a treasure. Move over the coffee table, pull a quilt over it and you have an entrance tunnel. We spent hours constructing and repairing the castle. Finally, after my parents had enough, it was all torn down and the pieces returned to their rightful spaces.

I built a really sweet fort in the bamboo and reeds in the vacant lot behind our house once. By tying them together, I created a cathedral-style fort that was virtually invisible until you walked up close to it. All the kids in the neighborhood wanted to be in it. That is the real joy of having a clubhouse: other people want to be a part of it.

My father build a really wonderful tree house for me when I was around ten years old. He was truly a Jack-of-all-Trades! He salvaged lumber for some projects from an old burned house at the end of our street earlier. After he had saved the lumber he wanted, he gave in to my pleading and constructed me the best tree house ever. It was built in an old mimosa tree that had stood beside our home for years. The branches went out perfectly to the four corners of the earth. And this wasn’t just a tree house, it was a two-story tree house! A homemade ladder went straight up from the ground through the first floor and into a cut out in the floor of the second story. Each level had a couple of window holes that allowed us to look out from the highest points. He was sure to put one window facing toward our house and another toward our grandmother’s down the block. Above the second floor the ladder extended up to the open roof where he had made a rail and placed a couple of planks from the two narrowest sides. A crow’s nest or Widow’s Walk…only the very best forts had them.

It was here where we played pirates and cops and robbers. It became a castle where the lovely damsel in distress waited in the watch tower as we, the valiant knights, fought to rescue her from the evil black knight. We didn’t have real swords or even a girl to play the part of the damsel so we had to use our imaginations. In our Medieval battles, we catapulted the fighters in the castle with walnuts, horse apples or whatever we could find. If one of the fighters were actually hit and started crying, the wars stopped immediately to calm the wounded before my mother or grandmother heard the wailing.

There was a family down the street on the next block that had several boys who were the town bullies at the time. They had a sister and she was even more mean than they were. So, in case of emergency, my Dad hooked up an old 1949 diesel truck horn to a car battery and placed it on the second floor. At the first sign of trouble, we were to make the connection and blast the horn. This alerted not only my father, but every neighbor within two blocks.

Like every kid since creation, we grew tired of the tree house eventually. We turned our attention to bicycles and long walks on dirt roads across Huntington Hill and the valley below. Some of the older of us gave our attention to the neighborhood girls. The tree house became a playhouse where we could pretend to be married and the other kids were our children. Young, stupid and innocent, the times never allowed us to take advantage of the situation.

We got bigger and felt no need for the alarm any longer so my oldest cousin pushed the old car battery from the top floor to the ground below. It snapped that big old battery into two even pieces. Battery acid poured from it until it was drained completely. Being honest children as we were, we hid it from my dad so he could save his voice and not get those big blood vessels going in his forehead.

If we had told him immediately, things would have been different. The acid killed the old mimosa. Dad figured it out and ceremoniously cut down the dying mimosa with the tree house still attached. We were blessed that most of the words he was using couldn’t be heard above the roar of the chainsaw. But I could still see that blood vessel standing out of his red face.

Tree houses aren’t for kids anymore. I looked them up on the Internet recently and there is barely any mention of them for kids. It is the going thing now to build entire houses in the top of trees. Hundreds of thousands of dollars can be spent now to once again live and play in your own fort. And just like when we were kids, they want the nicest one possible so the other kids will want to be a part of it.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every child had a special place to escape and to dream, whiling away hours in fantasy? In the tree house, I could daydream away my troubles, ignoring the responsibilities of being a kid and watch the wind-blown branches swaying to and fro, imagining that I could save the world. But I now have my damsel and she no longer needs rescuing. But I truly believe the world would be a better place if we all used our imagination and got back out into our back yards.

Thanksgiving Blessings

2011-11-20T18:05:00.000-06:00

In November 1621, fifty-three colonists and some Indians sat at a big table and gave thanks for a bountiful corn crop and for the fact that none of the colonists had thrown anyone overboard while traveling on a small ship across the ocean for 66 days. Ahhh, the first Thanksgiving celebration. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn't until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November. Thank you Mr. President. Now, pass the taters.

Thanksgiving is a time when we cook for 12 hours, eat 5575 calories in 10 minutes just before we collapse on the couch in a carbohydrate-induced coma, and after giving thanks for all the bountiful gifts in life. Oh, believe you me; I’m the first one to admit that I’m thankful for all the obvious gifts like family, friends, and the kindness of strangers, sliced bread and pecan pie. But I’m also thankful for the many not-so-obvious gifts. Therefore, I’ve compiled a small list of the things I am eternally grateful for this Thanksgiving:

Elastic waist pants. I came from a family with lots of uncles and cousins. Enviably one or more of the older men would back up from the dinner table and find his way to the couch. After a long sigh, they would unbutton their pants and perhaps lower their zippers a bit to make room for the gluttonous display we had to watch. That can really scar a child.

The television remote. I have literally missed a television show because I couldn’t find the remote. I was the TV remote when I was a kid. I am a channel surfer who can watch several shows at the same time. It drives my wife nuts. There would be mutiny if I had my kids stand by the set and change the channels. My dad had only three channels but with 97 channels on our cable, I could wear a kid smooth out.

A car gas gauge. My yellow Aztek has a broken gas gauge. I had it repaired once but it didn’t take. Now, I drive around throwing caution to the wind! Can I get to Fort Smith and back? Across the street to CVs? Will it even start? Ask the Lavaca Police Department and Rusty Wilson how good I am at guessing gas mileage since they have both had to help me home before.

Deodorant. I teach teen aged boys. After PE class! Enough said. I have seen teachers go to their knees after a hot day and a good workout with those kids walking in. I am not lying when I tell you that one of the things I have on my personal school supply list is a selection of FreBreeze and Lysol. The kids will spray on their deodorant and Axe Body Spray until a low cloud hovers over our school desks. Thank goodness they can’t have open flames. I am not complaining. My father once joked that a man came into the barracks when he was in the Army and exclaimed “Wow men! Somebody’s deodorant isn’t doing it’s job!” My dad replied, “Ain’t mine sir! I don’t use that stuff!”

Reading glasses. Without them I would have to pay for expensive arm extension surgery that my health insurance company refuses to cover. I used to be able to read road signs from miles away. Now, I am lucky that I don’t have to use Braille to find an exit. By the way, why do they have Braille lettering on the drive-thru ATM at the bank? Think about it.

Spam. I mean it! Spam gets a bad rap but it pretty much saved our soldiers in WWII. That little can crammed full of “meat” has that fun little key that opens it. Fun and food in one small space! Fried, baked, cold, in gravy, in eggs, in sandwiches…you can’t beat a good can of Spam.

The first settlers around that first Thanksgiving table included four married women, five teen aged girls and nine teen aged boys, thirteen young children and men. Sounds a little like dinner time here at our house. I hope they cooked enough. Spam hadn’t been invented yet. Over ninety Wampanoag Indians were in attendance. I have seen my Indians when the food gets low but at least they don’t have weapons. I think.

And finally, I am thankful for my God-given talent to exaggerate because without that skill, I would never be able to compose this weekly column. I really do count my blessings and have so much to be thankful for. May your turkey be moist. May your meringue stand tall. May you enjoy all the blessings of family and food and this wonderful country. But please, keep your pants zipped.

Caddy Gap

2011-11-20T17:30:00.000-06:00

Andy Rooney died a few weeks ago, just one month after retiring from the weekly news show, “60 Minutes.” Sure, he was 92 years old and had lived a wonderfully happy life but to have a retirement of only one month is a real bummer.

We had an old gentleman who lived with our family off and on for most of my life. His name was John Robertson. He lived in our little one-bedroom rent trailer for a couple of decades. He drove a bright orange Volkswagen station wagon with chrome western mirrors on each side. John came home from a trip to Malvern one day and his car was torn to pieces on the passenger side. The western mirror on the passenger side was driven completely into the inside of the car through the door panel. After quizzing him about what had happened, John told us that “a large man-like vermin was sitting on the concrete rail on the bridge (by Barber Park near Packsaddle) and had jumped on top of the car.” Seems that he critter attacked John’s car and then ran to safety. At the tender age of eighty-four, I had to take John to the DMV for a driving test, which he failed miserably. I found him dead in the floor of his little trailer a month after they had taken his license away.

John was a character to say the least. He looked just like the old actor Jimmy Durante. He was born in 1898 in Caddo Gap and never married. I bet he wasn’t over five feet five inches and had to weigh no more than 120 pounds soaking wet. The man reeked of Old Spice after shave. He would pour it into his hand, rub his palms together and then wipe it on his face and then over the few remaining hairs he had on his head and then comb it all straight back. For some reason, John wore nothing but khaki pants that were maybe two sizes too large, a selection of checked or solid dark sport coats and with a worn fedora hat cocked slightly on his head. John whistled constantly. It was never a tune just a simple but never-ending ditty that didn’t annoy or entertain. He walked with his hands deep in each pocket, one hand rattling his keys and the other jingling the change his kept. “Caddy Gap” is what my father called him.

John was known to get toasted occasionally but never got too sloppy. He would come to the house and reminisce about his long life and the things he had seen for hours. My parents were having a ‘musical’ one night. We called it a musical but it was usually a dozen or more of my parents friends who got together and played different instruments. They would pull all of the furniture out of the living and connecting dining room, roll back the rugs and dance on the wooden floor. Others would sit in the front yard on our couch and chairs and listen to the good bluegrass and country music. Old John would have a touch or two of the fermented grain and would sing. It was always the same song, “Pray for the Lights to Go Out.” His old squeaky voice made small animals run and our ears cringe but I loved to hear him sing.

John, my father and I were going to Hartford one day along Highway 252. There was an old single-lane steel bridge that went across the Jamesfork Creek, just below Sugarloaf Mountain before it forked to either Hartford or Midland. A large truck pulling a loaded cattle trailer was already entering the other side of the bridge when we started on the east side in John’s orange Volkswagen. We met in the middle of the creaking bridge and sat there, bumper to bumper, staring at each other through the windshields. The man couldn’t back up even if he wanted to and John wasn’t going to budge. Dad finally convinced him into going back. John swore that if I would get out of the car, he would ram the guy, truck and trailer into the creek and we could be on our way. Getting out of that car seemed like a perfect idea to me.

John had no immediately family. His only relatives were two great-nephews who lived in Malvern and Dumas and they had only been to his home maybe twice in the decades he lived there. When John died, we called his nephews. Within four hours, our yard was filled with ‘grieving’ relatives. My parents made room in their home to accommodate them and even slept in the cellar and gave up their beds. That night I slept in the same room where I had found John just hours before. After the funeral, they attacked the little trailer looking for valuables. Old John had nothing but mementos to his name: his WWI draft card, several jackets with burn holes from Prince Albert tobacco cigarettes, a few worn out Zippo lighters, matchbooks and a single photo of the only woman he ever loved. It was of the two of them in the 1920s as they stood on a large stump. It was beautiful. I found it in a pile on the floor where they had dumped out a small suitcase. One guy wanted our cook stove. Another tried to take the air conditioner.

They took the orange Volkswagen with the ruined western mirror. They cleaned out his small bank account saying that they would use the funds to purchase a headstone for him. Two years later, my father and I went together and bought him a simple marker which I still decorate every year.

I still miss that old man. He was a hoot. But I am more afraid of a catastrophe hitting a month after any life changing event after what has happened to John and now Andy Rooney.

Old William Henry Harrison, ninth president of the United States and heroic Indian fighter, died in office exactly one month to the day after taking office. The oldest man ever elected to office had given the longest inaugural speech ever given in a cold March rain and caught pneumonia. At least he wasn’t attacked by a vermin on a bridge. I wonder if his nephews ransacked the White House and tried to steal his air conditioner?

Did You Hear?

2011-11-12T13:26:00.000-06:00

gos·sip\noun\
1. a person who habitually reveals personal or sensational facts about others
2. a rumor or report of an intimate nature b : a chatty talk

Before children (BC) came to our house, Shelley and I could be found at the Antique Auction in Roland, Oklahoma every Saturday night. Row after row of odd matching kitchen chairs, lawn chairs and even living room furniture lined the width of the old building. Up to one hundred people sat here and watched and bid on things they just couldn‘t live without.

As we drove into the parking lot one Saturday night, we noticed that the paved parking lot was unusually full of vehicles. We moaned about how everything would be selling higher this night with more people in the crowd. We were pretty defeated as we walked into the entrance. Instead of a crowd in the auction, we found only five or ten people. We asked the owner about the cars outside and he replied, “Oh, there is a new act at the Gentleman‘s Club next door and the men park here so their wives won’t see them there and fellow church members won‘t see them parking at a club.”

I stopped at a liquor store once to buy some rum for a cake my wife was making for her family Thanksgiving dinner. Before I woke up the next morning, no less than three people had heard that I was seen coming out of the liquor store with an arm load of booze.

Old Martin Luther, the monk of the Middle Ages, started the Lutheran Church after he put a list of 95 problems he had with the Catholic Church on the door of the church. He did that because that is where all of the old men in the town hung out to spread the news of the day. Didn’t take long before dear Martin found himself booted right out of the Catholic Church.

Today, we spread the news at the diner or the EZ Mart. In Huntington, the town criers were regulars standing in front of the post office every morning. If you need to know who was seeing who, how much Jimmy owed on his new pickup, or how Joe bought the Martin’s house for back taxes, you could hear about it in great detail at the post office.

In the long summer break during my junior high years, my girlfriend and I got hooked on the ABC soap opera, “All My Children.” We sat in the pew at the Huntington Baptist Church and spiritedly recalled how Tom had been cheating on Erica and how Mona shouldn’t take the heat for Erica after she shot him. We continued about how Jesse really didn’t need the surgery but Dr. Kelly was drinking and almost killed him on the operating table. I remember getting that feeling that we were being watched and slowly turned to look behind us. Two pews of elderly ladies sat silently, mouth open with hands covering their dainty hands covering their shock. One made eye contact and said, “Oh my goodness! Is that Grace’s daughter Mona? Was that Jesse Cotner who had the surgery?” We ticked off a flock of old hens that day when we told them it was a soap opera. It would have made for a great conversation at the beauty shop on Monday morning though!

My classmates and I used to play the Gossip Game at school years ago. It is started by lining up as many kids as you can. Someone starts the play by whispering a sentence in the ear of the first player. “Larry got scared by a ghost in his house” is passed quietly until the last person hears the sentence. The words take a beating until the last person shouts out, “Loosen the bell! The goat is home!“ Gossip and rumors, like wine and cheese, get better with age.

The American people even had to be warned about gossip during World Wars I and II. “Loose Lips Sink Ships” became a popular propaganda slogan to remind us that the smallest amount of information could fall on enemy ears and may cost an American soldier his life. Winston Churchill once said "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

It was in ancient Greece (469 - 399 BC), when the great philosopher Socrates came upon an acquaintance who ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students?"

Wait a moment," Socrates replied. "Before you tell me I'd like you to pass a little test. It’s called the Triple Filter Test. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?" The man answered no.

“Okay,“ Socrates said, “Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?" "No, on the contrary..."

"So," Socrates continued, “Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?" "No, not really."

"Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither true nor
good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?"

Before you say I am preaching, I have to confess. I love sitting at the diner and hearing all the conversations. Honestly, I have added to the discussions. I have been known to linger at the supermarket checkout line and read about how Ashton and Demi are headed for a divorce or how Michele Obama is adopting a two-headed alien baby. But I have really been working hard to watch my own gossip.

So if you hear that I have been at the Gentleman’s Club, liquored up with Demi Moore and buying antiques, don’t be to quick to judge me. I don’t even like Demi Moore.

Hair Today. Gone.

2011-10-27T20:17:00.000-05:00

This past Halloween, I put caramel sauce on my head and went Trick-or-Treating as a candied apple.

Ok. I am going bald. There. I said it. While it is obvious to everyone else, I have been in denial for some time now. For several years, I have been telling myself that it was not a receding hairline…my forehead was just growing. Perhaps I had been washing my hair in too hot of water and it had shrunk? But it is getting harder to hide from the truth. I have come to understand that the only thing that can stop falling hair is the floor.

My dear maternal grandfather was Tim Goff. He passed away before my first birthday. He was a very poor man but he left me two things: a leather key chain and the baldness trait. Poppa Goff was a short man. He was a stout man with a waist size that out measured his height. I guess he left me three things. He wore Big Smith overalls and an old felt Fedora hat and worn out work boots.

My uncles were bald early in life. Their sons were completely bald by the time they were eighteen years old. It didn’t seem to bother them, but it was like a coming train to me. I have to thank the good Lord for my father. He had thick hair and, with his contributing genes, I have held on to my follicles thirty-two years longer than any Goff relative in my family tree.

I used to have really long hair in the 1970s. In fact, my hair was so long that I wore it parted on the left, pulled over my right ear and it hung down past my shoulders. I could reach behind my back and pull it. My dad was finally convinced that it was the 70s style but made it perfectly clear that, should he ever see my hair nasty and greasy, he would cut it himself. I was smart enough to know that he would have too.

Hats were in style in the 60s and I wore one all the time. At least until my mother decided that it was a hat that had caused her father and brothers to go bald so quickly. All of my hats were tossed in the trash and I never wore another one for the rest of my life thus far. Now I want to start wearing them again. The bull is out of the pen so what could it hurt?

I quit going to a guy who used to cut my hair when he kept talking about my thinning hair. My new barber became Selma Green and I tease her about cutting my bangs too short. Sadly, she spends more time trimming my eyebrows. It is embarrassing to tell you but I have actually used to pray for hair. Now, I can spend that knee time praying for starving children or and end to world hunger.

Someone gave me a gag gift of a box of Rogaine sometime back. It sat in the bathroom cabinet for years because I didn’t want to live the rest of my life squirting foam on my head and depending on its medicinal properties. Old men shared their sure fire home remedies with me without being asked. Some swore that a good rinse with apple cider vinegar would grow rich, luxurious locks. One suggested a compote of a cinnamon and honey plaster on my scalp and promised it worked for their grandfather’s WWII buddy’s friend. Another promised that he had read that cow manure would fix my balding problem. (I think that anyone who would do that had more problems than baldness.) The Internet had millions of hits that promise that their remedy will grow hair on a doorknob. But seriously, who wants hairy doorknobs?

The television and movie screens are filled with bald men that have driven women bonkers: Sean Connery, Bruce Willis, Yul Brenner, Vin Diesel and even Michael Jordan. They make the women swoon. I look in the mirror and, instead of seeing these guys, I find Ed Asner, Fred Mertz, a Stooge brother and the guy on Seinfeld.

I would never consider a comb-over! A friend of mine had a balding husband and he insisted on wearing a toupee. Even though his own hair had made a horse-shoe shape from ear-to-ear that was very gray, his old toupee was jet black. When he turned sideways, it looked like he had a dead bird on his head. I might train my cat to ride on my head…let the kitty’s tail hang down my back and put his little paws down on my face like sideburns. I would have the only hair in town that needed a litter box.

Well, there are worse things than losing your hair. And, if you dig deep, you can find some positives too! It won’t be long until I can just wash my hair with a wash rag! I will never be afraid to drive with my sun roof back. Just think of the money I will save on shampoo, combs and brushes! Maybe Selma will give me a half-off discount? Instead of asking for a shampoo and trim, I am five years away from requesting a dusting and a polish to a high glossy sheen.

When it comes to hair, there are three categories for men: parted, unparted and departed. And I have resolved myself to being near the last of those three. I just think it is rude though to turn 50 and you get a mailbox filled with birthday cards, a membership request from AARP and a sad plea to join the Hair Club for Men. Now, has anybody seen my hat?

Screen Door

2011-10-22T23:52:00.000-05:00

There is something about a screen door that makes my heart happy. The sounds of squeaky hinges and the noise of the pulling of the long spring are wonderful memories for me.

Unless your toddler pokes a hole in it, a guest leans too hard on it or -- as happened during an early scene in ''The Wizard of Oz'' -- a violent wind rips it from its hinges, you are liable to take your screen door for granted.

Our front door was an old hollow-core door, a cheap and inexpensive decoration to a Jim Walter Built house that was my childhood home. The three staggered windows in the door were like a time capsule. I knew I was growing up when I could stand and look through the next higher pane.

That squeaking screen door takes me back to a time when everyone I loved was still alive. I couldn’t realize then that it would be all too soon before they were only in my memories, faces in old pictures or names etched in granite markers.

Our screen door wasn’t anything special. There were no ornate carvings or fancy iron frills that others had. It was just a simple wooden frame and an old wire screen. The years of running through it, pushing on the wire and such had made it necessary for my father to place a thin wooden brace across the center. I can still hear him yelling loudly, “Don’t slam the screen door!” It was too late, of course, as I was already across the porch and running on the lawn by the time he said it.

“It’s startin’ ta rain,” my mother would say. “Run out there quick and get the clothes off the line.” I’d dart out the door, throwing the screen open so fast and hard that it hit the side of the house, then hear it close with a loud thump behind me. And then, with arms overloaded with the clothes, I would tap it with my foot to get someone’s attention to let me in.

Every evening, I’d hear the squeak of the spring as the door opened and knew that Dad was home before he turned the knob and pushed open the paper thin front door. There was no need for a burglar alarm. When that door opened, the spring squeaked, the hinges moaned and the little latch rattled and announced that company had arrived. That is a good thing when you are not expecting someone and you’re half-dressed. But it is not so welcomed if you are trying to sneak in after the street lights have come on--the universal signal that you should already be in the house.

Growing up in a house without air conditioning, I recall those screen doors were vital in letting in the gentle breezes. The smell of newly cut grass was our air freshener. There is nothing like the smell of wild onions having been cut by the lawnmower. The aroma of mom’s rose bushes or the honeysuckle that filtered through the mesh or the welcomed smell of the coming rain. We knew what the neighbors wear fixing for supper. The smell of mom cooking poke salad or cabbage made me avoid the house when I could smell it from the front yard. We propped it open if a bird flew in the house….a sure sign that death was near.

Looking back, that old screen door kept things cool enough with the exception of a few miserable days in late July. Then we would pull our mattresses out of the house and sleep in the yard beneath the mimosa’s and chinaberry trees or on top of the storm cellar. We would wait with our arms held up at our sides like little chickens with wings lifted to cool their tiny pin feathers.

Our old black weenie dog, Meego, would let herself out of the house and would knock on the screen when she wanted back inside. Not to be outdone, my Uncle HL would hold onto the brass handle and bang the old door twice to announce he was on his way in. He walked so slow with his bad knees and cane and we would have a fresh supply of flies, waspers and dirt dobbers come in with him.

According to the New York Times feature on American culture, “the screen door, in one version or another, has been around since shortly after the Civil War, when people discovered how to weave metal wire.” These days, they have been replaced with aluminum framed full window pane storm doors. There is nothing romantic or nostalgic about a storm door.

Screen doors, I am happy to report, are supposedly making a comeback. Baby Boomers like myself, long for the memories of when we were young and safe and our problems were so much easier. We would gladly exchange the skinned knees and elbows for the arthritis and heart murmurs we enjoy today.

Cherish your screen doors, if you still have them. They are hot sellers in antique shops, at local flea markets and garage sales lately. The screen door is as classically American as good ol’ apple pie and baseball. It’s such a simple thing that brings a smile to my face every time I think of it.

DANCING THE NIGHT AWAY

2011-10-17T22:55:00.000-05:00

I don’t know how I have made it this far. This summer, I turned fifty-one years old. It’s funny how you say “I turned…” like I am an old piece of fruit. I was pushing 50 but now I am dragging it.

I don’t have any major vices to speak of really. I don’t partake of recreational drugs. I have a cabinet filled with prescription drugs to keep my food down, my heart pumping and cholesterol decent. If aspirin were a narcotic I would be doing time in the pokey by now. I don’t drink to excess. I will enjoy the occasional glass of red wine on a date with my wife. I have been known to taste the grapes when visiting with friends too. I hate beer and what it does to people so I avoid it and the people who enjoy it too much.

I try not to swear. The only gambling I do is driving down Rogers Avenue on Saturday. And teaching. It is amazing that I have been teaching for over twenty-six years and haven’t been seen running into the wilderness, hands above my head, bobbing between trees and giggling with wild abandon. I have around 150 students a day….all teenagers….150 kids x 26 years…you do the math. There are four teenaged boys in my living room right now but they are my own sons and they run much faster than I can.

I have one addiction and that is food. I write about food too much. Even as I am typing this on my computer, the wonderful aroma of potato chip crusted chicken breasts fill the air. Smothered in sour cream and garlic, there is no place to go in this place that you don’t have your tongue slapping your forehead. I do believe I would crawl a city block on my left ear to get a plate of it. And it is sooo healthy for you….Shelley removes all the calories, cholesterol and fat. I know, I just lied.

But seriously, food is my drug. Any person I have ever known has a food attached to their memory. My mother: goulash. Dad: cold white gravy. My sister Donna Jo: BBQ wieners. My sister Lou Ellen: stroganoff. Grandma Goff: beans and cornbread. Aunt Julia: fudge. Aunt Fern: champagne punch. (Man, she loved that punch and didn’t need an occasion either.) Woody Green: ice cream. Then there’s Ruthie Martin and her coconut pies and Bud Moore and okra. I am obsessed.

When I was a young boy, our friends from California, the Baker’s, came to visit unexpectedly. They drove a large RV home and had several kids. When word got to my dad’s brother and sisters of their visit, our house quickly filled with people by afternoon. We weren’t together more than an hour when a neighbor walked in with a hot dish of macaroni and cheese. She was certain that out of state guests and family gathering quickly meant that someone was dead. We never flinched and ate it before she left.
For my twenty-sixth birthday, my parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday. Mom was thinking I would ask for shoes or blue jeans. I asked for a cookout. Not just a grilled burger but one of the old cookouts that we used to have when I was a kid. As usual, they did just that and more.

Our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Shields, were constantly on Lake Hinkle and were champion crappy fishermen (that is pronounced CROP-PEE). He would catch them and she would fillet them on the boat and freeze bread sacks full of the boneless fillets. They always gave Dad a sack full after every trip. Dad would freeze them and we would eat them later. He had three large bags and decided he would have a fish fry. When he invited the Shields, they brought out three more bags. Dad rigged burners under two cast iron kettles in the front yard to fry fish and hushpuppies. Mom and I ran their party lights that they used from their camp trailer in the mimosa’s and up to the concrete stairs that separated our front yard from the side yard. Everyone was invited. People began arriving early from Waldron, Hartford, Midland, Mansfield. My Aunt Fern even came from Eufaula, Oklahoma and made punch.

We moved our dining room table outside and lined up our picnic table with it. Our picnic table was actually the front porch that was left in an empty lot when they moved the trailer away. It made a perfect outside table. Our neighbors carried their tables over until we had six or seven lined up and covered with different colors of sheets. Everyone brought a dish of something whether it was Jenny Kinard’s neon-yellow chicken and dumplings or Donna Jo’s BBQ weenies. Some brought green beans or a sheet cake. One just brought a loaf of white bread.

I was starting to build my own house at the time in the lot beside my parents and had just the foundation and sub floor built. Dad had invited several of the people to bring their guitars and instruments to the festivities and they set up where my kitchen was to be eventually. The bluegrass music filled the air and the multi-colored lights and bug candles lit the floor as dozens of men and women danced on the floor of my soon-to-be house.

More than a hundred people attended that night. I had to go get ice at one time and noticed that almost three blocks away, a couple was sitting on their front porch swing listening to the music that filled the night air. I stopped and told them to go and eat and enjoy themselves. They beat me back home after I had run my errands.

With the exception of my wedding to Shelley and the birth of our sons, that had to be the greatest night of my life. And the saddest thing is that we could do the same thing here in Lavaca with very little effort. I sure wish we would.

(This photo was taken from Google Images and is not of my family. It does look a little like what was going on in this story though!)

Grandma Goff and Aunt Julia

2011-10-15T22:48:00.000-05:00

My grandmother, Bertha Ellen Smith Goff, was a devout Christian woman. She and her sister, Julia Ann Smith Callaway, were raised in the Pentecoastal faith and were faithful to God until the day they died.

This photo is of them sitting on the banks of the Jamesfork Creek in Sebastian County Arkansas, reading the Bible. It was taken in 1922. Grandma Goff, in the back, was already married to my grandfather Tim Goff. Aunt Julia was a young girl.

This is one of my favorite family photos.

Playing Possum and Chasing Roosters

2011-10-07T20:06:00.000-05:00

Skunks and other small creatures have really been active in our county lately. I don’t know why unless it is the lack of rainfall, lack of food or what, but they are out and about. The smell of skunks even made the local news this past week when several families of the fellers decided to pull up stakes and travel across town. It may have been caused by the construction of new housing developments like the ones going on in Chaffee Crossing. Who knows? But they are on the move.

My father used to take me hunting with him when I was growing up. Our goal was a good fox race or some success coon hunting. Dad would turn the dogs loose and the chase would soon begin. It wasn’t but a few times that my dad would get mad because he could tell exactly what they were trailing. We would finally get to where they were treed and, if it was a possum, my Dad would shoot it out of the tree, pick it up by the tail and proceed to beat the fire out of the dogs with the poor dead thing. I expressed my disappointment only once about this practice. He said that it taught the dogs to not tree the possum the next time. I never brought it up again because I saw the look in my dads eye. For just a moment, I thought I would be next to suffer a possum spanking.

My sister Donna Jo married in 1969. The old house that they moved into was just beside his parents on the main street of Mansfield and was just a little more than a shack. Twelve foot ceilings were decorated with hanging strips of wall paper that were victims of years of a leaking roof. Ancient wallpapers covered every room and worn linoleum floors were centered in the middle of wide board flooring. For some reason, there was a sink in the bedroom. The bathroom was an afterthought having been added on the back porch many years earlier. The toilet leaned to the north at an uncomfortable angle that forced the user to counter-weight himself on the seat toward the south so you and the bowl wouldn’t tip over. The long, claw-footed bathtub also leaned to a degree that made you recall photos of the ships in Pearl Harbor after the Japanese attack. Some previous renter built a box that enclosed the tub in thin paneling, which we thought was very bizarre.

One morning, my sister was “using the facilities”, half asleep and bracing herself against the tub and wall. She noticed something moving so she tried to focus across the room. Seconds later, a momma possum, complete with attached baby possums, waddles from behind the bathtub enclosure. Something scared the critter, perhaps it was the loud screams of my sister who found herself blocked from the exit, tilted vicariously and not in any shape or position to run let alone try to hurdle a family of possums. Momma and babies hurriedly scampered back into the loose paneling and through a hole in the floor behind the tub from which they had arrived.

Donna’s husband, ever the avid hunter, sat in the bathroom for two days with his 22 rifle. The next appearance of the possum was to be its last as the poor thing died of sudden lead poisoning.

I went possum hunting accidentally one evening. Shelley had made a trip into the garage to get something from the freezer when something hissed at her from beneath our shelving. Being the tough man I am, I took my weapon of choice, a Louisville Slugger baseball bat and boldly went to rid our home of whatever it was. It was a possum who was looking for food, I imagined, but his welcome had worn smooth out. I poked him several times and finally got him out of the shelf. It fell to its side...playing possum. I was not to be fooled so I gave him few bloody whacks and then tossed him into the ditch to dispose of in the morning. When daylight came, the possum was gone. Evidently, he was very, very good at playing possum.

Our own Lavaca police officer Randy Toon can testify about critters catching you by surprise. Officer Toon was recently off duty and was down at the EZ Mart wearing his off-duty uniform: shorts and flip-flops. A call came in on the police radio about a domestic squabble and assistance was requested. Toon, always on duty when there is trouble, jumped into the police cruiser and zoomed to the address to help. The other policemen had reason to believe that a person was hiding in or around the house after they had arrived so Randy made his way carefully around the house and into the backyard. He noted that there was a chicken pen and small chicken house so he went in to check it for the trespasser.
He had just closed the door behind him when a big old rooster came charging out and running toward Officer Toon. It seemed that the bird thought there was room for only one rooster in this pen and began to attack the naked legs and uncovered feet of one of Lavaca’s finest. Randy drop kicked the bird across the pen but it didn’t even flinch and made a second and third run. The spurs were taking their toll and Officer Toon was close to drawing his weapon. If he shot the rooster, it would have been an alert to the other officers who would have responded with guns drawn, so he backed toward the door of the cage between chicken attacks. I guess if someone had been in there it would have been oblivious by then.

Watch out for skunks. They are notorious carriers of rabies. Check your bathtub for exits. Close your garage doors. And salute Randy Toon, aka Officer Foghorn and thank him for his part in the Battle of the Dirty Birds 2011! Colonel Sanders would have had your back Randy! And so do we.

ALL ABOARD!

2011-10-02T17:15:00.000-05:00

Trains and railroads have always fascinated me. Although I have never had the pleasure of riding one, I can imagine the feel and excitement of it.

As a young boy on the Mansfield Elementary play ground, I would run to the fences and watch passing trains as they flew past the old Mansfield Depot. I would count the cars carefully or try to run along side of it until the far fence blocked my way.

Movies rerun on television glamorized the trip by trains. I rode along with Cary Grant in the sleeper cabin in “North By Northwest” and with Jimmy Stewart in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance.” At the movies on Friday night, I would hold my breath as Pauline, tied snuggly to the tracks, lay in peril in fear of certain death as a fast train approached. With inches to spare, the Lone Ranger, Gene Autry or some horse riding, hat wearing hero yanked her to safety and into his strong arms. Even Snidely Whiplash was fond of attaching poor Nell to the rails only to be saved by Dudley Do Right and his trusty steed Horse.

When someone decided to tear down the old train depot in Mansfield, I was more than shocked…I was ill. That beautiful old brick structure was a monument to the glory days of the town. Even as a very young man, I knew the value of history.

When I moved to Lavaca, I was intrigued by the stories of the town railroad history and of the old depot. The train still ran up and down the tracks but the old depot was long gone. The only thing that remained of it was a concrete pier at the corner of Houston and 2nd Street. In doing research for the town’s history, I found a grainy photo in a 1903 Sebastian County Plat Book. The men, standing along side the foreman, Mr. Erikson, posed in front of the freight door. Above their heads was the sign announcing Lavaca. Before them on the tracks sat two rail hand cars. Another photo shows a proud Joe Carruth atop his horse as he collected the mail to deliver to local businesses and citizens. I have never seen other photos but would love to.

Recently, I have been renewing my search for the history of the depot. This summer was eventful as I thought we had located the old Lavaca sign from the depot in Fort Smith. Woody Green told me he had seen it in the back yard of a man’s house as he was reading meters once but had forgotten where. After an all out hunt and afternoons of literally driving up alleyways, I found the sign with the help of some local snoopers. Turns out that it was a remake of our sign, made by a train enthusiast. I was pretty depressed about having the slats kicked out from under me on that dream. Then new clues began.

After hearing local men talking at the diner, one man thought the old depot itself had been moved to a place south of town into the back of a pasture. After speaking to several older citizens, it was verified that it had not been torn down but moved many years earlier. Other old timers said they had not seen it in their lifetimes. Just as fast as the hunt started, it ended. The place that they remembered it having been moved to turned up empty.

Just this past week, a former student responded to my Internet questions about the location of the depot. He wondered if it could be an old place that was in the woods near his childhood home where he used to play. We made a time to meet.

This past Sunday, Kevin Wood and his young sons Chris and Connor and I began a hike into the dense woods south of Lavaca. Surrounded by briars and trudging through limbs, leaves and debris, we trekked up a steep hill toward the house he remembered from years earlier. I had to stop several times to breath and pray and was totally embarrassed as he and his young sons showed no signs of hyperventilation, as I was doing so expertly. We never hit a clearing until the place appeared before me.

There it was. Cargo freight doors just like the 1903 picture. The beautiful architectural details that were evident in the grainy 108 year old photo stood above me that once shaded passengers as they waited to board the train. I was stunned and speechless. All signs of fatigue and exhaustion were quickly replaced with awe and excitement.

The building itself was in tremendous disrepair. Windows were gone and floors collapsed. Expletives were irreverently spray painted on antique wanes coating walls by other adventurers before me. I looked out the back freight door and there, thirty yards behind it, lay the pasture that I had heard of before. Filled with cattle, a house was in the far distance. It was where it was rumored to be.

If you have a Facebook account, I have posted photos. If you don’t I will try to have them in the museum soon. As I told you before, I love snooping through old abandoned houses. But this was so much more. It was my Disneyland. I sure wish we could bring it back home. Thank you Kevin Wood. You made my day!

Wear Comfortable Shoes. Bring lots of Quarters.

2011-09-25T18:37:00.003-05:00

Sound the trumpets! Beat the drums! Unfurl the flags! It’s big news folks! Really big! Maybe you should sit down. Are you ready?

This weekend will be the Lavaca Community-Wide Yard Sale! I KNOW, RIGHT? The citizens of the entire area will have the unique opportunity to buy the treasures of local citizens this coming Saturday, October 1, 2011. Literally tens of yard sales will be going on simultaneously throughout our little village. Look in today’s paper and in local store windows for addresses of sales that have been announced. I am sure more will be added after the paper comes out.

Call your tag sale buddies and make a day of it. Take a break and enjoy a good lunch in one of Lavaca’s fine eating establishments! Ask about the Yard Sale Specials that may be offered!

If you plan to sell along with us, please call me or email me at
jackwjames@aol.com and I will add you to the flyers and to my Facebook announcements! Also. Drop by the Lavaca City Hall and fill out a free Garage Sale Permit. It is a formality that keeps some from having perpetual yard sales so keep it legal. Also, drive carefully. Don’t mar the celebration with a ride in an ambulance.

I have always enjoyed yard sales. I have always wondered what it is that people do on Friday night that makes them put their junk on display in the driveway on Saturday morning. I have gone to sales where someone will have a masking tape sticker for $10 on a vase and, when I ask about it, I hear how it once belonged to their great-grandmother on their momma’s side and how they hate to part with it. Then they ask if I will give $8 bucks. Sentimental belongings grow wings when you need a pack of cigarettes I guess.

I wrote about this last year but I wanted to repeat it for any who had missed the story last June.

It was a fine Saturday afternoon in May of 1985. I was graduating that day from the University of Central Arkansas at Conway after four years of study. My small apartment was part of a duplex on a busy street just behind the campus. It was filled with yard sale treasures that I had acquired to make my little house feel like home. All of my family would be attending and watching the first James member to ever graduate from college. My two sisters were traveling together and had never been to my apartment and I wasn’t sure my parents remembered how to get there either. I got the bright idea to make sure they would find the place by making the coolest direction signs that said “This way Sis!” “Almost there!” “Don’t give up yet!” and hung them from the city limits of town and at every turn to my apartment. Big helium balloons of purple and gray and a big sign were on my mailbox, “This is It!“ Mom and Dad arrived without incident. I asked them if they had seen the signs but they replied they hadn’t noticed. (This didn’t surprise me because my Dad only watched things in his lane while driving. The man had absolutely no peripheral vision whatsoever.) I was busy getting ready in the back bedroom and my mother decided to leave the front door open to watch for my sisters car just in case they should miss the place even with my wonderful directions.

It wasn’t long before I heard my mother politely call me from the living room, “Jackie! Would you come out here please?” I opened my bedroom door and walked down the hallway and turned to find a rather large black man, his wife and daughter in my house! The woman had my photo frames in her arms and her daughter was sifting through my cassettes. My parents were statues…motionless. “Can I help you?” I asked. “How much are your photo frames?” They thought I was having a yard sale. They were mortified and I was pretty much speechless. My sisters arrived as they were leaving, wondering why a black family was leaving my apartment. They drove in from the back roads and had missed every sign. Figures.

My sister had a similar situation one day. Her house was located on Huntington Hill on Highway 71. Her dryer went out one day and, being a resourceful James that she was, she hung a chain from porch post to porch post, put her clothes on hangers and left them out to dry. Sometime later, she answered a knock on her door and found a woman holding a handful of her blouses and asking if she could pay out. Another woman was just parking in the driveway when she shooed the lady off of the porch and started taking in her clothes.

I was told about a man recently who had bought a new refrigerator for his wife. They had changed the colors of their appliances and it didn’t match. The door on the ice box was bent slightly so he pushed it to the end of his driveway and hung a sign that said “FREE” in large letters. It sat there for days without anyone even stopping. His wife told him that he was stupid to give it away and that he should at least get some money back for it so he put a new sign out and wrote “FOR SALE $25” in bold letters. When he woke up the next morning someone had stolen it.

I hope you have fun this weekend! Please visit all of the people who are making this a great day! Maybe we can have it every year and get a reputation for it that will bring in a lot of people! And drop by the Military Road Museum too! I am selling free coffee! And, depending on the Bingo luck of Bobby Jim Martin, there may be a snack cake to go with it!

A Burrito, Senor! Hold the Lettuce!

2011-09-18T21:18:00.000-05:00

There are many reasons to love a small town and I was reminded about it on Saturday. The webmaster for the City of Lavaca’s webpage needed a photo of me for the city website. We agreed to meet at the city hall at high noon. He called me from the parking lot on Saturday and told me that the place was full of people and we may have to wait. I told him to wait on me and we would just go in, apologize, and get the photo and leave. We walked in the door and into the middle of the McCrea Family Reunion. We took our picture and they FORCED me to stay and eat ham and dressing, home-made rolls and German chocolate cake. Yeah, gotta love a small town.

In a totally unrelated story, my youngest boy Noah and I were discussing racism the other day while driving. I have told stories here about how colored families in my hometown of Huntington were treated and how my old superintendent thought I was a minority when I was hired. But prejudice and racism is a subject that concerns my youngest son very much.

When my wife and I were dating years ago, her mother would invite us to eat in Fort Smith in different restaurants occasionally. Myrna, my future mother-in-law, her mother Mildred, Shelley’s two sisters, Shelley and myself would try every ethnic food in Fort Smith before Myrna passed away ten years later. That family would eat anything if it were on the menu. At one authentic Japanese restaurant, they ordered squid, octopus suction cups and raw fish. I had a cup of tea and fried rice. The cook seemed offended when I asked for a chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes. I apologized quickly after he gave me a glance that reminded me that he was holding Ginsu knives that could and had cut a beer can before slicing a tomato and paper-thin bread slices on television. That commercial may have saved my life that day. But silently, I was wanting a steak fresh from a George Foreman Grill.

On this particular day, we were breaking in a newly opened Mexican restaurant on Rogers Avenue. (The Bank of the Ozarks later tore the building down and built their offices in its place.) I held the door and walked in behind the five women. A guy in this family had to learn quickly that all you needed to add to their four simultaneous conversations was an occasional nod of agreement or disagreement or a well-timed chuckle. Any attempt to add to their chatter was futile. Many times, I have never used my voice during a four course meal.

We were seated at a large table and I was placed at the head of the two attached tables. Drinks were ordered and Myrna ordered appetizers. The waiter returned and took the orders carefully from each of the guests while standing at my side. Shelley’s sister ordered a Quesadilla. Their grandmother asked her what it was and, after a brief explanation, turned to the waiter and said, “I want a Case of that Dilla myself!”

His English was very poor and he stumbled over most of the order. After getting the orders of the women, he turned to me and smiled a great big smile and then greeted me with a pat on the back and rattled off a couple of quick lines of perfectly spoken Spanish. I looked into his smiling brown eyes and then into the waiting and stunned faces of my dinner party. I smiled back, patted him on the side and replied in perfect English, “Number Seven, no lettuce or tomato please.”

Stunned, he looked at me like I was kidding and carefully searched the faces of the women, who said motionless and quiet. He nodded a little and replied in bad English, “No número siete, lechuga o tomate?” I nodded and replied, “Qui.”

He turned to look at me several times on his way to the kitchen as the family began talking quickly about how he had thought I was Mexican too, and must have embarrassed himself and wondered what he had asked me? I looked up to see two other servers looking at us as he spoke to them quietly. I was really nervous about eating my burrito.

So Noah and I were discussing the differences, if any, between the races besides the color of our skin. Our conversation continued and we both discovered that neither of us had ever heard of a Spanish person that had a stuttering problem. Now, since I don’t know how to speak a word of Spanish, I am sure I couldn’t recognize the Senor Mel Tilles of Mexican stutterers, but surely there were such people. (For younger readers: Mel Tilles is a country singer who stutters horribly while talking but sings like a canary without so much as a skip in his voice. A medical phenomenon really.) Since we were on our outing, we decided to asked the preeminent authority on all things Spanish, Mr. Apollo Castillo, manager of the Mi Casita Restaurant in Lavaca.

After ordering drinks, salsa, cheese dip and fried ice cream, we invited Apollo to join our table for some deep interrogation. I am happy to report that, just like their white peers, Spanish people do indeed stutter. Well, not happy that they stutter, but, well you understand. In our conversation it seems at Apollo not only had a friend who stuttered, but had a nervous tic in his mouth and right eye as well. These are the questions that bring our people together. We are ignorant because we don’t ask.

Well, thanks to the McCrea Family for a wonderful lunch this past week and thank you Apollo for not taking your frustration out for my ignorance on my fried ice cream. And adiós señoras y señores!

ARE YOU GONNA EAT THAT?

2011-09-10T23:06:00.000-05:00

Food. Glorious food. I was very bored the other day and began cruising the upper channels on our television. Usually I can rely on the TCM (Turner Classic Movies) to have some good old black and white film being shown. But this time, it was a day-long tribute to Danny Thomas movies. I was disappointed to say the least. But I did pause on the Travel Channel and caught a moment of the Show “Bizarre Foods.”

The host is Andrew Zimmern, a short, portly, bald-headed man who covers the globe in search of different foods. This man goes to remote villages and eats whatever is on the menu at a local hut or tent. These people will take a perfectly good hog, butcher it, and then eat the parts of it that we usually don’t speak of in the company of the young, women or those with weak constitutions.

This man will eat anything. He gets giddy at the site of an animal killing and chooses to eat the parts of it that I paid good money to a veterinarian to surgically remove from my daschund dog Oscar. The people stand back and stare at him as he makes a meal out of stuff. The man who killed the pig had pork chops.

There was a lady on another show who was fond of eating dryer lint. Another man would eat broken glass and light bulbs just for fun. I would hate to be in the stall next to him when that light bulb finished its journey.

When I was a kid, I refused to eat liverwurst. I couldn’t be forced to put it in my mouth. But, it was a favorite luncheon meat of my parents. Because of my fear of liverwurst, my mother would fix me a bologna sandwich when she had liverwurst for everyone else. I was too stupid to realize that she was simply just cutting off the white edges and feeding me the same sandwich meat. She was sneaky like that.

When my oldest niece was just barely able to walk, we found her on by the back porch, sitting in the dirt and chewing on an old charcoal briquette. They rushed her to a doctor but he said it was okay for her to eat it. Seems her body knew what it needed: a vitamin or a mineral she was missing, and the charcoal wouldn’t do her harm. But he did warn about letting her eat too much of it and to not encourage it. Kind of made my mom mad when he said that. She thought the doctor believed they were stupid and would serve her a briquette on a plate with a side of slaw or something.

My nephew was fond of Field Trial Dog Food. He would sneak a couple of chunks of it when he could. The doctor told them the same thing as the charcoal with my niece: he needed something in it. I don’t know if it helped his mineral intake but his hair was always nice and shiny.

I feel the same way about coconut pie. There is just something in it that I need! It’s more than a want…I NEED IT! My mother made the best coconut cream pie. She used Raleigh pie filling which came in a tin canister that was sold from a neighborhood Raleigh dealer who went door-to-door in those days. But her pie was always delicious and consistent. When she died, I knew I would never taste one as good again. But Mrs. Ruthie Martin sure comes in a close second!

It is strange how your taste will change as you get older. Used to be that I would never eat real onions unless they were chopped finely or even blended in the blender. Now I am not so picky. I wouldn’t eat okra for all the tea in China when I was a kid. Now, just today even, I got a big sack of fresh okra from Bud Moore and I fried a mess of it for supper. My dad used to love boiled okra but I was not so brave. He would tease that the trick was to eat it with your legs crossed so it wouldn’t slip right through you. I never doubted a word he said and worried about that every time we had it for supper.

During the Y2K scare, the scare that when the year 2000 hit that the computers would freak out thinking it was 1900 again, they worried that all heck would break loose. Planes, they feared, would fall from the sky, banks would refuse to let you have your money, cars would fail to start and electricity would never work again. We almost created a bunker made of cases of green beans, corn, rice and dry beans. If the world went nuts, we could survive the zombie apocalypse armed only with a can opener. Why is it that the most boring of foods are the ones that will survive the longest? You never hear of a bunker with coconut pie.
In hindsight, perhaps we should have stockpiled a case of Spam or a canister or two of assorted nuts. And maybe a bag of charcoal or dog food. Just in case.

One thing is for sure, the Travel Channel’s Andrew Zimmern will not starve as long as there is a south end of a north bound mule.

BEWARE OF CROP DUSTERS!

2011-09-10T22:59:00.000-05:00

I have never had the privilege of seeing an actual crop dusting airplane in action. Oh, I have seen movies and television shows of them. Shows would chronicle the life of the pilot who traveled place-to-place and save crops from all forms of bugs before moving onto the next area. One of my favorite movies is in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film “North By Northwest” starring Cary Grant. A crop dusting place means to do him harm in a tense scene where he runs for his life and hides in a corn field. The plan flies low and powders him but good just before it crashes into the side of a well-placed gasoline tanker truck. I always wanted to be Cary Grant.

When I was a kid, a crop duster was a person who would ‘expel gas’ while walking through a crowd.

I have come to realize that South Sebastian County had to be the victim of some form of crop-dusting of hazardous chemicals or nuclear waste. Maybe they put something in the water or the school lunches. Something was up. But for some reason, Mansfield and Huntington raised more than their fair share of idiots.

Case in point: Let me introduce you to a young man named Jackie. (No, it’s not about me….every town can have more than one person named the same!) Jackie was a special child by today’s standards. He was older than I was so we never ran in the same circles. He lived on the Westside of Huntington: one of the few white families on that side of town. I don’t know who his parents were or exactly where he lived but I do know one thing about Jackie…he was fries short of a Happy Meal. Had one tire in the sand. Cheese had slipped off of his cracker. He was nuts.

My earliest memory of this guy is from when I was around ten years old. The early morning rain on that summer morning had given way to a pretty decent afternoon. All of us neighborhood kids had ended up in the side yard of our buddy (and fellow hoodlum) Jimmy. Just across the chain link fence was the newly finished home of the Holstein’s. Their front yard was nothing but dirt in preparation for the sod that would be delivered. Deep shag wall-to-wall carpeting had just been installed. We knew this because all of our houses had area rugs or just linoleum floors. We just knew that the Holstein’s were the richest people to move to our town.

Someone yelled that they had seen Jackie riding his horse in the front yard next door. Sure enough, he was making that old black horse cover every bit of the muddy front yard. We knew he was strange, so when he yelled at us to go, we went. It wasn’t five minutes when we saw the kitchen window raise up in the Holstein house. To our amazement, the black horse stuck his head out of the open window! Jackie raised a window in the back of the house and yelled profanities at us. We fled for our lives. The Holstein’s got all new carpet.

It wasn’t long after this that I was at a 4-H Club meeting at the Huntington City Hall. We were all in the front lawn having our Kool-Aid and cookies and running around like wild Indians when down the main street comes Jackie with a long ladder on his shoulder and a paint brush and bucket in his hands. Jackie leaned the ladder onto the two-story porch awning of the old Seaman’s Store which was directly across the street from City Hall. He opened his paint bucket and yelled to us something about the name of the store being perverted and he was going to paint over it. During his speech, our sponsors hurried us into the city hall to safety. We ran to the large window that covered the front of the building and watched as Jackie made his way up the ladder toward the flat faced façade of the store. Just as he made his first steps on the awning, I guess he misjudged the pitch because he took off running backwards down the awning and fell the distance to the gravel parking lot below, ladder, paint and all. Laying flat of his back and covered with white paint, he lay there motionless as we all were trying to breathe again after a unanimous gasp. It wasn’t long before he sat up. He shook his head a few times, rubbed his back and stood up. He tried to dust himself off but he was tarred and feathered in white paint and pea-sized gravel. He walked away leaving the ladder, paint brush and bucket and his almost perfect outline on the pavement.

He tried to steal copper wire from a live pole one year. Using only wire cutters, he tried unsuccessfully to cut the first wire. The shock not only blew him off of the pole but also removed his fingernails and shoes. The ambulance driver said that he was saved by the fall which probably had restarted his heart. Where are bushes when you need them.

Jackie was riding his old black horse in a full gallop toward his Westside home one afternoon when he decided to have his horse hurdle the railing of the Cherokee Creek Bridge. Jackie and his horse fell into the dry creek bed some 60 feet below. The horse was killed instantly but Jackie came out without a scratch.

He made his last appearance in town when he was with a group of young men sitting on Huntington’s main street sidewalk. One of the boys had long, straight blonde hair, which, for some reason, burdened Jackie very much. When Jackie pulled out a knife and offered to cut it for him, the guy declined his kind offer. A chase ensued for many blocks through many yards and alleyways. It ended only when the young man was running through a back yard and, at full throttle, hit a clothes line and cut his throat ear-to-ear. Jackie then jumped on top of the bleeding boy and proceeded to shear the kid of all of his long locks. This proved to much to ignore so while the boy recovered in a local hospital, Jackie became a guest of the state mental facilities.

I heard he died some years ago. Boy, they don’t make them like that anymore.
Maybe it was a crop dusting that bent the minds of so many of my town’s residents. Maybe we were the guinea pigs of some secret inoculations by the government. It could have been the well water we drank that came from the abandoned coal mines deep beneath the ground. Who knows? I am just amazed as to how I am the only perfect kid to come out of there without any flaws? I guess I am just lucky!

AND NOW, A HISTORY LESSON

2011-08-29T21:10:00.000-05:00

Several readers have asked for a history lesson. They especially want to know the scoop on our own General Matthew Arbuckle. Now, I didn’t know the good General personally, but I have great respect for a man who gets an island named for him. I wonder if Mr. Manhattan or Mr. Hawaii were as respected?

Matthew Arbuckle was born in Virginia in 1776 to Captain Matthew Arbuckle and Frances Hunter. He followed his father’s profession and entered the army as a ensign in 1799. Rising through the ranks, Matthew Arbuckle would fight beside General Winfield Scott and with Colonel Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. When Jackson became President of the United States, he knew his old friend Matthew Arbuckle had skills that would be needed in the new frontier.

Arbuckle went on to serve in the Mexican War and commanded at New Orleans and Fort Gipson. His rival in his career was Zachary Taylor, former resident of Fort Smith, wanted to close the fort when he became President, but died in office before it could be accomplished. The U.S. War Department named him the second commander of Fort Smith.

Matthew Arbuckle was known nationwide as a man who could negotiate with the “savage” American Indian tribes that covered the new territory. Congress knew of his adventures and knowledge of the area and asked Arbuckle to negotiate between the rival tribes. He held the trust and confidence of the Indians and the whites alike.

For his long military career and service, Congress granted Arbuckle more than 20,000 acres of land. Among part of this land grant is a section called Arbuckle Island. Although it is reported that Arbuckle never married, family records indicate a marriage to a Mary Trolinger in 1813, but no other record of the relationship has been located. His nephew, Mr. John D. Arbuckle, was chosen to settle the gifted land and run a plantation on the property. The location of his home was on Highway 96 just north of what will become the Arbuckle family cemetery. The plantation consisted of a large two-story log home along with buildings that included slave quarters and a cook house.

General Arbuckle was active in military matters all of his life. In 1824, two years after coming to Fort Smith, General Arbuckle and his command were ordered by General Winfield Scott to go into Indian Territory (Oklahoma) to try to tame the feuding Cherokee and Osage tribes. He and his troops went to Grand River, and founded Fort Gipson. Arbuckle Mountain, north of Ardmore, Oklahoma, was named for him. Fort Arbuckle in the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma was named for him as well.

General Arbuckle was making plans to protect Americans traveling as they crossed the country to California as a cholera epidemic was sweeping the region. The disease claimed many lived, including that of General Matthew Arbuckle on June 11, 1852 in Fort Smith. At the age of 75, Arbuckle was laid to rest in the family plot near Arbuckle Island where family members lay who preceded him in death.

The area surrounding the good city of Lavaca has so much history! What is amazing that our local history is also connected to so much of our nations history. So many local citizens have wonderful histories of their own. Most of us haven’t been rubbing noses with Presidents, given thousands of acres as a gift or fought in a major battle but the people of this town have history that is just as important. They have fought the battle of keeping a home during depressions and recessions, farmed dirt that would barely grow weeds and without a bucket of water between here and Europe. They have performed miracles of putting food on the table, raising children and keeping them in school through graduation.

Matthew Arbuckle got his name in the history books. But it is our citizens who are the heroes.

JUST LIE BACK ON THE COUCH

2011-08-29T21:07:00.000-05:00

Sigmund Freud believed that dreams are a window into our unconscious. A writer once said, “Dreams can include people you know, people you've never met, places you've been, and places you've never even heard of. Sometimes they're as boring as recalling events that happened earlier in the day. They can also be your deepest and darkest fears and secrets, and most private fantasies.
Stresses in waking life can manifest in dreams plainly or be cleverly disguised. For instance, a dream about a grizzly bear chasing you through your house could be the stress you feel about the relationship with a friend. A dream about being stuck inside of a room with no door might echo your feelings about a dead-end job.”

Or it could just mean you’re nuts.

I have had reoccurring dreams that have haunted me for years. I am in an abandoned house; dirty and dusty from the neglect of a dozen years. It is usually a two story house without lights or shadows. The floors in my dream are made with wide boards but there are places missing. The floor joists are visible and deep darkness lies below. I would seek professional counseling but my wife has it all figured out.

She says I am nuts.

I also have dreams of having to keep my father out of harms way. In my dreams I am hurrying him from a place of danger, trying desperately to force him into a waiting car so we can flee to safety. But he is like a child, or even worse, trying to herd cats. When I do get him in the car, he is happy and oblivious to the danger. Then, it gets worse. There are no brakes. So I am stomping the floor board and steering with wild abandon. Somehow, I stop just in time but the car still rolls as I step out onto the welcomed earth.

A friend/ philosopher suggested that I was busy trying to take care of those that I love and felt as if I was not in control. There may be something to that.

But the reality is that I have driven cars like the ones I dream of. I have had my scares in old cars with soft brakes. I remember one old car that I had to keep a can of brake fluid with me at all times. This same car used so much oil that the Middle East would send me Christmas cards. It would take two quarts of Quaker State to get to Fort Smith and back to Huntington. I provided a free service of mosquito fumigation to all houses along Highway 71.

In Huntington, abandoned houses were fairly common. Some were waiting on the next owner or renter while some had been abandoned for decades. Before I continue I must confess to trespassing on many private properties in the day. Not criminal trespass, mind you, but trespassing just the same.

Old houses made wonderful adventure spots with a severe lack of caves and jungles to explore. Empty houses in various degrees of deterioration were just blocks from my home as I grew up. The doors were either unlocked or even open to the snooping eyes of area kids or the local animals who were passing through. We never destroyed anything but had some great times.

The old Elmore house stood just three feet from my house. The elder Elmore couple had passed years earlier and their house was locked and only rarely entered by their children. Over the years, the back bedroom was rotting so badly that one could just about walk onto the interior floor. I couldn’t wait for nature to take it’s course, so I climbed through a window and snuck through the storage areas and gained access to the entire old house. Photos were still on the walls. Dishes were still in the shelves. Beds were still made. It was just as they had left it some dozen years earlier. A chalk frog doorstop always spooked me in that dark bedroom. I walked through that house a dozen times. I snooped in drawers and cabinets but I never took a thing and never destroyed anything more than the dust covering it.

One day, several of the Elmore family came by to visit their home place. As an annoying little kid of eight or nine, I tagged along with them. They walked around and reminisced for a long time. One of them asked if they knew where some box was kept in the house that they wanted to take with them. No one remembered but I spoke up and told them it was in the front bedroom in the dresser. All eyes went to me and, when it was exactly where I said it was, I was hurried quickly and sharply out of the place.

Some dreams are very real and very hard to explain. My wife’s great-grandmother passed away in 1988 at the tender age of 101 years old. She and Shelley were very close spent long hours together before she and I married and Granny was put into a home after a fall. Her house was cleared out and her home was closed up. One night, Shelley had a dream that she was visiting with her great-grandmother. In the dream, she told Shelley that she needed to get the quilt she left for her in the very top shelf of the hall closet. Shelley woke up extremely happy about the wonderful dream she had and wanted the quilt from her dream very badly. Our house was decorated with the quilts and with rose designs on our wallpaper in our dining room and bedroom. We had quilts from generations of our family on both sides but we were not given one from her.

We went to visit her grandmother the next week and made a trip into the old house. Shelley looked into the hall closet for kicks and found it empty. But she stepped into the closet and looked up to find a high shelf in the uppermost part of the closet. She climbed onto a chair and in the back of the shelf was a beautiful quilt! And in the folds of it was an old empty bottle of Four Roses Whiskey. Spooky.

So dare to dream…even if you are awake. I am looking forward to sleep tonight. I have to finish the date I started with Sandra Bullock just last evening. I hope she had the same one too.

Concrete Jungle

2011-08-15T22:18:00.000-05:00

I need a new driveway. We had a new roof put on our house in the late Spring. The company did a decent job but their trucks, loaded with shingles and supplies busted my concrete driveway all to pieces. Now, mind you, it was cracked in many places due to the growing pine trees that line both sides of it. The roots have won the battle and were slowly running the concrete off of the property.

My father worked for the last twenty-seven years of his career as a concrete laborer for Buckner and Fleming Construction Company in Fort Smith. He got up every morning at 4:30 AM, drank a cup of coffee and ate two fried eggs every morning of his life. He took two fried egg sandwiches for lunch every day.

Many of us remember when the tornado tore through Greenwood in 1968. The beautiful county courthouse was destroyed and lay in pieces in the center of town. Buckner and Fleming won the contract to build the new court house that would replace it.

On the day of the big pour, the creation of the floor on the first floor, my father was in charge. That day, he was like a conductor over an orchestra. He told which trucks to dump their loads in which area, told me where the drag the mud and several other jobs but all at the same time. He stood near the center of the foundation in his knee-high rubber boots and it went off without a hitch.

The men were pushing the wet concrete into the rebar and mesh and my father went to move from the spot where he had stood for so long. The wet mud held him in place and he couldn’t move his feet at all. He was stuck in the middle of this large platform with wet concrete halfway up his calves. The workers had a good laugh at his expense. Dad took out his pocket knife and cut the boots off just at ground level, pulled his feet from the shoes and stepped on to the drying concrete. He had the crane bring some more concrete over and filled the shoes, leveled it out and then grabbed the crane boom and it carried him over the rest of the smooth floor. To this day, my dads shoes remain like a time capsule somewhere near the lobby of the Sebastian County Courthouse.

His company poured the floor for the Norge Manufacturing Plant, now known as Whirlpool. He had his hand (and shoes) in several major concrete jobs all around the county.

I remember well the day when he drove me to the top of that hill on Highway 22 and showed me where they would pour Central Mall. The poured the majority of the work on the tall bank across from the Mall on Rogers Avenue. On the last major pour on the bank, they were to pour the top floor of the structure. A large crane would carry the wet concrete up to the pad and the men would drag it to the edges and level it out. The problem was the wind. It was an extremely windy day that day. The men from the Labor Union he worked for refused to put themselves in danger at that height in the gusting wind. The concrete trucks had already been ordered and were standing nearby but the workers refused. Dad walked over to the man in charge and said “I will pour it myself if you will pay me double time!” They jokingly said that they would pay triple. Dad grabbed a roll of rope and yelled for my brother-in-law to follow him. Reluctantly, he followed. They got to the top and my father tied the ropes around their waists and onto a nearby steel girder. The crane started the concrete slowly and the two of them got started. After a few hours, several other men joined them. I remember that his paycheck was great for that week and that we would have meat in our macaroni and tomato sauce and a hambone in the beans. We lived large.

He and I laid the concrete blocks for the foundation of the first house my wife and I would build. After plans changed, the house was sold and moved off of the property. We worked very hard to remove the blocks we had worked so hard to put in earlier. Now, my brother-in-law has an old feed pond on his property in Mansfield that was where they took the clay from the ground and built bricks that were made at the brick plant that once stood on the property. We dumped the broken blocks into the pond trying to help fill it up.

Shelley, my dad and I were busy that afternoon and had made three good trips loaded with the blocks. I was up in the bed of the truck, legs spread open with my head downward to the tailgate, tossing blocks as quickly as I could. I grabbed one full block by the end and gave it a good yank. The block was cracked and, when I yanked it upward, the heavy block broke. Now I had the lighter end in full swing and smashed it straight into my face. I was shocked and grabbed my hurt forehead with both hands and began laughing at how stupid that had been. The blood began squirting through my fingers and gave a pretty clear clue that I had done some damage. My dad, who always had a piece of tissue in his shirt pocket, calmly handed me the tissue and said to put some pressure on it. The paper instantly disappeared into the gash and the bleeding continued. I told my pop that I needed to get to a doctor and he said “Ok, bub but let’s get the rest of this load out before we do.” Shelley had other ideas and we hurriedly went to my doctor’s office. I got several stitches. The doctor was astonished when he found dissolving toilet paper deeply packed into the wound.

We will be getting that new driveway in the near future but I am absolutely certain that I will hire professionals to do the removal and construction. For some reason, concrete work gives me a headache.

Where There's Smoke...

2011-08-06T21:49:00.000-05:00

Three old cowboys are captured by Mexican soldiers and given the death penalty for trying to invade their country. The first guy is before the firing squad with his blindfold and last cigarette. The guard yells “Ready. Aim….” Thinking quick, the old cowboy yells “Tornado!” and points over their heads. They freak out and scatter while he runs away. The second follows his lead and at the right moment, he yells “Earthquake!” and runs for it. The last cowboy, not so bright, catches on. The guard yells “Ready! Aim!…” and the cowboy yells “FIRE!”

There has been a lot of people yelling FIRE lately. With the temperature soaring well over 100 degrees everyday for weeks, our vegetation is burned to a crisp. Our lawns are brown and crunch beneath our feet. Once green trees are now turning brown and wilting.

The news has been reporting a house fire in the surrounding area almost every day. Seems like every town has used their fire department to its limits. In the movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” Zuzu says “Look Daddy! Every time a bell rings, an angel gets it’s wings.” I have been saying, “Look Shelley! Every time a siren rings, Fort Chaffee loses another hundred buildings.”

Fort Chaffee has been such a historical part of this state since the early 1940s. Hundreds of people were moved from the land that they called home to make room for the military base, then known as Camp Chaffee. Towns were moved. Houses put on trucks and moved. Farms destroyed. Cemeteries removed and replaced.

My father was living in California in the middle of the year 1941. He was working in the oil fields when he got a friendly letter from President Roosevelt that he was going to get to see the world. Dad came home to Hartford to say goodbye to his mom and eight remaining brothers and sisters. While showing off for his sisters, he fell out of a tree and broke his arm. Uncle Sam said that when the arm had healed, he was to report to San Luis Obispo in San Pedro California, the nearest base to where he was drafted. He walked through the gate there on December 1, 1941.

After training there for weeks, they announced that the platoon would be getting the honor to be some of the first soldiers to train at a new military base way out east in Sebastian County Arkansas. He had so many stories of training at Fort Chaffee. My uncles worked there as carpenters. My sisters would one day work as custodians there.

When bus loads of Americans from New Orleans arrived after Hurricane Katrina, it wasn’t unexpected to see them come here. Years earlier in its history, Chaffee was a temporary home to German POWs, Vietnamese and Cuban refugees and others. Even Elvis graced the place in the 60s.

I was working as a sort of youth minister at my old church when the Cuban refugees were there. When they started a riot, I was near Gate 9 at a youth picnic. A jeep drove up and told us to pack it up and get as far away from the area as we could. I am proud to say that I respect authority. I loaded the kids on the van and didn’t slow down until we hit Huntington.

My dad loaded his gun and prepared for trouble. Because of his preparedness. I am proud to say that NOT ONE Cuban radical stepped foot in Huntington Arkansas! One WWII veteran single-handedly created a 30 mile perimeter of a safe zone for local citizens. I still don’t know why the President didn’t pin a medal on him.

A questionable fire destroyed many of the historic barrack buildings in 2008. I was on lunch duty at the Middle School and watched the smoke grow larger and change from white to black smoke. Rumors spread quickly that Central City was in danger and we could not send the kids home until we were sure it was safe. That was a scary day. I have to admit, I came home during my planning hour and put our family photos in my car.

So Camp Chaffee is almost a memory. In 2008, over 150 buildings burned to the ground. Yesterday another 120 were destroyed. And even more today. It won’t be long until those charred fields of lonely foundations and chimneys will be replaced by schools, businesses and homes. Is there room for history and progress?

The James family refuses to tease much about fire. My parents lost two houses to fire; one in 1965 and the other in 1972. My sister and her husband were homeless twice due to house fires. My late sister Donna burned down the outhouse after sneaking a smoke when she was fourteen. Nothing funny about that.

Donna Jo never lost a house to fire but it sure wasn’t her fault! That little lady could burn boiling water. She would cook meat to three levels: well done, burnt, or cremated. My mother said she believed that she may have had a charcoal deficiency. I lovingly made her a sign for Christmas one year that read: “Dinner is ready when the smoke alarm goes off.”

Pray for our firemen and women as they protect us in this heat. And, just in case you may have Indian blood in you, get out in the yard and dance yourself silly in a marathon rain dance. Yeah, pray for rain!

The Old Hoboken Hustle

2011-07-17T23:41:00.001-05:00

My father told me that he once got into a tremendous fight. The other person was giving him dirty looks and mumbling, what he took as, curse words under their breath. After a couple of stare downs, from the body language he knew that they had to fight. Dad was six-foot-one and weighed 160 pounds soaking wet. But he was scrappy. He started the fight with a left hook to the jaw. His opponent went down but came back with a right cross. On the ground, Dad kicked the legs out from under the hoodlum and, after a couple of kicks to the ribs, they lay motionless. Dad was walking away when WHAM! She hit him in the back of the head with her walker.

Pop loved telling that story and I loved hearing it. The details would change depending on the audience but it was always a funny story. One thing that wasn’t made up was the fact that my Dad loved professional wrestling.

Growing up tall, red-headed, freckled faced and with a stutter, he got his share of the manly art of self-defense. Back in his prime, he never ran from a fight but he never ran to one either.

In his middle age, he let the professionals do the ‘restlin’ as he called it. We knew when every big fight was on the old black-and-white television and I can’t tell you how many times we have sat there squinting at the set since it never came in clearly on the snowy off station that barely came in on the old antenna. We knew every fighter by name and weight class.

There was a professional boxing area in Fort Smith on Towson Avenue just up from Sparks Hospital. I was a luxury but we managed to go more than several times I remember. One night, as a young boy in the 1960s, my mom, dad and I went to the arena. The lobby was crowded before the fight started but since my head was barely butt high anyway; this view this night seemed no different. My father broke through the thick sea of people and through the legs of patrons, I saw him waving me to him. Dad was standing there beside a large black man wearing an ill-fitting suit that seemed to hang on his body. My Dad had his left hand on the stranger’s right shoulder and Dad made a fist and showed it to him and said, “Now Joe, don’t make me whoop you here in front of my boy!” The old man held his arm up to block his face and acted like he was afraid of my father. “Son, I want you to meet Mr. Joe Lewis!” Old Joe bent down and shook my hand and said something kind and patted me on my back with a massive hand. He made some small talk with my parents and then we entered the arena to find our places on the benches which sat on the raised tiered stands, surrounding the fighting arena on all four sides. I had no clue who that old black man was and didn’t know for years that he was arguably the greatest heavyweight boxer that ever lived.

I did often wonder why my Dad was threatening to beat up some poor old black man who seemed so kind.

We were there on another occasion watching several fights. The crowd was large and the thick cigarette smoke filled the air. The people around us were yelling and swinging their own fists through the air like they might strike a lucky punch themselves. The first was the C matches where very inexperienced fighters were learning their craft to boos and hisses from the crowd. Some old guy two benches above us began yelling “Choke! Choke!” over and over.

After the first couple of matches, the lights dimmed. Spot lights cut through the smoke and chased each other across the crowd until the man at the microphone in the center of the ring announced the arrival of the tag team fighters in the evenings Main Event. The name of the fighters escapes me but they were the Gorgeous Something Twins and some other tag team fighters. Tanned and with long curly blonde hair, they entered the ring after holding up the ropes for, what they said, was their mother. She was tanned faced and had big bleached white hair. In my memory, she favored Susan Alamo.

They talked some smack for a while but when the bell rang, it was on. Immediately after the first sound of the bell, the old man started up again “Choke! Choke!” It got completely irritating until even the referee asked the man to give it a break. His words fell on deaf ears. Again with the chant, “Choke! Choke!,” his voice was growing weaker. The Gorgeous Whatever Boys told him that if he didn’t shut up they would kick his tail. The old man replied with a raspy, “Choke!” That did it. The two guys tore through the ropes along with their sweet momma, knocking down bystanders and climbing across tables and benches still filled with people. They crawled right between my parents and completely over me, knocking me backward on the floor behind me. Right above me Gorgeous Brothers beat the living tar out of the old guy and left him bleeding and unconscious, sprawled across the bench. They then crawled across us again and proceeded to finish the scheduled fight. Dad said it was a part of the act but I never believed it. The old man never moved or moaned until much later, a couple of thick men picked him up and carried him to parts unknown. It was sometime later when we were watching a fight on TV when, in the background, you could hear a distant voice yelling “Choke!” I guess he make it fine after we parted ways.

My Dad, if given the chance, would have taken them all. And I would have been right there with him yelling “Choke! Choke!”

July Picnic Time

2011-07-17T14:50:00.000-05:00

(Photo is of my father Jack James, and family friend, Hubert Hampton, at the Griffin Park Zoo, Los Angeles California. 1956)

The month of July is a very busy one for the James family. Besides being the month we celebrate our nation’s independence, it is also the month with the most family birthdays. Sandy, my very first niece, was born on July 1st. Ten days after that (in different years), my very first cousin, Evelyn, was born on the 11th. Count off another ten days and it is my birthday on the 21st. My sister Donna Jo was born on the 31st, ten days later than me and finally my very first nephew, Joe, was born ten days later on August 11th! Mom used to say that God did that so they would have a paycheck between birthdays. By mid-August, none of us want to even look at a birthday cake.

July is also the perfect month for picnics, in my opinion. June is recovery from school and time for short vacations. August is a race to get school clothes and supplies ready before the new school year starts. July is laid back and relaxed. Sure, it is hotter than the devil in a wool sweater, but July has it going on.

Many moons ago, my parents would grab us up on a Saturday and we would take off across the Queen Wilhelmina Scenic Drive across the Ouachita Mountains. The view was tremendous and we would all ‘oooh and ahhh’ at the rolling hills that carpeted the most wonderful countryside. We always ended up at Mena at the county courthouse where my Dad would pull out an old blanket and lay it under the grass beneath old oak trees. My mom would pack sandwiches and a coffee thermos and other picnic delicacies: potato salad, deviled eggs, etc., and we couldn’t wait to dig in. Several feet from where we ate there was a large pen where young deer were kept and we could feed them scraps from our lunches. I have several photos of my parents, sisters, and grandparents as they stretched out there in the shade years before I was born. I wonder what they would think today if I loaded up the family in the van and spread out a picnic lunch on the front lawn of the Sebastian County Courthouse? I bet they would haul us to the pokey for mental evaluations and some nice officer who help himself to our bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken!

It was a July 4th celebration in 1974 at the Hartford ball field that really stands out in my memory. My parents knew everyone like family at Hartford having grown up in that area and having lived there off and on since Dad’s birth in 1918. The clanking of horseshoes and the yelling and cheers from the men’s baseball game filled the warm air as others visited and listened to the songs of local amateur musicians. The concession stand was open and local ladies sold hamburgers and hotdogs and slices of homemade pie to help support the baseball teams during their season.

Area politicians were out in droves bumping hands and kissing babies, telling everyone what they wanted to hear to guarantee their votes come November. My father was a staunch Democrat who lowered himself in the local ranks of his friends by daring to vote for General Eisenhower in 1952. Although Ike was a Republican, Dad respected his leadership during WWII and thought him to be the best candidate to lead our country at that time.
At the picnic, a young man made a nice speech and announced that he was running against Representative Hammerschmidt, long-time office holder and Republican. The crowd gave him a warm reception and listened intently. It was during the question and answer section that my father, who was usually quiet at times such as this, raised his big old hand above the crowd and pointed his large finger skyward. “Young man,” my father started, “you seem like a nice guy and all, but son, you ain’t never gonna whoop John Paul Hammerschmidt in this district.” The speaker appreciated his opinion he said and returned to the Q&A. “Who is that man, daddy?” I asked. He replied shaking his head, “Some kid named Bill Clinton.”

We made our way to the concession stand and got our food and drinks and found an empty picnic table several steps away. We were talking about our day when the young Mr. Clinton apologetically interrupted and asked if he might join us at our table. He sat beside me on my side on my side of the bench. “Man, I forgot my coffee!” he said as he stood to go back to the growing concession line. Dad stopped him, “My boy Jackie will get it for you. Go on son.” I stood there for a moment waiting for Mr. Clinton to pass me a dime. Ten cents then to a young boy was the payment for finding five good pop bottles and was worth a candy bar and about ten pieces of penny gum at the Elmore’s Grocery back in Huntington. Clinton smiled at me and reached to get his change and before he could get his hand out of his pocket, my dad announced that his money wasn’t needed and I would get it! I was ticked. When I returned, Mr. Clinton gave me a wink and a thank you and a rub on the head and said, “Jackie, I owe you a dime!”

Clinton got beat by John Paul by a landslide.

Fast forward eight years. I had been elected two years earlier as one of the youngest city council members in the US after turning 18 just barely three months earlier on election day. Bill Clinton was elected the governor of Arkansas. Our town was in desperate need of street repairs and Huntington, then as it is now, had no revenue to undertake such a project so I wrote to the governor and asked him who and where to write to for grants for street and road repairs. I received a nice letter about two weeks later that detailed who to call and what to ask for. The last line of his closing remarks of the letter stated simply, “And I still owe you a dime for that cup of coffee!” I wish I could tell you I still have that letter but I don’t.

He never did repay me that dime and, after 37 years, I don’t believe that I will ever see it. He could have repaid the debt by making me the Ambassador to France or someplace, but that never crossed his mind I guess.

It’s okay though. You can’t get a cup of coffee, a candy bar or even penny candy for a dime now. Let him keep it.

(Photo is of me on top of the Queen Wihelmina Drive, 1965.)

Got a Light?

2011-07-17T14:25:00.000-05:00

Can you believe how hot it has been? Last week, I saw a dog chasing a cat and they were both walking. A man was overhead at church praying, “God, I wish it would rain—not so much for me because I’ve seen it—but for my 7 year-old.” Last Wednesday, I saw a funeral procession pull into a Snow Cone Shack. No, seriously, it is too hot, even for July.

I was at a teacher workshop at County Line on Wednesday. On the drive down there at noon, the air conditioner in my car wouldn’t cool at all. I was driving old-style with my 4-55 air conditioning: four windows rolled down and driving 55 miles per hour. My head was stuck outside the window like a hound dog going to town. Both of my hairs were blowing in the wind. My radio was turned up so I could hear the twang of the bluegrass music that I love so much and I sang along with Vince Gill at the top of my lungs. The temperature was well over 100 degrees already so I welcomed the air-conditioned classroom.

When the class dismissed, a dark cloud teased us with the thought of a chance of rain but I have been around too long to get my hopes up. Lightning was striking from the storm clouds in the distance. Younger teachers, obviously with Yankee heritage, danced a mock rain dance on the asphalt even though the black pavement was eerily near a fluid state. Shaking my head at their optimism, I hurried to my car so as not to have my brain pop like a pan of Jiffy Pop. I, too, was optimistic as I cranked my A/C to full blast and was met by four vents shooting hair dryer-like steam at my face. I branded my hip from the metal clip of seat belt. I headed home just as I had left—windows down, singing my heart out.

Before Charleston, I could see a tremendous pillar of smoke rising from, what I believed, Fort Chaffee. Thick smoke covered Charleston so badly that I had to roll all my windows up to breathe. I rode all the way home burning up from the heat but I could inhale. When I arrived home, I found out that the Calvary Church in Greenwood had been struck by lightning and had burned completely to the ground. The pastor of that church, James Myers, was once a friend of mine who taught along with me years ago at Lavaca. I know that he had put a lot of energy in getting his church going and my heart was heavy for their loss. They will come back bigger and stronger than ever.

Driving from Central to Lavaca today, I saw the large prairie areas covered in soybeans and corn. The corn was brown and dying and the soybeans lay in straight rows just as green as could be, oblivious to the fate that lay before them.
I can remember as a kid in the dog days of summer when it got terribly hot. We didn’t have an air conditioner in the house but we did have a good water cooler. For those who don’t know, it’s a dryer sized, vented box that sat in the window and a large barrel with blades spun moistened air into the room from the wet hay insulation on the outer three sides. When working correctly, you could hook a small line from a water faucet that would keep the hay damp and the house cool. Ours rarely worked correctly so we/I would have to go wet it down every so often. Dad would sometimes freeze water in a half-gallon milk carton and lay it in the bottom of the cooler to get better air coming in. Sure felt like heaven after coming in all day from the yard!

Our front yard at home was more weeds than grass but it died quickly just the same. I can still feel it making that cracking sound as my bare feet trampled it down. You had to be aware of your surroundings in bare feet. The shade thrown by any bush, stump or fence was welcome news to the souls of toasty toes! At the end of summer, our feet were so tough we could walk down any dirt road or paved street without so much as a flinch.

The sound of the cicada (which we mistakenly called a locust) rang continuously in our ears in the summer heat and buzzed about our neighborhood. An old burned oak tree in a local lot was a favorite resting place for the bug and they were easy to catch. I used to catch them and tie a length of light kite string around them under their wings and turn them loose as I hung on tightly to the other end. The would fly in circles as long as the string would go making all kinds of fun. I would let it go after a while and watch them fly until I couldn’t see them any longer. Sometimes I could find one dead with the string still on it. Cruelty to Insects.

By night it was lightning bugs and in the daytime bumble bees in old mayonnaise jars was a contest between friends to see who could collect the most. Forts made under porches or trees or tall grasses and weeds made cool comfort in the breezeless summer sun.

My mind goes back there every time I hear the singing locust and the lonely coos of doves that nest in the ivy on my house. I appreciate my air conditioner and the shoes that keep the stickers out of my feet but I do miss those times.

Put a Lid on It!

2011-07-04T15:24:00.000-05:00

I was digging in our pantry this past week, trying to find something to make for supper. I rearranged peas, green beans, soup, chili, corn and other vegetables and assorted cans before I sifted behind packages of pasta, cake mixes and the like. Isn’t it strange how you can have a shelf full of food but there’s nothing to eat? Now, I am confessing here: I have a short attention span. My mind wandered until I got to thinking how we didn’t have one jar of home grown anything. It was exactly the opposite when I was growing up.

I did some quick research and discovered that true canning was discovered in 1809 when some French guy devised a way to preserving food in bottles. He won 12,000 francs as a reward offered in 1795 by Napoleon who urged someone to find a way to keep food edible for his army and navy. It was an American who first put food in tin cans in 1818 but it took 40 years for some other American to discover the can opener! Kind of like inventing a lamp years before the light bulb. People.

My father worked construction for a living. That meant that work was plentiful during the three seasons of Spring, Summer and Fall, but Winter was tough. With no money coming, our cupboards were pretty thin by the end of it. So Mom canned everything my Dad could grow in our garden.

Mom canned anything she could cram in a fruit jar. Dad’s garden covered almost half of a city block in Huntington. He grew every vegetable known to grow in dirt. He harvested buckets of greens, potatoes, corn, green beans, tomatoes, peppers of all kinds, beans of all kinds, okra, squash and many others. He even grew blackberries and strawberries and blueberries as well as apples, pears, peaches and plums.

Cases of empty jars filled one area of the old Smoke House. We stored them in our abandoned concrete block outhouse along with chicken feed and large paper barrel filled with Field Trial Dog Food. A worn out ice box stood against the wall of the building beneath the huge old maple tree. It was filled with odd-sized jars that we would use in a crunch.

We would build a fire in the back yard by the old smoke house and sterilize the old fruit jars. After a rinse in a big galvanized tub of cold water they were placed upside down on an old table that had been covered with old sheets. Mom was busy in the kitchen as the rest of us would shell peas or beans, peel potatoes or whatever needed to be done to prepare for the canning process.

I remember vividly the time when we peeled and cleaned our potato harvest. The new potatoes were put in the cleaned jars. Others were cut to fit until the food was to the rim of the glass. Water would fill the rest of the space and mom would take them indoors in groups to a cold pack or pressure canner. I can still hear the lids ‘pinging’ as they sealed before they were taken to the cellar or into the ‘side room’ which held our deep freezer.

One year during canning time, my dad had gotten in on some deal with a grocery store owner to get the hamburger that was a day old and had to be taken off of the shelves. He came home with nearly two hundred pounds of raw hamburger. Like bees, the family went to work rinsing the meat and then frying it in every pot and pan we could find. We cooked hamburger on all four burners of the kitchen stove and on the four burners of the old stove my dad had rigged in the back yard to cook food for his hound dogs. Mom canned quart after quart of cooked hamburger meat. After she filled the jar with crumbled meat, she filled the jar with the grease from the pans which sealed the jar completely.

We still had meat so dad hit the garden. My mother scoured out the bathtub, put the stopper in the drain and dumped the leftover pounds of meat into the clean tub. We cut potatoes, peas, corn and carrots, tomatoes and onions and dumped them on top of the hamburger. After huge amounts of salt and pepper, Mom stirred the mixture with the wooden paddle she used with the wringer washing machine. Jar after jar was filled with our bathtub stew until we had filled every jar we owned…even the odd jars from the old ice box. When we ran out of jars we filled quart freezer bowls and put them in the deep freezer. I have to admit, that was some of the best soup I have ever eaten.

We repeated the bathtub canning one year after my cousins, the neighborhood boys and I got into an apple throwing fight. Before we knew what had happened, we had cleaned all three of my father’s huge apple tree of every apple that was in them. My dad spanked every one of us and made us pick up everyone of them. We were taken to the front of the Smoke house and given knives and told to peel. Every apple was peeled, cored and mashed into applesauce. Mom filled the tub again and spent two days canning regular and cinnamon applesauce. It tasted delicious but every time I ate it, my behind twitched in remembrance. When my dad died in 1999, we left the last of the applesauce in the cellar as a rotted time capsule of our time there.

We don’t can anything in our house. I have three jars of honey I bought from the Hutchins family and a pint jar of salsa that I won’t eat because Woody and Judy Green made it for me before he passed. I may keep it forever. I have a pint jar of homemade apricot preserves my sister gave to me before she died in 2005. I just realized what a tremendously serious hoarder I really am.

But, I hope you will agree: food tastes better from a quart fruit jar!

BAD BOYS. WHAT YA GONNA DO?

2011-07-04T15:19:00.000-05:00

A blonde, a brunette and a red-head are on the run from local police. Just moments ahead of the sheriff and his trusty deputies, they duck into a barn and hide in some empty potato gunny sacks. The posse tears open the door and begin to search the barn when they notice movement in the sacks. The sheriff carefully pokes one bag with the end of his shotgun. “Meow! Meow!” comes from the red-head hiding in the sack. “This must be kittens!” says the sheriff. He pokes the second bag with the brunette inside and hears “Ruff! Ruff!” “Puppies!” he says to the deputy. The sheriff pokes the last sack with the blonde inside and hears “Potato! Potato!”

I was reminded of that joke this last week when a hooded man reportedly attacked a woman in her own back yard in Greenwood. For some unknown reason, the man jumped the neighborhood fence, shook the woman senseless and then fled over another fence. Random? Maybe. But there are idiots among us.

I like to watch “Dumbest Criminals” on cable for the same reason I like to read the police reports in the local papers: I am looking for family. My blood relatives have done some extremely dumb crimes, not that I am proud of them for it. But let me introduce you to Jerry. (No relation, thank you.)

Jerry was in his early 20s and lived with his parents one block above us on the bluff road in Huntington. To say that Jerry was simple is understating facts. Everyone knew Jerry and allowed for his antics around the neighborhood and around town.

Jerry took off walking to Mansfield one morning in the 80s. It was nothing to see him making the journey daily. So, a passing motorist recognized Jerry and stopped to give him a ride. He asked where he was headed and found that Jerry needed to go to the bank so the kind Samaritan took Jerry straight to the front door. Jerry turned to him and asked if he would mind waiting for him for a moment. The driver giggled but agreed and waited in the parking lot in front of the bank. Moments later, Jerry came trotting to the car, jumped in and said, “We should probably go now!” Before the man could ask why, the president of the bank broke through the front door of the bank, leveled a shotgun at the car and fired! The man floored it and exclaimed “What is happening?” Jerry calmly said, “I think he’s mad because I just robbed the bank.”

Scared silly with a bank robber in his car and a ticked bank president shooting at his vehicle, he silently drove until Jerry asked him to drive west to Hartford. The man did as he was told. When he got to Hartford, Jerry had him pull over at a gas station. Jerry opened up the bank bag, took out a wad of bills and handed it to the man and thanked him for the ride. He then got out and started walking away. The driver turned his car around and sped back to Mansfield and surrendered himself, his booty and the get-away car to the police.

Because the local police knew Jerry, they figured he would make like an old chicken and come home to roost when he got tired. By loud speaker, local, county and state police told everyone to get indoors and away from windows. One state trooper pulled his car in our side yard just beneath my parents bedroom window and lay across the hood with his gun drawn and aimed toward Jerry’s house. My mom raised the window and told the policeman “Mister! If you run over my Mock Orange Bush, that rifle ain’t gonna save ya!“ He shushed her motioned for her to get down.

My mom and I knelt in the floor with our noses on the window sill waiting for gun play. We must have looked like living Kilroy’s to the swarm of police officers. My dad, Huntington’s answer to John Wayne, stood beneath the carport on the west side of our house and calmly smoked his cigarette. Deaf and undaunted by the dragnet unfolding, he looked like a conductor directing the entire scene. I spoke softly to him with my nose and the top of my head poking out in harms way.

Sure enough, a car pulled up to Jerry’s front drive within an hour after the bank was robbed. Jerry got out, handed the man something and began to walk calmly toward his front porch. Police began swarming like bugs on a streetlight. Several got Jerry down and others surrounded the car with guns drawn. Jerry went without a fight.

We never knew why he did it and even Jerry couldn’t tell us why. Jerry hitched rides from the bank to Hartford, then Midland and several other spots before he finally hitchhiked home. He spent over $7000 on his journey as he was generous to his drivers. All but $500 was returned to the bank by the people who picked him up that day. Some believed the bank president probably helped himself to a few bills in the struggle. Who knows.

Jerry got a lengthy vacation from our neighborhood starting that day. No jury would have found him guilty of his crime so they simply sent him to a place where he could thrive and not go all Bonnie and Clyde again. He was eventually released and came home for a while but I lost track of him not long after that. I think of him every time I hear of a bank heist or see a lonely hitchhiker on the highway. You just don’t see people needing a ride and holding bank bags anymore!

Pass the Greek Macaroni!

2011-06-20T08:45:00.000-05:00

Anyone who has lost a parent can tell you that it puts your life in a tailspin. With the constants in your life now gone, you find yourself lost and in unfamiliar territory. You can be five or sixty-five years old but it still rocks your world.

My mother passed away unexpectedly in 1990. When she did it was like the hub of our family wheel was missing. My father, sisters and I were lost. It was understood that all of our family gatherings, holidays and birthdays were to take place at my parent’s home. With her gone, we wandered lost for over a year. In a spark of genius, my sister Donna Jo decided it was time to blow the trumpet and gather the troops again. We all understood that things would never be the same so she decided to reinvent the holidays.

Donna started a James Family Scavenger Hunt. At my birthday in late July, each member of our family had to come with five slips of paper. On those pieces of paper were written one item required to win our contest. I suggested a hub cap, a paper drink umbrella, and a coin minted in the year of each member of your immediate family. My nephew Jamie, who arguably is a half of a bubble off of plumb, suggested a photo of ourselves with road kill. All of the papers were put in a hat, shaken and twenty-five slips were drawn. We had until Labor Day in September to gather our items. In the event of a tie, the person with the most unique items was declared the winner.

I quickly gathered my box of goodies but balked at having my picture made with a squashed animal on the highway. My sister and our niece had their photo made on Interstate 40 near Little Rock with an unfortunate armadillo. It was embarrassing, they reported, when they had to explain why they were posing with the poor thing when a state trooper happened by.

The Scavenger Hunt wasn’t the only break with tradition for our family. Donna Jo, along with our other sister Lou Ellen and their daughters decided to celebrate the end of the Scavenger Hunt at Donna Jo’s with “Ethnic” dinner. A list of different ethnic groups was put on paper and the one drawn would be the type of food prepared. The list included German, Italian, Greek, Mexican, Chinese, Texan, Russian, Soul, Japanese and others.

The first year we decided to break our rule of choosing randomly and have a Hawaiian theme so we could get the hang of it. Everyone researched food possibilities. My brother-in-law roasted a pig. Everyone wore Hawaiian shirts and flip flops. My sister provided grass skirts, and plastic coconut bras. Everyone who came through the door was given a lei and a kiss on the cheek as they arrived. We drank fruit punch from coconut shell cups as Hawaiian music played in the background. We had a blast!
Mexican was drawn the next year and all the decorations reflected it. It was the next year that things got ugly. Greek food was chosen.

Research revealed recipes for lamb, veal, baklava, salads with all forms of olives, grapes and such. The problem was that I had four young sons who would have starved to death in the country of Greece. Shelley and I, being the good parents we are, devised a plan. We arrived at the dinner with our covered dish offerings and placed them by the beautifully prepared leg of lamb, meats wrapped in grape leaves and such. The lids were removed and they found our specialties: Greek Macaroni and Cheese, Greek BBQ Weenies, Greek Corn, and Greek Mashed Potatoes. The only thing that was Greek about any of our dishes was the work Greek. Some weren’t happy that we had broken the new tradition, but at least my babies had supper.

Shelley and I lived in Barling at this time next door to a Vietnamese family with few English skills. He drove an old truck that leaked oil constantly. He parked it in the street so it wouldn’t stain his driveway and that poor old man had to work on his motor daily.

It was the weekend of Labor Day and I had still not stooped to my sister’s level of posing with road kill. Then I got a great but sneaky idea. One of my sons had a pair of house shoes that looked like a bear paw. I placed one just in front of the oil slick, stood about five feet in front it and pointed down like I was standing over it. Shelley snapped the picture and it was perfect.

At the Labor Day cookout at Donnas’, I was in a tie with my nephew. It was decided that, since my road kill was in front of my own house, I was the winner. I received a nice little trophy of the back end of a horse engraved with the words, “First Place because you made an *** of yourself.” I treasure that trophy but feel guilty because I cheated.
My sister Donna Jo was told she had advanced breast cancer that next year. We had a simple family dinner that year as she fought sickness from the chemo and radiation. She passed away the next year in August of 2005. Our family was once again was thrown to the wind with the new hub of our family wheel gone. My only surviving sibling moved to Conway some time later. While our family doesn’t celebrate Labor Day any longer, Shelley and I have turned to starting other family traditions with our sons; traditions we hope will be passed to our grandchildren and beyond.

My Endless Love

2011-06-16T22:27:00.001-05:00

Her name was Cheryl. I will never forget the first time that I laid eyes on her. It was love at first sight. She was standing in the middle of the room when I walked in. Every guy in the place was trying to get her to notice them. Even though she was older than me by a couple of years, it didn’t matter. Her eyes met mine and a beautiful smile grew across her face. Her eyes twinkled and smiled as well. For once I was shy. Speechless. Without looking away, she turned and came toward me, ignoring everyone around her. A lump grew in my throat as my knees weakened. She had my complete attention. With a voice as sweet as an angel, she spoke her first words to me saying, “Hello Jackie! My name is Cheryl Conaway and I am going to be your First Grade teacher!”

For the next 170 days, my complete attention was hers. I hung on her every word. I made her cards, paintings and drawings. I asked her to marry me. She declined. Some silly notion about an age difference and that I would one day love again. Little did she know that I would still hold a place in my heart for her even forty-five years later.

Miss Conaway was a first year teacher. I can’t tell you much about what she said or what we did in her classroom but I remember two things: I, and all the boys in my classroom were dressed as Santa Claus in the Christmas play (and I had to use a pillow!), and the other memory is that she spanked me almost every day. I was a very spoiled young boy, full of mischief and energy. I owned the world and I allowed people to live in it, or so I thought. She did her best to break my spirit and did so by busting my behind almost daily. I do remember that little round wooden paddle: the one that came with a red rubber ball stapled to a piece of elastic string. She broke one once and apologized to me for days. I didn’t care…she was my girl.

When my mother passed away in 1990, I found an old suitcase in the top of her bedroom closet. In it were finger paintings, old report cards, handmade Mother’s Day cards, and a pile of handwritten letters from Miss Conaway. They were notes of my dastardly deed of mischief that day and a record of my punishment. Almost every note ended with a sentiment that told her that, after my punishment, she and I would sit and cry together.
She quit teaching after that year. Her first and last year was with me. I guess she loved me too and had to leave. Yeah, that’s it. When I was in the fifth grade, she came to school with her husband and two children. It was good to see her but it still broke my heart.

I was given her phone number and called her to invite her to the 30th Reunion of my graduating class. She remembered me well. She promised to try to come but didn’t make it. I wouldn’t recognize her now in a line up.
Spanky had a very intense crush on Miss Crabtree in the “Little Rascals” films. Even though Darla begged for his love his heart beat only for Miss Crabtree. Opie Taylor pined for Miss Helen Crump on the “Andy Griffith Show.” It was tough for old Opie because Miss Crump was his teacher for the entire series. I know how Spanky and Opie felt.

Now I am the teacher. Yes. There was a time, many many years ago, when a student had a crush on me. I’ll admit that it was MANY years ago but I can remember how careful I had to be not to break her tender little heart. There is much to be said for growing older in your profession. Very few have crushes on old, balding, fat, crippled teachers. And if they do, we now have counselors, medications and treatment centers for that.

Here Kitty Kitty Kitty!

2011-06-16T22:22:00.002-05:00

Studies show that a high number of people make their homes within 100 miles of their place of birth. I have lived in Fort Smith, Hartford, Mansfield, Huntington, Barling and Lavaca. I am one reason that fact might just be true. But there is no sense traveling when you have a good thing going where you are at already.

I was born at the old St. Edward’s Mercy Hospital located on Rogers Avenue just before Garrison in Fort Smith. My parents lived in Hartford in an old white, four-room house on the southeast corner of North Pine and Highway 96. The front room was at the right door on a long front porch. My sisters, 10 and 12 years-old had a front door in their bedroom as well. The dining room/kitchen was behind that and my parent’s room was just behind the living room. A long back screened-in porch completely covered the back of the house. We lived there until I was three years old.

I can remember having to sleep in a cast iron, full-sized bed with my parents. The only light in the room hung from a single cord that was directly centered in the square room with very high ceilings. My father tied a long cord to the chain that turned the light on and off and wrapped it around the head of the bed so he could see to get in bed and up again in the morning. I can’t tell you why I remember that.

The only heat in the house was from a large, tall and round cast iron coal burning stove that sat too far into the living room so it wouldn’t make the walls too hot. A long black stove pipe went up toward the ceiling and then bent where the rest of it disappeared into the wall. A series of two or three pieces of bailing wire was wrapped around the pipe and then onto nails in the ceiling to keep it from falling into the house. My father would let me throw wood chips into the roaring fire when he would put coal in to stoke up a good fire that had to heat the rest of the house. Small wood chips placed on the glowing red sides of the stove would smoke and eventually burst into flames. It got so hot in the living room that you couldn’t sit in there for the heat.

It was a cold morning and my father had built a good fire before I had woken up. In true “Leave it to Beaver” style, the men went to work and the apron-wearing women stayed home, raised their children and had supper waiting when the men returned. Cotton dresses and aprons were all the fashion anyone needed. Almost every morning, neighborhood women would gather in our kitchen and visit for an hour or so. Someone would make a coffee cake, or a plate of powdered donuts or cookies to nibble on and the coffee was percolating on the burner on the cook stove.

I remember this particular day very well because I was sitting on a rug in the cold linoleum floor in the living room playing with my new all-white kitten that someone had conned us into keeping against my father’s wishes. The stove was red hot and burning brightly. My cat was trying to get away from me as I was getting too rough handling him. He didn’t like being held and then it happened: He scratched my hand but good! Blood trickled down my little hand. I remember grabbing the kitten tightly in my bloody little fist. Without any talk or thought….I threw open the stove lid and tossed the kitten into the roaring coal fire. The little thing was gone before it hit the heat. It let out a loud little noise and I slammed the door down. I held my bleeding hand and walked calmly out of the living room into the kitchen. I don’t remember this part myself but my mother said that I calmly walked through the kitchen. As I walked past the women, my mother said I dusted my hands together and promptly stated, “That damn thing won’t scratch me no more!”

The neighborhood ladies broke into hysterics but my mom knew something was up. She walked into the living room to the stench of burnt kitten. She opened the stove door to find nothing but an incinerated corpse. She walked back through the kitchen and onto the back porch and found me slowly swinging on the old wooden porch swing, holding my bleeding hand. With my head hung low and my bottom lip lower, I didn’t acknowledge her presence. “Jackie, is something wrong with your hand?” she asked calmly. “Yes, momma,” I replied. “Where’s your kitten?” “I don’t know.” “Jackie, did you put your cat in the wood stove?” “Yes momma, I did.” Then it got ugly.

Mom was one of those old school mommas who disciplined with an open hand. She would grab me by one hand and hold it up high while she let the other hand do the work. She would ask me questions in syllables as she spanked and as I ran in a circle, making her twirl around in a form of a painful merry-go-round. “Jackie! Don’t you know that you killed your cat? It ain’t coming back! You burned it to death!” “No, mom! It will come back!” I explained, “Midge always comes back!” Now, before you think I was a special child, let me explain.

My sister’s best friend was a 13 year old girl named Midge. She and I would play Cops and Robbers or Cowboys and Indians in the yard around our house. When one of us “died” from a gunshot or arrow, we laid there until the victorious shooter would kiss the other on the cheek. (Even then, I was no idiot! At three, I had 13 year olds kissing me! I died a lot!) My simple, young mind didn’t understand death. To me, a simple kiss would restore life…even to a burnt kitten. I learned the truth that day and my father made sure I got it right when he got home as well.

Before I leave you, remember: I have never purposely harmed that poor kitten. I was three. I learned my lesson quickly..but I didn’t get another cat until I was much older and we got gas heat!

Berry Festival is Over!

2011-06-05T23:46:00.002-05:00

The Lavaca Berry Festival is over. A long year of hard work, committee meetings, phone calls, emails, trips far and wide and then a couple of days of grunt work and near 100 degree HEAT, the Lavaca Area Chamber of Commerce calls the Berry Festival a success. And it was worth it! So many people were responsible for the success of the 2011 Lavaca Berry Festival! A tremendous thank you to the Lavaca Police and to the Lavaca Fire Department for your protection and participation and to Jared Cleveland and the Lavaca School who volunteered the use of the school grounds! You all are what made it happen! Thanks for the countless hours and effort you performed to make it a historic day for Lavaca!

As a new group to hold the festival, we all learned some important things of what to do and what not to do next year. And their will be a next year!

You couldn’t have counted the hundreds (maybe a thousand) visitors we had on the grounds Saturday! I can’t wait to tell you this: complete and total strangers came up to me throughout the day. Many wanted to shake my hand and to thank me on behalf of the Chamber for a great day! Several of them told me that they were very shocked and pleased as they drove through Lavaca to see the beautiful, well-kept houses, streets and roadways. They also included that the businesses they used were kind and friendly. But they also said that the people, everywhere they went, were considerate, friendly and happy. One evern complimented the Christian attitude she had witnessed at the Festival and in the town. We take that for granted here in Lavaca but we shouldn’t. Folks, it’s an ugly world out there at times. There is a growing number of people out there who wouldn’t be so kind as to give you the time of day. How foreign it must be to come to a town where almost everyone is eager to be friendly, courteous and kind. A place like our town is rare where people greet strangers with a hello or a handshake or wave at every car as it drives past. I myself am thankful every time someone uses their blinker in their car to declare if they are turning onto Highway 255 or staying on Highway 96 at the crossroads in front of the Lavaca Grill! When I count my blessings (and I do that frequently) I am thankful for these things and so much more.

Here is an example: I mentioned in my Memorial Day column how, one day, I wanted to get a flag pole in my front yard. A simple statement, a wish for the future, you know? Late last week my good friend Allen McKinney asked if I was still wanting a flagpole as he had read in The New Sentry. I told him I did. He had already made me a handmade, homemade flagpole that swivels in the wind and told me he would bring it to my house! I was floored! He and his beautiful wife Sharon came by my house Sunday afternoon with the flag pole. It is outstanding! They not only made the pole but put it in the ground AND gave me a brand new American flag already hanging from it! How cool is that? Tell them when you see them how much it meant to me and how good of a neighbor and citizen they are to have in Lavaca: Not just because I got a flag pole, but because they are!

Get this: another gentleman approached me at the Berry Festival and said he had a tall iron flag pole that was mine if I needed it! I’m telling you what.

Dare to dream. If you have a need, let someone know. It’s not charity…it’s neighborly. I have a list of wishes I would like to see happen here in Lavaca and I just might share them with you someday!

As it proved to me Saturday, this heat is already oppressive and record breaking. Whether we are being punished, blessed or even if it is a diabolical plan devised by the Russians, the heat is on! Please check on elderly neighbors and friends. Make sure they have some type of fan or air source of some type. Keep good water out for your animals and make sure to get plenty of liquids yourself. As Allen and Sharon blessed me this week, I ask that you be a blessing to others. I know that isn’t a tough job for you because you show it to me everyday!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Conway Twitty!

2011-06-05T23:34:00.002-05:00

A new minister comes to a town and decides to visit the people of the neighborhood. A knock at the first door is answered by an elderly lady who exclaims, “You’re Conway Twitty!” “No ma’am,” he replies, “I am a minister but I have people tell me that all the time.” Down the street at another home, a door is answered by another elderly lady. “You’re Conway Twitty!” “No ma’am,” he replies, “I am a minister but I have people tell me that all the time.” He sadly walks up the another house where the door is answered by a beautiful young woman barely dressed in a skimpy gown. “You’re Conway Twitty!” and he replies “Hello Darlin’. It’s nice to see you!”

I tell that story for three reasons. First, it was my fathers favorite joke and I am missing him this Memorial weekend. Secondly, I have been going door-to-door to tell people about the coming Lavaca Berry Festival this Saturday. And third, I really think that joke is funny.

I usually hang out an American flag on holidays such as Memorial Day but my flag was faded and torn. I disposed of it in accordance to acceptable ritual but haven’t had the time to replace it. I would love to have a flag pole on the corner of my place so all the travelers down Highway 255 can see it. Someday. My dad was a decorated Veteran of WWII. Having been wounded three times, he deserved the Purple Heart three times but only accepted it once. He fought all over Europe and Northern Africa. He met Presidents Roosevelt and Eisenhower, saw Bob Hope and other movie stars on his journey. But all that made it hard to return back to Midland and Hartford Arkansas. Dad never talked much about the War only to say that it wasn’t something real soldiers discussed like a dog trade over coffee. His silence spoke volumes to me of the things he saw, endured and suffered. He was my hero and always will be.

The Lavaca Berry Festival is making its return this week on Saturday! A 5K Run and Walk will start at 8AM at the Lavaca Assembly of God Church. Winners will receive medals and the first fifty get a free t-shirt. At the same time, vendors will be opening up their booths and displaying their arts and crafts, handing out information, and getting ready for a day of celebration!

Music is starting at 9AM with the group called Ruff Cut: a country band with area musicians including our own Tim Goff. The Little Mr. and Mrs. Lavaca Berry Pageant will start on stage promptly at 9AM where crowns and trophies will be given for the three age categories. At High Noon, it’s a Wild West shootout from the PeaceMakers and LawBreakers group of Van Buren. They will be wearing authentic costumes and sport real antique firearms. Don’t worry though, there is no live ammunition of any kind! At 2PM, the first performance of the Lavaca Community Theater will present a play titled “The Trail of Tears” in the Performing Arts Center (PAC). All of these activities are free to the public.

You can purchase all kinds of food and drink anything from ice cold water to fresh squeezed lemonade, climb the rock climbing wall, play in several kids games. But here is the news! For the first time in any festival, a group called Games2U will pull in a double trailer that has amazing video games and activities for the not-so-young gamers! You won’t believe this attraction. At the same time, the Lavaca Police and Fire Department will host an Open House in both departments and will perform a car extraction….aka..they are going to cut a car in half! AND the famous pork skins will be fresh and on sale.

All proceeds from the Festival will go to helping the Lavaca Area Chamber of Commerce who funds several activities throughout the year for the community. Please come by and visit me there!

The annual Lavaca Alumni Reunion will be celebrating in the school cafeteria this Saturday too! It is a great and wonderful time getting to visit with all of these people from graduating classes from 1934 through 1967! I may be wrong about the years but you get what I am saying. I know Irma Lockridge and Selma Green have worn themselves to a frazzle trying to get this reunion to be a success! I know it will be!

Lavaca Berry Festival parking will be in the new gravel parking lot and the large parking on the south side of the PAC and behind the High School. We are reserving parking for the Alumni Reunion at the Band Room, the Administration Building and the gravel parking lot on the north side of the Middle School off of Division Street. When you are having your 50+ reunion, you will thank people for reserved parking!

School is out this Friday. It has been a very short year, at least it has for me. My twin sons, Jacob and Joshua, graduated from Lavaca. My youngest son, Noah, spent his first year in my classroom. My middle son, Caleb, completed his first year of High School. It’s a year of firsts and of lasts as well. My world is changing so fast it is hardly recognizable when I look. But everything changes, so the country song says.

Well, you guys watch out for the school kids who will be out and about now that school is out. (Hey! That rhymed!) Make plans to come to the Festival and help make it the best day ever!

It’s Back! And Better Than Ever!

2011-05-22T19:12:00.000-05:00

For years, Lavaca waited anxiously for the annual Lavaca Berry Festival. The first Saturday of every June was set aside to commemorate and celebrate the history of the Lavaca Berry. In the late 1930s until the early 1970s, almost every field and back yard would be growing the berry.

The Lavaca Berry, a hybrid of the boysenberry and the loganberry, was developed by a grower in the 1920s. In 1937, Lavaca Agriculture teacher I. H. Fielder introduced the plants to a local farmer named Ed Girard. Girard promptly purchased 1000 plants and started a crop that would save the economy of the Lavaca area. Girard owned 800 acres that stretched from the corner in front of today’s City Hall location all the way to Nixon Road. From his start of 1000 plants, he increased his acreage yearly. And so did other area farmers.

In its height of business, local farmers harvested over 360,000 quarts of Lavaca Berries in ONE day. It weighed in at over 600,000 pounds. Local farmers total income for that year in 1943 was $200,000. You have to remember that this was post-depression era and in the heat of World War II.

The Lavaca Berry has been called “The Berry That Saved Lavaca.” Mr. Girard built the native rock house that still stands today beside the old Lavaca Supermarket building on Highway 96 in east Lavaca. Girard was able to completely pay for his house with proceeds from his berries. Joan and Terrall Rambo had a similar story when they made enough from the harvest to buy his farm on North Davis.

The Lavaca Berry was shipped all across the United States by rail. The success our berry caught the attention of the major fruit producers who took it upon themselves to squeeze the market and choke out the berry sales. Little by little, the sales of the Lavaca Berry began to dwindle until it was not profitable to grow them any longer. The Lavaca Berry Association disbanded and sold its assets in 1972.

Several citizens still grow the once proud berry. You will find them being grown in back yards in several places around town.

The Lavaca Berry has a proud history and heritage in our little town and area. No wonder we chose to celebrate it years ago. Like the berry business we honor, the same thing happened to the Lavaca Berry Festival.

There were about a dozen local citizens responsible for creating the Lavaca Berry Festival. Each year, booths of games, contests, foods and entertainment were held in town at the time of harvest, the first Saturday in June. Little by little, committee members fell ill, passed on and others just lost interest working to have the festival and, it too, dwindled. It wasn’t long before those who remained on the committee couldn’t work to keep the festival and it ended. For years, local residents have talked of reviving the celebration. This year, their wish is coming true.

On Saturday, June 4, the Lavaca Area Chamber of Commerce will host the once-annual Lavaca Berry Festival. With help from many of the original group that started the festival, it will be held on the site of the Old Main High School Building on the school campus. This all day event will start at 8AM with a 5K Run/Walk that will begin at the Lavaca Assembly of God Church parking lot. At the end of the run, the festival will be in full swing. Live music will be performed all day long from local bands and musicians. A Little Mr. and Mrs. Lavaca Berry Pageant will be held at 10 AM. Bingo will be going on almost all day in the Old Gym. Visit with re-enactors from Van Buren who are dressed in period costume from the Old West and Civil War era throughout the morning and early afternoon. The very first performance of the Lavaca Community Theater will perform the play “The Trail of Tears” live on stage at 2PM in the Performing Arts Center.

Over 60 booths filled with arts and crafts, gifts, products, wares, and information will be available all day long. Children’s games will be plentiful complete with face-painting, sand arts, painting crafts, bounce-a-rounds and something totally new to this area! A company will be on hand that has video game competitions and games like we have never seen. And ride the historic Lavaca Berry Train!

Buy your commemorative Lavaca Berry Festival T-shirt, cups and items from the Lavaca Chamber of Commerce booth. You will even have an opportunity to buy a start of your very own Lavaca Berry plant so you can keep the legacy alive!

What is a festival without food? Local vendors as well as vendors from south Arkansas, Oklahoma and even Texas will be selling everything from funnel cakes, BBQ, snow cones, ice cream specialties, hand-dipped corn dogs, BBQ/Cheese Nachos, Cajun food, hamburgers, hot dogs to our very own Lavaca Berry Fried Pies! You can diet another day! This comes only once a year!

All proceeds will go to help the Lavaca Area Chamber of Commerce fund local activities throughout the year and help local interests. So, rain or shine, mark your calendar to attend the new Lavaca Berry Festival on Saturday, June 4 and make plans to stay all day! And invite your friends!

If you need information on joining the 5K, the Lavaca Berry Pageant or setting up a booth, please check our website online at www.lavacaarchamber.com. Forms and information will be there for you or contact any Lavaca Chamber of Commerce member!

Pass the Eggs, Your Highness!

2011-05-16T20:39:00.001-05:00

Finally. After months of anticipation, Prince William finally walked the aisle and married Katherine “Kate” Middleton. The newest Royal couple has been the topic of much discussion, aggravation and anticipation since young Will asked Kate to be his bride.

I didn’t get invite to the Royal nuptials. I went to the mailbox religiously. I even blamed the U. S. Postal Service but still, no letter. I don’t blame them though. There is very limited seating in Westminster Abbey. It only seats around 1900 and even President and Mrs. Obama weren’t on the invite list.

Even though I may not have made the cut on the invitations, I wondered if I should send a wedding gift. I remember reading that when William’s mom and dad, Lady Diana and Prince Charles, were married in 1981, they received over 5000 wedding gifts. That is a lot of thank you notes to write! Princess Grace of Monaco (nee Grace Kelly, former Hollywood movie star) gave Diana a simple silver photo frame. Nancy Reagan gave them a $75,000 crystal bowl. With some research, I found that the usual gift to royalty is jewelry. Now, I know better than to buy jewelry for another woman other that my wife so I passed that thought up right away. When Queen Elizabeth married in 1847, the United States sent her food. It might have been an old-fashioned pounding: a pound of flour, a pound of sugar, coffee, salt, etc. Every new couple needs a good start and nothing says “I’m thinking of you” like a pound of shortening. Winston Churchill presented the new Queen with a leather bound collection of his books. Those must have ended up in the next Royal Yard Sale.
I decided that the royal newlyweds would probably enjoy a nice glass deviled egg tray. I am sure that no one else has considered it. Once they get back to the castle and get unpacked, they will have to give some parties and an egg tray will come in handy. When Charles and Camilla, Elizabeth and Phillip come to Christmas dinner, Kate will be proud to serve them on a lovely glass tray instead of having those deviled eggs roll around on an old flat dinner plate. Trust me, been there, done that. With four kids, we have been able to collect the entire set of McDonald’s plastic dinnerware. Even though we have the whole set, sometimes it is not fitting to serve guests on them. And even the costliest Chinet paper plate won’t stop a rolling deviled egg once it sets it mind to it.
When Shelley and I became engaged in 1986, we began building our house on two lots that were given to us by my parents. We sunk every dime we could get into that place. I made the house plans myself and did most of the work. In this little house, I needed eight windows but they were the costliest item we had come by so far. One evening, my parents told us that my sweet Aunt Fern and Uncle Max had come by and measured for the windows. They were sworn to secrecy but were so excited they couldn’t hold it in but said that it was going to be our wedding present! Needless to say, we were tickled to death. We decided to spend our own window savings on a beautiful antique bay window that had been recovered from an old tear-down in Fort Smith. We waited and waited for the windows and did everything we could do in anticipation of the wonderful gift but they never came. Finally, on the day of our wedding in the summer of 1987, Max and Fern presented us with a small box at our reception. The card taped to the box reported that it was a present from the two of them, their daughter and her husband and children, and an elderly cousin and her husband and son. With nine peoples name on the card, we quickly guessed that they had gone together to present us with either the cash or a gift certificate to Sutherland’s to make the window purchase. I timidly opened the gift at the reception, trying to act like I had no idea what they were doing. When I ripped the paper off of the box I was speechless. It was a beautiful deviled egg tray! I was silent. Shelley rammed her hand in the box to look for the money or paper but there was nothing. stood there with this glass egg tray with gold trim like I had been slapped in the face with a fish. (That, friends, is another story.) Shelley pointed to the back of the box and there was a small bit of Christmas paper taped to the box. They didn’t even buy it. Nine people re-gifted a sorry Christmas present.
We bought our own windows eventually. I had every plan to make a porthole opening of sorts in the hallway and put the deviled egg tray in it. I couldn’t wait to show my aunt and uncle how much I had appreciated the “window” they had so generously given. Shelley wouldn’t let me but I was sure going to do it.
We re-gifted the egg tray when Fern’s granddaughter got married two years later.
One sweet little Mexican co-worker of mine in Conway gave us a bright yellow, orange and red pottery piece. We had no clue what it was. I decided it was a bicycle rack or a foot scratcher but Shelley was sure it was either a letter holder or a homemade speed bump. It turns out that it was a taco holder. Who would have guessed?
Maybe a deviled egg plate isn’t the best gift. I bet that they do not have a taco holder either! Being rich doesn’t mean you have everything, I guess. The couple has asked that no gifts be sent anyway. They ask us to make a donation to our favorite charity. So, I put the $3.00 in the donation can at the Military Road Museum. William and Kate will just have to deal with rolling eggs and have to hold their tacos like the rest of us poor folks.

Confucius Say: That Wasn’t Chicken!

2011-05-16T20:35:00.000-05:00

Mystery meat. Every school cafeteria has been accused of serving some unrecognizable meat patty of questionable origin. It is part of the school experience. But outside the confines of the divided trays and small chocolate milk cartons, food shouldn’t be a guessing game!

I love to watch cooking shows. I can be found on the Food Channel whenever there is nothing on the other stations. I have made white gravy with Paula Dean, fried my squash in olive oil with Rachel Ray, set my table-scape with Sandra Lee and overeaten with Man v. Food. But, this week, on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, I almost lost my lunch.

This ‘cook’ in some obscure restaurant was showing the host/chef Guy how to make his secret recipe for Turtle Soup. Did you know that they put real turtles in Turtle Soup? I was mortified. I watched with my mouth wide open in shock as he proceeded to bake a hubcap-sized snapping turtle. I believe that I screamed out loud when he pulled the shell from its back and began to shred the meat. All of my life I have believed that the turtle in Turtle Soup was a play on words. It looked like those one hundred year old gentle guys that you see in the Little Rock Zoo.

People in the diner we moaning and smacking their lips at the delicate flavor. Me? I was shouting at the TV. I used to have bowl with two or three small turtles that sunned on a small rock in a bit of tap water. I never considered them to be appetizers. A local man a the diner here in Lavaca told me that his father used to go to the river and shoot snapping turtles for this family to eat. I can’t imagine how hungry I would have been if that was on my table.

Where is the sport in hunting turtles? Do you use a beagle or a hound to get on the trail of a turtle? They aren’t especially quick creatures and they rarely put up much of a fight. You never see a turtle at a taxidermy shop. Teddy Roosevelt probably never went on a Turtle Safari.

I have written before about my mom’s cooking and her Polenta. I used to beg for it. She would take an iron skillet and fry the meat and, in the drippings, cook down onions, bell peppers and tomatoes. Then she would return the meat and bake it and pour it over a good hunk of cornbread. That was special food to me.
Years later I found that the meat was a squirrel or a rabbit that my father had killed. They let me believe what I wanted about the mystery meat. I haven’t had it in about thirty-five years now.

I was on my third piece of chicken fried steak at a buffet at the King’s Row Inn in Fort Smith as a young man before my mother innocently said, “If I knew you would eat liver, I would have made it at home.” I didn’t finish my third piece.

I know people used to be hungry and would eat whatever they could find to keep some meat on their bones but some things push the limit. Seriously. How hungry was the first guy who looked behind a bull and decided that those things might taste pretty good if they were sliced and fried?

Archie Bunker on “All in the Family” told his wife Edith one episode, “Edith, don’t ever fix me another beef tongue sandwich! I don’t want anything that has been in a cow’s mouth. Now, go boil me a couple of eggs.” Don’t think about it too long.

I have eaten some really good apple pie before that turned out was not apples at all. It was made with Ritz crackers. There are people who are out there looking for a cure for cancer and somebody used their brain power to substitute a cracker for a lowly apple. I hope that they at least got a ribbon for their efforts.

God has been good to me. Even as poor as we were when I was growing up, I never knew real hunger. But I knew some who were. I still see kids who need a meal today. That’s why I get so aggravated at the government making a big fuss about school lunches. School lunches don’t make a kid fat; the chips, cokes and candy they eat after school while they play video games all afternoon makes them overweight. School lunches are the only meal that some kids get in a day.

My family and I are planning to go eat Chinese food soon. It’s always an adventure. Mystery meat isn’t just for the school cafeteria any more!

“THOMAS EDISON! TURN OFF THAT LIGHT AND GO TO BED!”

2011-05-16T20:28:00.000-05:00

So Sunday was Mother’s Day! A day we take a step back to honor our beloved mother! And why not? Everybody has one!

Even Hitler had a mother! Don’t you know that she was proud? Did she carry a photo of him in her wallet? When she saw him on the news, did she turn and tell the other old ladies, “That’s my boy, Adolf!”

Mothers are notorious for telling us what is right from wrong. My own mother would give me sage advice whenever she thought I needed it. “When I was your age, I had to play with broken dishes and imaginary friends. Why can’t you just pretend there are tires on your bicycle frame?” Abraham Lincoln’s mom probably never said, “Again with the stovepipe hat, Abe? Can’t you just wear a baseball cap like the rest of the kids?”

My mother would make sure that my feet were clean before I went to bed every night. The rest of me could be a greasy mess but you didn’t go to bed with dirty feet. Back in the time when we bathed in a wash basin in the winter and under a water hose in the summer, dirty feet were a real possibility!

One thing that was good about my mother was that she always believed her baby. It was never a question of doubt; if I said the dog opened the ice box, he did. I remember wondering what it would be like to shoot my favorite cousin with my new Daisy BB gun. We were taking turns shooting a tree when the bright idea hit me. I drew a bead on him and popped him one in the leg. He took off jumping and screaming and making a big old deal out of it and finally took off toward the house. Of course, mom came running to see what tragedy had befallen him. He told the whole story, just as it happened and I knew I was about to have to pick a switch from the old maple tree. I quickly lied and told mom, “I was shooting at the tree and he ran in front of it!” Mom turned to him and told him to stop trying to get me into trouble and to be careful next time. David stood there slack-jawed and staring at me in disbelief. I owned him from then on. I do feel bad about that….now.

Jonah’s mom from the Bible probably didn’t believe her boy though. "That's a nice story, but now tell me where you've really been for the last three days?”

You never hear a mom tell you that you are sitting too far from the television. That you should hitchhike to town. Your room is too clean. Or that you should bet stray dogs. My mother never admitted to skipping class or sneaking out of the house without her parents permission. To hear her tell, she was an angel.

Mom was always a little more than put out that her birthday was so close to Mother’s Day. Some years, the two days were together. That really made her feel like she got robbed somehow. We were always careful to buy her two small presents and draw her attention to the difference to the gifts. It rarely worked.

When I was around 10 years-old, I saw a mother’s ring advertised from a Fort Smith store. I talked to my father about the two of us getting it for her for Mother’s Day but he was not sure I had my half of the cash. To get the 18K gold ring with three birthstones for me and my sisters: two rubies for me and my sister Donna and an opal for my sister Lou Ellen, the price, after tax, was $29. Dad and I made the trip and put a small down payment on the ring. My dad said that he would pay half but I had to come up with the other half. I dug into couches of every family member I could visit. Old soda bottles were returned and the deposit, that would have bought penny candy and more Coca Cola, was saved for the ring. I eventually saved less than $10 of the money needed but my dad showed me some mercy and paid the rest. She was so proud of that ring and almost never took it off for the rest of her life. It became so worn that my sister had it repaired for her for Mother’s Day twenty-five years later. She passed away just months after it was returned. My sister’s insisted that I keep her ring although I wanted her be laid to rest with it.

I could never out-do that ring gift. I did buy her a $1.97 red rosebush from Kmart one year for Mother’s Day. I told her that the rose bush would give her flowers every year and was to remind her on that day how much I loved her. That cheap climbing rose grew and stretched more than 25 feet long and over 8 feet tall. Cuttings of it have been transplanted all over the area. A piece of it grows in my back yard here in Lavaca. The rose bush still blooms in the abandoned home place on Huntington Hill.

My wife and I took a slow and leisurely drive on Saturday to lay a wreath and flowers on the graves of our parents and other loved ones in Mansfield, Hartford and Spiro. I dropped by the old house in Huntington and clipped some of her roses and took them to her again for this Mother’s Day too, just like always. A simple bouquet of her own roses to remember the greatest woman I ever knew.

THE CLOTHES LINE OUT BACK

2011-04-17T18:35:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, my mother would load up the dirty clothes during the winter from the past week and we would head to Mrs. Perkins Laundromat in Mansfield. With a change purse filled with quarters, mom would shove clothes into industrial sized washers. We sat for the next hour in the old building with the smell of detergent and damp concrete floors. Drying clothes in a machine was more than mom could do though. We would load up the wet clothes and haul them home to the clothes line in the back yard.

You rarely see clothes lines anymore. Technology and Kenmore have put a washer and dryer in almost every home. But they were sure luxuries to use back in the day.

Our old house had a smoke house that was built in the early part of the century. Years earlier, hogs were butchered and cleaned beneath this tall and sturdy maple tree and the meat was cured and placed in the old twenty foot square shed. We used it for a storage shed in the 1960s. Just inside the door was our old wringer washer. The round barrel shaped washer had wheels that would let you pull it out side where we put heated water in the tub. With some washing powder thrown in, the old agitator would wash the clothes forever if you wanted. A square galvanized tube was filled with cold water from the well or, later, a water hose. The soapy clothes were fed through the tight wheels of the wringer to remove most of the water and then were dropped into the fresh water. There they were dipped and soaked until you felt certain that the soap was removed. One more trip through the wringer and it was time to hang them out to dry.

Our clothes line consisted of two iron post welded like a T. There was four lines of wire stretched tightly between the two posts.

The first thing you had to do was take a wet rag and wipe the lines down before you put clothes on it. Birds, dirt and dust could ruin hours of work. The first thing that went on the front line was sheets. They were the hardest to wash so they were usually done first. Sheets and towels were put on the front line so you could hide your unmentionables on the lines behind them. It was a southern sin to let your neighbors see you tighty-whities on the clothes line and no self-respecting woman would let anyone see her undies on the line. Neighbors would talk about you endlessly. And never ever hang shirts by the shoulders! No need to go to school or work looking like an elf if not necessary.

Mom kept wooden clothes pins in the pockets of her apron. We also had a bag sown around a clothes hanger that was made of an old towel. You never left clothes pins on the lines. It was uncivilized. A experienced person could place clothes strategically so that you would use one pin by overlapping clothes.

With all four lines filled with clothes, the weight of the wet material would pull the wires down so far that the sheets would drag the ground. Dad made us a temporary post of a couple of boards that had a notch cut and would hold them up until they were dry. Sometimes the first clothes that were hung were dry before the last clothes needed to be hung.

The thing about the clothes line was it told everyone who passed what was going on in your house. Sheets, blankets and bedding were all washed at the sign of Spring. After a long winter, it was a dreaded duty to get that done. Bedding was usually a Monday chore at our house. After a long weekend, mom felt she had the strength to handle the chore. Sheets on the line also meant that company was either coming or had just left. If the guest was really special, you would find the good towels or even the fancy tablecloth there.

When a new arrival came to a family, the line was filled with diapers and bibs and clothes so tiny that one pin could hold several little shirts. You could also notice when the kids were growing up when the little onesies were replaced by toddler or teen clothes.

If money was plentiful, neighbors would notice a new dress or blouse, a new shirt or slacks. If times were hard, worn out clothes were hidden behind the sheets or towels. People didn’t make fun of patches in knees and elbows because just about everyone had them. It would embarrass my mother if she had to let the neighbors see my patches. She wouldn’t believe the money people are paying for new worn out jeans now.

I miss the old clothes line! Most people love the soft, sweet clothes straight from the dryer. I used to love the smell of a sun-dried sheet or the feel of the towels after a shower. It was back-breaking work and certainly, most people are happy that it isn’t a part of their chores. But It reminds me of some really good times!

DRIVING 101

2011-04-17T16:38:00.000-05:00

I am constantly amazed at technology. Having been born before computers, calculators, cell phones or even the television remote, I have had the disadvantage of having to learn the ins and outs of pretty much anything electronic. There are times when I feel like I am not qualified to turn on the light switch. My children, however, can text, talk to Europe, search the World Wide Web, convert the American dollar to Turkish Lira (if the need arises), and play any song instantly with some wildly agile thumbs and fingers. I even have them open my aspirin with the child-proof caps. But this week, I almost gave up and bought a rocker.

It was a day not unlike any other day. Birds were singing. Children laughing. Stock market crashing. All was well with the world. I was bored. I had an errand to run so I decided that I would take a short drive toward the city and see what was going on in the area. Of course, everyone was too busy so I began my excursion alone.

I drove slowly down Highway 22 to approve the new work on the road expansion. I found some fault with a few places but, after driving the length of it to Central, I decided to okay their work and not have Obama shut the project down. I continued toward Fort Chaffee and pulled into the original road to survey the work they had down to clean the debris of the 155 barracks that had burned in 2008. The chimneys are now down and the ground is level and ready for future plans. I am sure the mowing crew enjoys not having to stop for those pesky buildings. I’ll bet there is little use of weed eating now. Anyway, I made my way to Fort Smith.

The drive home drew my attention to the old railroad tracks. I fussed mentally with the railroad powers-that-be on their decision to pull the tracks and thought how much Lavaca could do with having the old tracks intact. Just think how sweet a small train trip could be from Fort Smith to Paris for tourist and visitors! Or, if not a full track, someone could turn a few rail cars into a visitor center or even a bed and breakfast. Champagne ideas for a guy with an ice tea budget.

I journeyed onto Highway 255 on my way home and admired the work of several Central City citizens efforts to improve their homes with landscaping, new paint or even new additions. I once wanted to be a carpenter and build things like my father. That man could pick up a scrap of wood and build a table. He could look at any car and tell you what was wrong from the front bumper to the license plate. It was about that time when my car lost power.

The old yellow car, more affectionately called “Dad’s Taxi” slowed as the engine spit and sputtered. I got to the deep curve before it died completely and was able to pull off of the highway and on to Hickman Bluff Road. The gas gauge read that I had a half tank of the over-priced petroleum product. A good friend of my twin sons, who had been following me since Central, honked and waved sweetly as he sped by and disappeared on his way east.

After attempting to start the car several times, I called my wife to tell her that I was sitting in the wilderness and experiencing a nervous breakdown. She ignored my screams and suggested oil. I think she has been watching too much news and how OPEC makes the world go round. I explained, patiently I might add, that oil was not the problem. She drove to my side for support. I still don’t know why she brought the life insurance policy. Okay, not really.

I made a call to the LAPD (that is, Lavaca Police) to report an abandoned car was about to be torched. He talked me down and joined me and my wife in the approaching darkness. Calmer heads prevailed and he called a friend of ours to tow us back to Lavaca and civilization. Shelley left muttering something about how she had brought oil and wished we would try it or something like that. We hooked old yeller up and made the trip to Lavaca’s only car repair shop on Main Street. It looked like the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade, I guess. Cars appeared from nowhere, cheers from parking lots and driveways, honking from far away had us waving right and left like we had just won first place in the Miss Lavaca Pageant.

The garage didn’t open until bright and early Monday morning. Tommy, the qualified and professional savior of cars, trucks and small engines, called me and told me I probably needed a water pump. And in the words that only a mechanic can repeat correctly, he said, “She’s gonna cost ya.” Now, being a Christian person, I turned to God for help. Evidently He didn’t have $550 either, so He told me to have faith and all would be well. I did the best I could.

It wasn’t four hours until another call came from Tommy. He announced that it was not the water pump and, in one sentence, he proved that God had indeed been near. “You, Mr. Jack James, were out of gas.” The connection, it seems, to the gas gauge, had corroded. A gallon of gasoline cured all of Dad’s Taxi problems. I felt like an idiot until he reminded me that the tank read that there was fuel. It helped some. At least until I talked to the LAPD and the guy with the tow truck. They can be cruel.

I had called on the LAPD once before with car trouble. I had just bought the car and had taken my son to the H20 building for church. When I went to leave, the car had locked up on me and the key wouldn’t even turn in the ignition. Our police chief passed by and I flagged him down and explained. He looked at me and listened politely, got in my car, turned the wheel slightly and proceeded to start the car without a problem. I will never forget his face as he got out and gave me back my vehicle. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had given me a breath test.

So, I have about come to the conclusion to turn my car over to my kids and that the best thing for me to do is to ride the school bus to school from now on.
I am looking for a good rocking chair to place on my front porch. When you drive by, wave politely. Or better yet, stop by and visit.

CAN I HAVE THIS DANCE?

2011-04-17T16:18:00.000-05:00

The Lavaca Jr/Sr Prom 2011 is in the history books! We have been looking forward and dreading the night for weeks. I have been torn between sharing their joy and happiness for the occasion and worried silly for their safety and having to let go just a little more.

It was thirty-two years ago this month that I was going to my Junior Prom at good ole Mansfield High School. I was petrified at the prospect of going on several levels. First of all, I didn’t have a girlfriend. I was everybody’s friend. The girls trusted me with their deepest secrets and the guy’s trusted me to talk to the girls to get them dates. I was like a net in a tennis match. Everyone watches the moves of the players but they don’t pay much attention to the net. And there I was…smack dab in-between. Secondly, I danced like a fish…flopping without form, gasping for air, begging for sweet death. It has been my thought that the dance floor cannot be dark enough. Third, I didn’t have a date. Did I mention that?

I asked everyone in the high school to go with me to prom with the possible exception of the janitor. Finally, a good but unfortunate looking friend of mine decided we could go together if it wasn’t a date. It does so much for the teen-aged boy when the most unfortunate looking girl in your class doesn’t want you to think you are her date. But I jumped at the chance so I wouldn’t be alone. How stupid.

The day of the dance, I pulled out the old gray, polyester leisure suit and got ready. (Looking back now I must have looked like Barney Fife in the old reliable salt and pepper suit. I wore it for every occasion.) I had bought a nice orchid corsage and made my way to the countryside south of Mansfield to pick “Pam” up in my 1962 Dodge Dart. I was just about a couple of hundred yards from her driveway when she and her brother passed me in his truck. I was shocked to see her: mouth wide open in her screams, hair soaking wet as it tried to blow in the truck with the windows down, and speeding with wild abandon. Confused, I pulled onto the gravel drive to her momma’s double-wide trailer and made my way to the door.

Pam’s mom was scattered to say the least. Her mom explained that she had made Pam’s prom dress herself and, not thinking to fit it before now, found out it was about two or three sizes too large. Pam, it seemed, had gone to her grandmothers house to borrow a dress since they were of similar size. She left me sitting in the living room as she disappeared to the back of the mobile home. I sat there for almost thirty minutes on the edge of her couch, clutching her wilting corsage and picking cat hair off of my polyester. Finally, the back door opened and slammed shut as Pam returned, still screaming. “Tell him to go without me!” she yelled over and over. I told her mom that we would be fine and I would wait even though the prom had already started more than an hour earlier.

Finally she emerged. Her hair was pulled back in some clip, her eyes swollen and red, and wearing her grandmother’s wedding dress. Lacy, off-white, long-sleeved and floor length. We looked like a 70s cake topper. We rode back to town in total silence except for the occasional sniffle.

We arrived extremely late and the door made a huge sound as we appeared in the doorway of the darkened cafeteria. Every eye stared us up and down. We were ushered to our places and two cold plates of roast beef and potatoes were laid before us. I lined up my green beans across the plate like little soldiers as they guarded the meat from the potatoes. Pam never looked up, never spoke and never touched so much as a fork. Five minutes after walking in the door, the principal stood to announce that we were dismissed and would need to be at Westark’s Student Union for the dance in one hour or we wouldn’t be let in. The crowd stood and quickly fled. On the way back to the car, I asked Pam if she wanted to go get something to eat before we got up there. “I want to go home and now.”

It took forever to get to her house. I had just barely stopped the car when she jumped out and, with her wedding dress hiked up to her knees, ran into the front door of the trailer. I backed out of the driveway and went home. I laid there with my head in the window of my darkened bedroom and looked at the stars and the moon still dressed in gray polyester. I looked at my alarm clock. It was 8:30 PM.

I think that is why I fear Prom night for my boys. They are kind souls and, at least in my eyes, vulnerable to the same hurt. Now I fear them getting hurt, not by unfortunate looking dates, but the drunk and high people on the road at night. I didn’t have to worry about that as I watched the moon that night so long ago. And most of the drunks were dancing in the Westark Student Center.

YOU SHOULD SEE WHAT YOU’RE MISSING!

2011-03-27T16:39:00.002-05:00

There is a eye glasses store in Fort Smith that advertises “Buy one pair; Get one free!” I fell for it. I took my prescription to them and they fit me for glasses. I carefully picked out two rims and they gave me my total. It was a as much as a house payment. Insurance was kicking in, I reasoned, so I got my glasses a couple of days later. One pair is good but the other pair must really belong to a poor individual with a dog and a white cane. Sure, I complained but they assured me they were correct. All was well until I broke the good pair.

Sure, that is why I have two pair right? The second pair make me look like Mr. Magoo. My eyes look enormous under their magnification. Shelley’s 101-year-old great-grandmother had a similar prescription with lenses as large as a fruit jar lid. I have never understood why the elderly insist on having glasses so large that their eyebrows and cheekbones get to look out of the spectacles with their eyes. I have seen submarine port holes that were smaller than some of the girls glasses I see at Wal-Mart.

Anyway, today I broke the other pair. I had to take action immediately. I got both pairs of glasses and asked every member of my family if they would go with me to get them fixed. Three qualified drivers said no. Two unqualified drivers offered but I didn’t want us all to be killed. So, blind as a mole, I drove to Fort Smith to the original scene of the crime.

I was surprised to find that I made every light down Rogers and Phoenix Avenues. Several cars almost hit me as I went down Phoenix but I was able to avoid them by veering into my own lane. But I finally made it.
The store was filled with many customers as I told my reflection in the mirror what my problem was. A salesman took the hand full of parts and reassured me he would be back in a jiffy. A Boy Scout led me to a waiting chair.

I heard a lady in the corner exclaim loudly, “310 dollars?!” I felt the need to yell “Testify sister!” but bit my lip.

Just as promised, the kind salesman came back with my two repaired sets of glasses. I put on the good pair and it was like a miracle! I drove back home happy as a clam.

I took good eyesight for granted when I was younger. I remember on my 30th birthday how everyone warned me that I would begin to fall apart. I threw back my head and laughed. Two months later in a history classroom, I left the textbook open where I was teaching and promised to finish the following day. The next morning I picked up where I left off but somehow, the print was blurry and smaller. I pushed the book farther from my face and there it was…words. Two weeks later, after a good morning shower and shampoo, I found my bangs in the bathroom sink. It was happening.

Why is it that when we get older we become Mr. Potato Head? I see people who, every morning, put on their toupee, their glasses, hearing aides, and false teeth. One good slap on the back and our face falls in our laps. And that brings me to another thing. My lap is missing.

As I sat here today, squinting through what was left of my glasses with one lens and ear piece missing, I counted my blessings. I remembered years ago when my Dad began having trouble reading his newspaper. He wouldn’t spend the money to buy glasses until we all made him by badgering him silly. He wore them one whole day before some visiting friend let his kid grab them and rip the ear piece off. My Dad wore them for the rest of his life with it missing. I can still see him holding it up as he read the paper.

In the movie “The Shepherd of the Hills,’’ Marjorie Main’s character is healed of a lifelong blindness in time to witness the accidental shooting of her cousin played by Beulah Blonde. She says to another character, “I wished I had stayed blind in the cold, safe dark.” Of all of my senses, I would hate to lose my sight more than any other. I can’t hear well anyway so that is partly done and if I couldn’t taste I might lose a pound or two. I live with four teenaged boys so the loss of a sense of smell would be merciful. I am very thankful that God has kept me with all of my senses, so far. So if He’s reading this, I thank you again.

Crazy Betty

2011-03-23T21:15:00.001-05:00

I have a tremendous fear of people forgetting me when I am gone. I started this when I was searching for my family ancestors and found out that my father had absolutely no idea what the names were of his own grandparents. It took some real research for several years until I found, not only his grandparents but many generations further back. I want my name and myself to be remembered for years to come…not just a name carved into a tombstone. But I want it to be remembered favorably if possible!

The name of Jesse James has crossed time for more than a hundred years. The names of Lee Harvey Oswald and Charles Manson will cross generations for forever. You shouldn’t have to rob, kill and steal to be remembered. Huntington had a woman who will be remembered for many years to come. Her name was Betty.

Several weeks ago I told you about one of Huntington’s finest that tried to grow cigarettes. It reminded me of another character that we all called “Crazy Betty.” I am changing her name even though she and her kin are long gone but even Crazy Betty has a heart.

Betty was born in the 1930s and went to school in the one room school house at Arkole along with my mother. She was a normal child who was raised dirt poor like everyone around her. She met and married “Tommy” and they lived in a small house on the west side of Huntington all of their lives. Somewhere in all that time, Betty’s cheese slid off of her cracker. Her tire got stuck in the sand. Her elevator quit going all the way to the top floor. Betty went nuts.

Betty turned mean, and I mean really MEAN. She was given to spells of violence where she would pick a fight with anyone, man or child, at any given moment. She would appear to be perfectly well, happy and smiling and then, in a split second call you names and use language that sailors wouldn’t dare to utter. She finally was forced to seek professional help when she was found sitting in the center of a bunch of her neighborhood kids and teaching them dirty words.

Betty went away for a long time but returned eventually a changed woman. She was her old self. But we learned that it was medication that had brought Betty back and she would neglect to take it frequently. My grandmother used to baby-sit her when she was small and Betty found her to be the one constant in her life. My mother told me that if Betty ever got after me to mention that “Bird was my grandmother.” I lived in fear of her and gave her a wide berth whenever I saw her.

I was standing in the back of the Elmore’s Store one afternoon, buying a pound of bologna. Joe, the owner, cut sandwich meat from large slabs of different meats and cheeses and wrapped it in butcher paper and taped it closed after writing the price on the top in pen. He used to tie it up with string that hung from the ceiling that was from a large spool hidden by a tin box that advertised Colonial Bread. “It’s Good Bread!” it announced from all four sides. As I waited on my bologna, Crazy Betty through the doors open wide and loudly shouted words that I had not been privy to at that time.

Joe and his wife tried to calm her but she was on a roll. I timidly came from the back and she turned her full attention to me. “I know you!” she said loudly. “You are that #@%# son of that old @#$% who used to @#$%!” I was stunned. My mind said that I should stun her with a hit between the eyes with a package of freshly sliced bologna and run for my life but I knew she was scrappy and her long legs would quickly over take my short ones. I had seen her run like the wind after a car one day like a deer dodging oncoming traffic down Highway 71. While my head said fight or flight, my heart remembered the wise words of my dear mother and told her “Betty, you remember Bird Goff? I am her grandson Jackie!” Her facial expressions changed immediately and she started crying. “I loved ole Bird” she sobbed and then grabbed me like a rag doll and squeezed me until my back popped. I hurriedly paid for my bologna and backed out of the store.

Her last of many episodes started when she called on a neighborhood man named Alfred to check her kitchen pipes. She claimed she heard water running. Alfred couldn’t hear anything in the kitchen so she coaxed him to check beneath the house. Alfred went into the crawl space head first. Betty took a run behind the house and came back with a length of a 2x4 stud. She called out to him in a sing/song voice “Alfred….Allllllfrrrrreddddd! Come out here!” Shortly Alfred came out head first from the house. Betty raised the board back and hit him like Tiger Wood on the first tee, driving poor Alfred beneath the house in search of safety. She got on her hands and knees and stuck the board in striking left and right until she got tired. Alfred saw his chance and began backing out of the hole taking good licks across the back and buttocks. When he got out of the crawl space, he and Betty had a true fist fight. They were dancing around the yard like Ali and Sugar Ray. She got him against the chain link fence and it looked like he was done for neighbors say but a good left on her jaw put her out until the police arrived. I miss Huntington sometimes.

Count your blessings and go thank your neighbor. You know, I love living in Lavaca but I have to tell you. It sure is boring to buy bologna at CV’s Family Foods!

Hello Mr. Moon!

2011-03-20T16:02:00.000-05:00

On Saturday night, my wife and my boys and I anxiously awaited the arrival of the moon. The local weatherman called it a “Super Moon.” That meant that the moon was as close as it can get to Earth in its orbit without crashing into the planet and just ruining the afternoon of seven billion people. According to the professionals, the moon was 14% larger than any other time in the past eighteen years. Big deal. After some fast math, I figure I am at least 26% larger than I was eighteen years ago myself.

Armed with a camera and several milkshakes, we traveled east to find a clearing so we could get a clear look at the old man in the moon. We got out past Ursula and found an abandoned driveway out near the home of the late Harold Jones. We got a good look at the old boy and snapped a few shots but the attention span of my sons gave more interest to their milkshakes after one or two minutes of staring into the night sky.

Many moons ago…about forty years to be more exact, my father and I would take our hounds up on the top of Huntington Hill and turn them loose. As we walked through the dark woods, the lack of noise was often deafening. Every step echoed in the quiet night and became downright spooky if you would let your mind take over. In the clear night, you could hear those dogs as they got on the trail of some woodland creature. Dad could tell by their barking if they were chasing a coon or a possum. Barking was barking to me. I was more worried about Bigfoot who was surely sneaking up on me from behind.

On this particular night, I remember how the stars shone brightly through the tree limbs high above our heads and the moon illuminated the woods as if a large night light was guiding our feet. We were just entering a clearing and could see the truck only about a hundred yards ahead. It was just about then when I hear a panther let out a horrible scream. A scream is the only way to describe it. It sounded like a lady was being killed and had yelled at the top of her lungs. The next moment was blurry to me still today but somehow I ended up in the seat of the old green International pickup. I must have looked like a tom-cat with all my hair standing on end and staying there. I had one of those chills like you get when you have the heebie-jeebies. I think I was in shock.

Have you ever smelled a horrible smell but you keep sniffing and smelling it over and over? That is how I explain my panther incident because, for several year, I would drive to that spot and crack my car window and listen for it again. I never heard it until several years later but it wasn’t as scary as the first time. It’s always like that.

My parents woke me from a sound sleep on July 20, 1969. Forcing me to my feet, they pulled me into the dark living room so I could witness the landing on the moon by Neil Armstrong. The old black and white set was showing me history and I remember as he made the first steps onto the dusty planet. We eventually walked into the front lawn in the middle of that night as if we could see them walking and jumping around. My Dad was certain that Neil was just an actor on some Hollywood sound stage and that Nixon was just pocketing the tax dollars himself that was being spent on the space program. I always wanted Neil Armstrong’s auto-graph and wanted to shake his hand. But he doesn’t get to Sebastian County much.

Until that time, I believed the cartoons of Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes, that the moon was make up of Swiss Cheese. I would have eaten the place completely until they could only enjoy a crescent moon for the rest of time. The dark side of the Moon was surely housing literally hundreds of green bug-eyed creature/aliens or so I was told. I would give them a lot of room so they could work and just leave me alone. I had heard of probing that they would do in a person’s ears, nose and other body openings and want nothing to do with it.

I have always been fascinated by the Man in the Moon. You know how I love some good yard sale finds? I would love to have me some Apollo debris from the old planet. Old Apollo bases, a couple of moon vehicles, maybe a golf ball and an aluminum flag would be real conversation starter at the museum.

So welcome Mr. Moon! I hope you enjoyed your visit. I plan to see you in 2029 when you come back. And lastly, if there is a Man in the Moon, where is the missus?

Raymond Maness

2011-03-20T15:30:00.001-05:00

Oren Lyons once said, “Life will go on as long as there is someone to sing, to dance, to tell stories and to listen.” This week, Lavaca said goodbye to one of the greatest of story tellers, Raymond Maness.

I cannot recall the first time I met Raymond. It seems as if he just was in my day-to-day activities in and around Lavaca when I first started teaching here in 1989. For a long time, he was just one of the many older men who I saw at the Post Office or in a diner drinking coffee with other older men. I kept hearing of him through conversations with friends and how great of a story teller he was. I was visiting with some men one day when one of them began telling a great story about Lavaca in the 1940s or so. He was so interesting that I felt as if I were there. It was during that story that I discovered I was in the presence of Raymond Maness.

Sixty-six years ago, Raymond asked his lifelong partner, Lena Pearl, to be his wife. She told me that he was so excited that he lost the marriage license between the Justice of the Peace and her house. When he went back for a second one, the JP asked, “Raymond, who you planning on marrying this time?” Lena Pearl caught her first glimpse of what life was to be like with Raymond.

When he was just a young boy, Raymond was riding his horse on the east side of Lavaca on his way home at (if I recall correctly) Cason Bottoms. A thunderstorm came up quickly and lightning began to cross the darkened sky. Raymond had no where to hide except the old Red Oak Church/School on what is now East Utah Ranch Road. (A bit of background: the Red Oak & School were where all area black families went to church and school in the one room building during this time due to segregation laws. It was unheard of for a white person to be in the building.) Raymond stood inside the doorway holding the reigns in his hands with the door shut. Torrential rains beat the wood structure and lightning gave moments of sight in the darkness of the building. He thought he heard a noise from the front of the church and turned toward it. When the lightning flashed he saw a stooped figure, uncombed white hair hanging down her head that hung past her shoulders. When the lightning flashed again, she was coming up the aisle, hands outstretched toward him and mumbling something incoherent. That was enough for young Raymond. He said that he left the building so fast that he was several hundred yards down the road before he remembered that he was pulling his horse. He jumped on its back and rode quickly home in the rain. He went straight to bed and didn’t tell anyone of his sighting. The following morning, a couple came to the house and asked Raymond’s father if they had seen an elderly woman. She had dementia and was often confused. She had wandered out before the storm and they feared that she may have drowned. Raymond, overhearing the conversation, went to the porch and told them where to find her. Sure enough, there she lay on the front pew. Raymond had some good explaining to do for knowing that.

He told me that he once ran an appliance store in downtown Lavaca. He had rented the old feed store building to house his stock and trade-ins. Someone came in and announced that the storage building was ablaze. Raymond calmly walked across the street to the Citizen’s Bank and asked the bank manager if he could triple his insurance on his stock and building. The manager told him that he sure could but wanted to know why. Raymond asked him to hurry the paper work before the thing burned completely down.

Lena Pearl and Raymond had a monkey as a pet. They would tie it to a stake in the yard and let it run around. While the monkey was not evil, it sure frightened many local residents when it got loose. It slept on the well-house with a nightlight because it was afraid of the dark. A door-to-door saleslady came by one day to try to sell some Blair Home Products to Lena Pearl. She didn’t know about the monkey so when it grabbed her ankle as she climbed on the porch, the lady was sure surprised. Blair Home Product samples and catalogues along with her lovely carrying case were tossed high into the sky as she ran to the safety of her car. The monkey proceeded to scatter it even more. Lena Pearl never did have to worry about that Blair lady again.

Basketball was Raymond’s second love. He was part of the Lavaca Basketball program all of his life. At first on the court, Raymond played on every court in the town history and in the surrounding area. When the old court was being abandoned for the newly constructed WPA Gymnasium in 1941, Raymond almost made the final basket. He would have the honor of making the first one in the new rock facility though. He was a constant fan all of his life, following the team and area playoffs until the last year. Students knew to look for him in the stands at every game.

Raymond did it all. In his lifetime, he flew airplanes for a Tulsa company and would use the then dirt Hickman Bluff Road as a landing and take off strip. He said he would land, eat supper with his parents and then take off back to Tulsa.
He served as Lavaca’s mayor for years, owned a dry cleaning business, appliance business and delivered rural mail. He served his country in WWII and earned the Purple Heart in his eighty-five years. He will never be replaced and never forgotten. I was honored to call him my friend.

Pass the Plate!

2011-03-05T19:13:00.001-06:00

My sweet wife is a cookbook collector. She loves to cook and does a wonderful job at it. There has been many times she has curled up in her recliner, wrapped herself in a warm blanket and read a cookbook like it was a romance novel.

We both had mothers who were very proud of their cooking skills. Myrna, my late mother-in-law, prided herself on cooking for her family. She searched magazines and clipped recipes from newspapers and made volumes of her favorite ones that she would try eventually. We got five large photo albums when she passed away in 1998. She had good ideas. Some were weird and some bizarre.

It was Christmas 1995. Myrna had searched recipes to keep up her tradition of making new an different dishes for the family dinner. Christmas dinner was an occasion at her mothers house. Mammaw, as she was called by my wife and her other grandchildren, demanded that every major holiday was spent around her dining room table. She was almost full-blooded Choctaw, and usually got her way.

Mammaw started cooking two days before Thanksgiving and Christmas. Ham, turkey and dressing and all the trimmings were ready by 9 AM on the day. Problem was that Mammaw was not worried about fat or cholesterol. If it hit her table, it was fried or full of grease. She kept a blue-speckled coffee pot that had belonged to her mother. Bacon grease was treasured. At one Sunday dinner, Mammaw served fried pork chops, fried corn, fried potatoes and fried bread. I could have starred in a Pepto-Bismol commercial that afternoon. Her garlic bread was like no other though. We ate spaghetti and garlic bread there once and I complimented her bread. She said she was about to make more and called me into the kitchen. I watched as she took French bread and lathered both sides with Butter-flavored Crisco Shortening and fried it in an electric skillet. Sure sounds good now though.

This one Christmas in 1995, Myrna had found her recipe that she promised would make our tongue slap our forehead. Complete secrecy was demanded until the grand unveiling. After our turkey had settled, she went into the kitchen and returned, ceremoniously carrying a large platter of carefully arranged fruit. A homemade fruit dip was held in the center of a hollowed pineapple and was surrounded by the fruit chunks, covered in a red dust of some sort and glistening in the lights. Fondue skewers were passed around and we were to stab our choice of pineapple, peach, mango, kiwi, strawberry, grapes and others and dip it in the creamy dip. My wife’s uncle Ronnie, a man of few kind words usually, complimented his sister on the beautiful platter as he shanked piece of a peach and popped it in his mouth. Ronnie yelled and tried to curse. He grabbed his tea and took a large drink just about the time the rest of us were taking our first bite. Myrna’s recipe called for the fruit to be seasoned with chili powder. She had not tasted it and, to be kind, it made for an interesting taste sensation. We harassed her about it until she passed away three years later. And she loved the attention.

My wife inherited her love of cooking from her mother and grandmother. She has a dream to open a restaurant someday that features farm fresh vegetables that the customer chooses from a Farmer’s Market on site and prepare it before them. She even has a building picked out on Rogers Avenue in Fort Smith and keeps photos of the building in our kitchen and at her desk to keep her dream alive. I hope it happens for her someday!

She is in the kitchen right now, making beef and cheese manicotti. This Choctaw Indian girl knows her Italian! Like her dream of a restaurant, I support her manicotti too! I just hope she is not planning on using chili powder.

I HAVE A COLD IN MY NOSE!

2011-02-27T16:31:00.001-06:00

A guy goes to a doctor and says “Doc! I am in an awful mess! There ain’t a place on my body that don’t hurt! I touch my knee, OUCH! I touch my arm, OUCH! I touch my head, OUCH!! Doc! What do you think?” The doctor quietly looks up and says, “I think we need to treat you for a broken finger!”

I have felt like this poor guy before. Seems like the older I get, the more places I find on my body to hurt. I was only three years old when the doctors told my parents that I had rheumatoid arthritis. Throughout the years, I have had about two major onsets of arthritis a year. It is preceded by high fever, a skin rash and aching joints. I have had to relearn how to walk three times in my life. I have medication now to help but when I was a kid there was no relief. At the age of ten, when a spell hit, I worked up to 24 adult aspirin a day. The overdose of aspirin caused scar tissue around my eardrums and now I have limited hearing and a constant ringing in my ears. You can’t win sometimes.

When I was fifteen years old, a specialist told me and my parents to find me a career that I could do from a chair because I wouldn’t be walking by age forty. Well, I am fifty now and still scootin’. I have a deterioration and degeneration in my spine though that cannot be fixed. Slowly over the years, the bone has surrendered to the arthritis until now, it not only limits my mobility, I have nerve problems that send shock waves into my neck and both my legs. But I am still scootin’.

I am thankful for my troubles. Honestly, it has caused me to slow down and appreciate things more. I never got to play football or baseball. I never got to run races much, jump a hurdle or hike over mountain trails. But I have had so much fun watching those who can. What I have got to do is slow down and appreciate the beauty of things: visits with people, listening to their stories and learn compassion to the problems others face. So many are hurting.

I think God used me to listen to others. To be blessed by God with the ability to hear the joys and sorrows of others is a blessed gift indeed. I have had the chance to stop and smell the daisies. And I love it.

A couple of weeks ago, my son Jacob broke an ankle as he played football with friends. He had to have surgery to repair it and he is still recovering after having eight titanium screws and a plate placed on the bone and finished up with sixteen staples. His twin brother, Joshua, will have surgery on the first day of Spring Break to repair torn cartilage in his left knee from playing football for the Lavaca Arrows. I have their two brothers wrapped in shrink wrap and strapped to chairs so they will not get hurt, at least until these two have healed.

Like everyone else I know, we have had the cold and flu that is going around. I am currently surviving my second round. I talk through my nose more than the lady reporter on the Channel 5 morning news. My students have really taken much advantage of my cracking and lost voice. I am having to resort to a whistle and kindness of close kids to call for quiet.

Several years ago, my middle boy was in trouble at daycare. He had had a cold and his young pronunciation wasn’t that great to start with. The lady in charge was upset because he had been using a dirty word when talking to other children and had to be placed in time out. After listening carefully, we found that he was telling them about a Pokemon character from television and game cards. The characters name was “Ash”. The worker felt horrible and apologized to him profusely.

So many of you have had the colds and flu that have been going around. I have gone through boxes and boxes of Kleenex and bottles of GermEx trying to keep my students well. We get ahead of it for a second and then some kid will sneeze and the class will just about line up to see the school nurse.

A lady complained to a trusted friend, “Martha, I have silent gas! Every where I go, I have silent gas. In the elevator, silent gas. At church, silent gas. Martha, I am even having silent gas right now!” “Betty,” she replied, “What you need is a new battery for your hearing aid!”

I am a lot like Betty. But not the gas part. I cannot hear the signal blinker on my car. I have become one of these old men who appear to always be making a left turn. Students will say something like “Mr. James, is it time for the bell?” and I will hear “Mr. James, Tim has fallen into a well!” What well? We don’t even have a well!

The things I hear are sometimes more entertaining than what is really said. Now I know why some of our elderly sit and snicker. I will be that old man…sitting in front of a muted television and laughing my head off about the comedy of a infomercial. Don’t hurt my old feelings…just laugh along with me, okay?

Calling All Neighbors!

2011-02-20T21:52:00.001-06:00

George Foster and I have been swapping stories for the past couple of weeks about all of the characters I grew up around in Huntington. It seems unreal, now that I am older, to have had such interesting people in my life.

When I was just a few years old, my parents lived on Highway 96 in Hartford. Without air conditioning in our home in those days, doors and windows were usually wide open in the Spring and Summer months. Occasionally, they would lose me as I took advantage of the exits. I was first found across the Highway in the backyard of an elderly neighbor sitting down in the middle of an enclosed chicken pen. Every time from then on, that is where they looked first. My mother got the bright idea to put a dog collar around my waist and chain me up to the clothes line in back. It worked beautifully until another neighbor called the county human services on her and almost took me away. They finally decided it was a pretty ingenious plan and certainly better than me toddling across the highway.

It wasn’t long until construction work dried up nearby and our family packed up and moved to San Pedro, California. We lived in a neighborhood that was just three blocks from the ocean. Our landlord hated grass and had sand on every inch of the yard with sidewalks (painted green) around the house and a white picket fence around the pink house. At three years old, I remember this story a bit differently than my parents, but one morning, a boy and two girls were walking by on the way to school. They opened the gate for me and I took off. When they realized I was gone, my mom called my dad home from work, called my sister‘s for help before they had left for school, and even called our neighbor/landlord to help in the search. As if that weren’t enough, she called the police, fire department and water department too.

I remember the moment I was found. I was playing in the school playground many blocks from my neighborhood. My parents were in their car on the opposite side of the four-way and my mother was leaned out of the car window yelling at me to stop where I was. I remember so vividly as she grabbed me and hugged me hard, my dad looked relieved and our neighbor, who sat in the middle of the backseat, stared at me in disgust. I got such a whipping! The police asked me how I got so far from home and I replied that I walked. Turns out, I had crossed two roads that were three lanes..each way. I told them that the cars just stopped when I wanted to go across. I tell you, I can remember looking into the front grills of those cars even now. We moved back to Huntington not long after that.

Years later, our neighbor set fire to her house and burned ours down too. After rebuilding on the same lot, a small old strange man named Curtis moved a small trailer on the spot of the old home next door. He was simple at best. He reminded me of Freddy Kruger from the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. He had no teeth, and wore Big Smith overalls that were too large every day. He always wore work boots and an old baseball cap. One Spring, he plowed up a section of his backyard where he wanted to make a garden. He was tired of paying for tobacco, so he decided to plant cigarettes so he could grown his own. He worked for two days and planted two rows of Pall Mall Reds in a perfectly straight row. Of course, nothing sprouted and he blamed me and the neighborhood kids for stealing his plants. He was petrified of our two Irish Setters, Sonny and Cher. Alas, Sonny died and left Cher widowed.

Cher was overly-friendly and had this low growl when she wanted to ‘talk’ to you. She would wag her tail so much that her entire hind quarters would wobble. One day I saw Curtis running through his yard and into the trailer. Cher walked up around the corner and put her front paws on the front threshold. Curtis tossed an entire loaf of bread over her head into the yard to try to get her to go. She watched the bread and turned back to talk to Curtis. Then he tossed a tall stack of bologna slices toward the bread. That got Cher’s attention and when she turned he slammed the door shut. We didn’t see him outside for several days.

When the city would have a street dance, old Curtis would enjoy a few fruits of the vine and be there until the last person left. I have never seen anyone dance like Curtis did. If you have ever watched Ernest T. Bass on ‘Andy Griffith,’ you will have some idea of what I am talking about.

I love Lavaca but in all my years here, I have never ever had neighbors like this guy. While that is good, it is also kind of sad because we were never ever bored.

WOULD SOMEBODY BE MY VALENTINE?

2011-02-13T23:54:00.000-06:00

As if the long, snowy winter hasn't been tough enough, Valentine's Day came on Monday to remind those who are dateless that they are truly alone... or are they? All of us have spent at least one Valentine's Day in our past, or will in the future, without a date- no chocolates, no roses, no I Love You's. Everyone can relate. It can be a wonderful and romantic day, but it should never be depressing.

I am not very good at giving gifts on Valentine’s Day. I am never quite sure what a good gift might be. My wife thinks flowers are a waste of hard-earned money because they just die a slow horrible death. Chocolates mess with her perpetual diet. Cards are nice but it is read and then goes into a drawer. It’s a real dilemma.

I have been married for almost twenty-four years and I have learned some things I would like to pass on to you for next year. Here goes: A box of chocolates, clumsily rearranged in an attempt to hide the fact you ate all the caramel ones, is not a good idea. Even if you were thinking of her because you know that gooey ones make her teeth hurt, not smart. Lingerie never looks like it does on the mannequin in the mall. Avoid any food item with the words “diet”, “light”, or “high fiber” on the label. You should never write poetry to express your feelings, especially if it starts out “There once was a girl from Nantucket.”

It is never a good idea to buy her anything you pick up from a gas station. I once thought she would like a teddy bear shaped car freshener. Turns out, she doesn’t. And, even if the toaster broke, it is never a good plan to purchase any household appliance, power tool or other item from the harder side of Sears. My wife once told me that WE needed a new Weed Eater. It didn’t matter how hard the box was to wrap she didn‘t seem to care. By WE she meant I needed a Weed Eater. What? Am I psychic? Fitness Center memberships will get you hurt. Gift certificates to a beauty salon will take days of housework to secure forgiveness. Gift certificates as a whole are pretty lousy ideas. Seriously though, IHOP restaurants can be very romantic if you give it a chance.

I went to several Sweetheart Banquets in my younger years. They were always embarrassing and made for a really long night. I went to a Valentine’s Day Dinner on Saturday at the Senior Citizens Center. My wife didn’t want to go so I went alone and sat with several dozen couples ranging from 10 to 95 years old. I was pathetic.

Like most guys, I don’t get subtle hints. I need words, pure and simple, and clearly spoken. Most guys are clueless. I am their leader. I was dating this girl once in college who told me “I had a dream last night that you gave me a gorgeous diamond engagement ring! What do you think that means?” I told her she would find out at dinner that night. We went to a nice restaurant in town, the lights on dim, soft music playing and I gave her a book titled, “The Meaning of Dreams.” She seemed disappointed.

I can be very romantic and thoughtful though. I throw away the paper plates after dinner. I open the door to the dryer for her when she unloads the washer. I have been known to get up out of my recliner to plug and unplug the vacuum as she moves from room to room cleaning. I have taught my boys to lower the toilet seat even though there is one of her and five of us and it makes more sense to teach her to lower it instead of having to worry about four hard-headed guys who are lucky to hit the toilet in the first place…whoa..I think I found a sore spot there. Writing can be therapy they say.

I have been kidding here mostly. Old St. Valentine started the tradition when he was killed in ancient Roman times. History tells us the St. Valentine was in jail for quite a long time. During that time, he became very good friends with the jailers daughter. On the day of his execution, he left a note for the young lady and signed it, “From your Valentine.” I am so glad his name wasn’t Herbert. I can’t imagine walking up to someone I liked and ask “Will you be my Herbert?”

It wasn’t until the 1700s that they started printing and selling the first cut-out Valentine cards. Then some enterprising confectioner decided he would put candy in a heart-shaped box and charge double for it. You’ve got to love the free enterprise system. The Muslim faith doesn’t like Valentine’s Day. They think it is morally wrong. That is another reason to like the holiday.

Never fear. I have been sneaky this year in buying a present for my bride. I bought a big box of chocolates in the big red box but I put all of our son’s names on the card. I bought a mushy card that starts out “To Mom” and had them all sign it. She knew the boys didn’t buy it but couldn’t say she didn’t like it because it would hurt their feelings. I am sneaky like that.

So I hope you are planning already for the next chance to show your sweetheart that you love them….so let me be the first to say “Happy Herbert Day!”

Snow? Pooie!

2011-02-07T17:10:00.000-06:00

Okay. Enough is enough. I like snow but only on television and a Currier & Ives calendar photo. But that is it. If you are praying for snow, I wish you would stop. We have had so many missed school days this year that we will probably be celebrating the Fourth of July in the hallways. The school kids get spring fever just about the beginning of March. It is very hard to teach them after that and keep their attention. I don’t want to think about going after June 1st.

When I was at University of Central Arkansas in the early 1980s, a large snow fell on Conway Arkansas. My friends and I made the most of it. Skip, our fearless leader, had a car that he cared nothing about. He drove his car down the abandoned four-lane streets and my friends sledded by rope on top of trash can lids. (Of course, I never did any of this!) The sleds were weaving from one side to the other and everyone was having a wonderful time until one of the guys took out the mailbox of the university president. Skip came to a stop and two of the other sledding kids went beneath his car.

Shelley and I lived across from the University in an old house on Donaghey Street in Conway in 1987. She was finishing her last year of college and I was teaching at St. Joseph Catholic School. The house was an old two-story that had been turned into a four-plex apartment. Beneath our apartment lived two Vietnamese boys who spoke no English that I knew of. Across the hall from them lived an extremely large black man. His apartment always smelled of some horrible unexplainable odor. After a run-in with the local law officers, it was found that he was a drug dealer and was cooking it for profit. They had to completely gut his apartment to the 2x4 studs. That scares me now. Across the staircase from us lived a beautiful young lady. She rarely left her apartment. She had many male visitors that would come over to visit for an hour or so all hours of the day or night. She suspiciously moved when the policemen were arresting and searching the lower apartment. Hummmm?

It was in March and the daffodils were in full bloom. Tulips had stuck their heads up and bordered the entrance sign of the university. A weird cold snap hit suddenly and, during the night, almost six inches of beautiful powdery snow fell. The tulips stood proudly with a cap of snow about three inches on top of each of them. It was as beautiful as it was strange. The town went to a standstill. Shelley and I joined another couple and went out walking across the campus. Cold and damp, we decided to go back to our apartment to make some hot cocoa and warm up. The front yard of our apartment was like a fluffy blanket of pure, undisturbed white. The three of them were walking in front of me and I had a great idea. I told them to watch as I did the ‘Nestea Plunge’ in the snow and create a snow angel. The ‘Nestea Plunge’ is from an old commercial where a person would take a sip of delicious refreshing Nestea and then, as they drank from the glass, they would fall backwards into a big swimming pool or the ocean. I was going to show off and do it in snow. Shelley said not to but I didn’t listen. I spread out my arms to each side and fell perfectly back into the snow. What I didn’t think of was that the snow was a perfect powder, not a bit of wet to it. When I fell backwards, the snow quickly blew out from under me and I hit the nice hard and frozen ground beneath it. I experienced the first of two concussions in my life. My head slammed hard against the ground and I nearly blacked out. I couldn’t move my neck for several days. Shelley put this in the “I TOLD YOU SO” file. She brings it out when I get some crazy ideas occasionally.

I am older now and, instead of falling on purpose, I try not to fall at all. Usually I am successful but I have had several close calls. Just this week, I stood up from my recliner in the living room. Unknown to me, my son Caleb had stretched the power cord to a laptop computer across the narrow path between his mothers chair and a foot stool. The cord went perfectly between both of my big toes and I stumbled. I tried as hard as I could to keep my balance but ended up sprawled across not only the foot stool but the unsuspecting lap of my wife and youngest son Noah. Then she asked me the silliest question, “What do you think you are doing?” I replied, “Sliding into second base.” Here’s your sign.

So please, stop praying for more snow. I know that the stupid Yankee groundhog saw no shadow last week and it supposedly means an early Spring. I wonder if a Southern possum can tell the changing seasons? Somebody check into that! It might just put Lavaca on the map!

Goodbye, My Friend

2011-02-05T15:38:00.000-06:00

I sat in the second pew on Friday in the First Baptist Church of Lavaca, silently sobbing at the loss of my good friend Woody Green. Several hundred of his family and friends surrounded me but I felt alone in my grief. While it is true that I am an outgoing person, I am very careful of whom I get really close to. I have lost so many friends in my life to death: my parents, grandparents, in-laws, all my aunts and uncles, most of my cousins, a sister and even a son. And now Woody.

The funeral service was wonderful, and I imagine that Woody would have been very pleased although he would have been very uncomfortable at the fuss we were making over him. There were four eulogists, Pastor Tony Buchanan, Rev. Danny Green, Woody’s nephew, Paige Tate Niblett, Woody’s niece, Paige’s husband Rev. Chris Niblett. Each of their eulogies and their accounts of personal details in the life of Woody was moving. Woody’s son-in-law sang two songs beautifully and without error. I sat an watched his wonderful wife, children and grandchildren as their world came to a stop.

The altar was filled with flowers of all imagination. Sprays of silk and real flowers surrounded the magnificent copper coffin that would hold my friend until the trumpet sounds.

While it was sad, two things were very true and apparent. One was that though we grieve, we really don’t grieve in manner of those who have no hope (1 Thess. 4:13) “…we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.” The understanding that we would see Woody again seemed unmistakable. The hope was real. And it was encouraging.

Secondly, it was very clear that the funeral was not just a time to share the burden of grief, but it was a celebration of the life of a man who had truly lived a life worth celebrating. He gave his utmost to His Father, His Savior, Their people, and Their work. He was good to his neighbor and good to a stranger. The world had been better for his presence and is lesser for his absence.

I cannot tell you exactly when I met Woody Green. His children were in Lavaca Schools where I was teaching. I had his son Davin in class. But it seems that I have never NOT known Woody. He had that ability that made you believe that you were the greatest of friends even though you had just met. You were never uncomfortable. Never ill-at-ease. Woody and I got to be great friends when I began researching local history for my lessons. All fingers pointed to Woody when I would ask questions of local citizens. If he didn’t know the answer, he knew somebody who did.

He and I would get in the old brown truck and drive near and far, visiting old friends or looking in an old cemetery. He would call and tell me he was coming to pick me up and, before I knew it, we were driving the old water meter route in Fort Smith that he knew so well. He would stop for ice cream at Glenn Headley’s Drug Store in Barling and make me get a cone, even though I am allergic to milk.

We hit museums in Fort Smith, Spiro, Huntington and Hartford. We visited Indian mounds and Veteran’s gravesites. Woody and I would just sit and visit for hours sitting in the quiet museum or around his breakfast counter in his home.

He was of Cherokee descent very proud of his Indian heritage. His bloodline was traced back to a distant grandfather named Aaron Brock, also known as Chief Red Bird. Woody wanted his Indian card, proof of his Indian blood but not for anything it would get him…just so he could prove it. I am also Cherokee but, like Woody, not card carrying. We would tease that we would leave the Indians alone if they would just give us a block of free Indian cheese. It was a huge joke between us. Woody and Judy have given me a five-pound block of cheese for the past two years at Christmas. When he was very ill and filled with medication for the pain, Woody told his brother that I had told the Indians that I was not an Indian but was a Mexican instead. In doing so, Woody was so aggravated that I had to return the millions of dollars that they had given to me. If only. But what a memory.

For the past three months I have had to watch Woody slip away. Filled with hope and promise, we prayed for a miracle. But God had other plans. I selfishly wept at the loss of my good friend on Friday because I will never again have a friend as good as Woody Green.

That’s not junk! It’s History!

2011-01-24T09:13:00.003-06:00

You know, I love my life! I believe that I have found my perfect calling. My future is much as it has been in the past: junk. Now, before you set your mind to thinking trash, my junk I mean quality historical pieces of treasure that most eyes can’t appreciate.

In 2004, Woody Green handed me the keys to his museum. It was like I had come home. A building with tables of old photos and artifacts lay before me. Angels sang. Time stood still. I think I started to cry because of his generosity. Finally, after years of harassment and open humiliation, another person on this planet understood. Like a boat lost on the seas, I had discovered a welcomed harbor.

I am a local history nut. There is so much history in this old town; it would fill a shelf in the Smithsonian. Woody started the collection (that would become a museum) for a display at the annual Lavaca Alumni Reunion. Local friends answered his plea for memorabilia dealing with the school and the graduating classes. I first saw his collection when it was housed in the old Agriculture building. It consisted of six tables with curling photos of past decades of young school children who were now celebrating a reunion of 50+ years along with a few artifacts perfect for starting conversation. A leaking roof at the school forced Woody to pack his collection until Mayor Lloyd Farrar offered the old Dayton Brewer Drug Store building that the City of Lavaca had just purchased on Main Street.

Since that time, the museum has taken the name of the Military Road Museum. The six original tables have now become surrounded by photographs and artifacts spanning the history of this area since the early 1800s. Besides some very important artifacts of great historical value, there are some items that are not so important historically but bring great stories of 190 years of local history.

As you enter the building, you will find yourself overwhelmed at the number of things we have that cover the place from floor to ceiling. Photos of every graduating class at Lavaca Schools since 1915 to 1974 fill the walls. Frames filled with original class photos of elementary classes border the area. Vintage trophies, diplomas, jersey’s, basketballs, and school desks are almost overwhelming. A basketball goal from the first dirt court on Main Street, the original down marker made for Lavaca’s first football team, and ever a crown for one of the earliest Miss Lavaca contestants bring floods of memories to mind.

The pride and joy of the Military Road Museum is the Military Room. The back room that once housed Dayton Brewer’s store and post office hold dozens of dozens of photos from Lavaca’s Military servicemen and women. They represent every major war since we have been a town. Veteran’s of the Civil War to the latest enlisted men and women fighting in the Middle East line the walls. Vintage uniforms, shirts, and foot lockers remind newer generations of the hardships of war. Trunks still filled with their WWII-era contents are like peeking into the past.

And in the spirit of the men, who played checkers with the likes of Ben Graham years ago, sit alongside the men who come regularly to sit, drink free coffee, and share a memory from so long ago. The memories flood the minds of all who sit and shared a story or two….or more.

The museum has opened its doors and has spread out to the Lavaca City Park where we have expanded the Veteran’s Memorial from one stone to five. Names of Lavaca soldiers from the Civil War to local troubles have been placed with room for others. Recently, a roadside memorial has been erected honoring our town and its rich history as a site of the Five Civilized Tribes of American Indians journey down our Main Street in the Trail of Tears during the 1820-1840 time period. The five flags of those tribes surround a roadside marker erected by the Arkansas Historical Society and Trail of Tears Association. Now we are working on proving that we were on the route of the Butterfield Trail Route, an east/west stagecoach stop during the middle of the 1800s.

The Military Road Museum offers tours and lectures to students from local classrooms, to area teachers for educational in-service hours and, if all goes well, be a stop on a coming ‘historic drive & museum tour’ between Paris and the new Marshall’s Museum in Fort Smith.

But we are out of room. So many local people have given and continue to give artifacts and treasures to the museum every week. We have had to ask many to keep them until we can get a bigger location. Our building is filled with so much to take anyone immediately back to our area’s yesterday. But we really need a future. Maybe something will happen soon to make that a reality.

So much has happened since Woody Green set up several tables in an abandoned and leaking classroom many years ago. His legacy, among so many others things, is that through his efforts to entertain a few classmates during a small class reunion, he has, in fact, secured his name in the great and interesting history of Lavaca and the surrounding area. As we continue the museum in the future, looking toward expanding and growing even further, we will always be thankful and mindful that is was Woody Green who started it all.

NEW YEAR'S DAY DINNER TRADITIONS!

2011-01-21T22:15:00.006-06:00

I spent some time on Saturday preparing a meal of black-eyed peas, fried hog jowls, fried potatoes and cornbread. For fifty years, I have dined on the same menu on the same day. Tradition and superstition demands that we eat these southern favorites to insure a healthy, rich and prosperous new year. We will see.

I cannot eat cabbage. Trust me, I have tried. Cabbage consumption guarantees us a year of great wealth. That explains so much. I wonder if they would understand if, on my latest doctor’s bill, I printed “Sorry I haven’t paid this overdue bill. It’s because I don’t eat cabbage.” I know they would wipe out the debt immediately.

But the truth is that I am already rich, and I don’t have to eat cabbage. I am not bragging but my bank balance is a six-figure number. The problem is that all six numbers are zeros. But being rich doesn’t necessarily mean that I have a lot of cash, stocks, bonds or structured settlement. Yet I am rich beyond the imagination of millions of people on this planet.

Tonight I sit here with my belly stuffed with peas, pork and potatoes. I read that almost 26% of the children right here in Arkansas will go to bed hungry tonight. Even my two dogs didn’t go to bed hungry. My cabinets are filled with groceries. It may not be stuff I like or even enjoy, but it is food. My Dad used to say, “If you get hungry enough, you will eat it!” Honestly. How hungry was the guy who first tried lamb fries?

It is twenty-seven degrees outside but I am sitting here in shorts and a cotton shirt, yet warm and toasty. But tonight, 20,000 people in Arkansas are homeless and many are living in the elements. My parents first home was little more than a shack. My father used to tease that, when he was young during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, it would take four grown men to hold a coon hide over a key hole. My childhood home was a great step up for them but I can remember waking up with ice formed on the inside of my window above my head. My mattress tonight may be worn and lumpy but it sure feels wonderful after a long day at work.

I have five people in my living room who are the world to me, but some are alone and, if they died tonight, it could be days before anyone noticed that they were missing. There was a story not long ago about a woman was found in her home some ten years after her death, still sitting in her chair. Her utilities where turned off years ago but no one followed up on it or reported her missing.

Some of you will say that, if some of these people would get a job and stop buying cigarettes, they would have money to spend on food. I agree. But tell that to a child who is trying to sleep with hunger pangs. It is agreed that, if not for a hot school lunch, some of our local children would not see a meal at all that day. No one in Arkansas…in Lavaca especially, should live like this. A guy I grew up with got smart-mouthed at his supper table one night. He didn’t like what his mom had prepared and wouldn’t eat. His dad remarked, “You’d better lick that plate clean! Don’t you know that there are hungry children in Africa that would love to have that food?” He quickly smarted back, “Get me a big envelope and I will mail it to them!” He eventually ate the food but only after the swelling went down so he could see the table again.

Seriously, what can we do? When you are making supper tomorrow, consider making an extra helping or two. Take it to a shut-in or elderly neighbor and tell them that you accidentally cooked too much and didn’t want it to go to waste. When you find a special on macaroni or a can of corn, consider picking up a couple of extra cans and donate it to our local food pantry. You may hate cheap tuna, but it may mean the world to a hungry kid. When you are mowing your yard, what about making a path or two in your elderly or shut-in neighbors yard? Such a little gesture.

People should be responsible for themselves but sometimes they just need a helping hand. Who knows? Someday, that someone could be you? So here is to you! May 2011 be the first year of the many greatest years of your life! May your bellies be filled! May your weary head find a place of comfort! May you always find a little jingle in your pocket…even if you didn’t let a piece of cabbage or a black-eyed pea cross your lips!

HOW COLD WAS IT?

2011-01-21T22:12:00.001-06:00

Maybe it’s because I am getting older, but I have been freezing this past week! On an ordinary day, I am almost able to bake bread in my pockets but this week has been totally the opposite.

Last Sunday, as the snow started falling, I began teasing my friends about the coming blizzard. I jokingly said that I had challenged my wife to a snowflake fight. I threatened to go outside and build a snowman by stacking three snowflakes together. I even harassed the superintendent of our school system to call school off before the snow drifts enclosed our homes and teased about a milk and bread run at the local CV’s Grocery.

Then the snow really fell. Frozen mist covered everything and was followed by a freezing rain. I began chilling physically as I watched truck driving sideways down the highway in front of our house from the once warm safety of my living room window. I was relieved when our schools were quickly closed for the following day before anyone got hurt trying to get out in the stuff.

But my wife wasn’t so lucky. Her work didn’t cancel but postponed the opening of business until 10:00 AM. Being the sweetheart that I am, I braved the elements and warmed up the family van for her to take on the journey to the west side of Fort Smith. I knew I was in trouble as I opened the garage door. It was more than freezing. I carefully made my way to the cars, trying not to do a competitive one and one-half flip that would rival Greg Louganis (FYI: Kids, he was an Olympic diver).

Now, I know this wasn’t a snowstorm of Biblical proportions. I have been in deeper snows. I have braved sub-zero temperatures before. But somehow, this blast of Arctic air had me and had me but good! I reminded myself that I had used the snow scraper on the gas grill on the back deck in the summer to remove some stubborn barbeque chicken, so I searched the garage for a suitable alternative. Hammers and chisels seemed to be overkill and the metal from an old porcelain coffee kettle seemed too abrasive. I finally found the weapon of choice in an 18-inch wooden school ruler. I shuffled to the van and began my delicate task. Like an experienced barber with a straight razor, I carefully shaved the snow and thin ice from the warming windshield. Old Louie Green would have approved of my method as I rivaled any seasoned shaver and cleaned the windows on all four sides of the van.

But I was freezing. I feared that the huge puffs of fog coming out of my nostrils would send the wrong signal and lead to tensions between two Indian villages. My teeth chattered so hard I feared I would soon spit fillings. Had it not been for my bleary eyes, my blue, frozen fingers would have never known that they were attempting to open the back door. After several failed attempts, I realized that the ruler was still in my hand. I considered trying to open it with my mouth for a moment but quickly decided against it. The scene of the boy in the movie “The Christmas Story” with his tongue stuck to a metal pole filled my mind. I could never explain that to my family or neighbors. So, I put the opposite end of the ruler under my arm and yanked my hand free and was finally able to turn the knob.

Back in the warmth of our central heating system, my mind wandered back to when, years earlier, my family didn’t have more than one heater in the entire house. My mind recalled the nights that my mother would pile quilt after quilt on me so I wouldn’t freeze in the middle of the night. I could see my breath as I tried to inhale and exhale beneath the crushing covers. In those days, you found your comfortable spot before you covered up because the weight of the quilts made flopping around all but impossible. It was nothing to wake in the morning with rolling icicles hanging over the sill from the window beside my bed.

In one house my parents had, the thin wooden walls were covered with newspapers which were soaked in a flour and water mixture and then pasted over the boards for insulation. Bits of old cloth and scrap paper were poked into cracks and holes before the paper mache mixture. Windows were covered with thin layers of plastic to keep the wind out as much as possible.

Suddenly, I felt a lot warmer as I sat quietly in my chair, and I counted my many blessings. Then, one of my sons asked if I was feeling okay. “Sure, I do!” I responded. “Then why do you have a ruler under your arm?” I didn’t even try to explai

To Have and To Hold

2011-01-14T22:13:00.000-06:00

Ahhh, weddings! I went to a beautiful wedding this past weekend! The eldest daughter of a beloved co-worker and the love of her life walked down the aisle as two and came back as one. The wedding went off without a hitch. YouTube will just have to find something else to feature this week. A man once said “Love is like a long sweet dream and marriage is an alarm clock.” He was a wise man.

My parents, as I told you earlier, were married by a Justice of the Peace. My romantic father arrived for their weekly date with a completed marriage license, drove to a local JP and proceeded to lie about her age. My grandmother welcomed the news with a fully loaded, double-barrel shotgun. Tradition runs deep in my family. My great-grandfather and great-grandmother married quickly just moments before her father arrived with a shotgun on horseback.

The first time I went to a wedding was when my cousin and his bride asked me to be the little ring bearer in the 1960s. There I was in my little black suit with the wedding rings on a little pillow. Problem was that I kept knocking off the rings. After the entire wedding party tired of crawling around on the floor looking for the rings, the best man used one of his handy knots that they teach you in the Navy. Unfortunately, I was six and had never been in the Navy. After three failed attempts to free the rings in the ceremony, I handed the preacher the entire pillow with rings securely attached. Their marriage lasted less than ten years. I guess they didn’t know how to tie the knot either.

My youngest sister and her beloved went to the Leflore County Courthouse to be married in 1965. I wasn’t invited. Either that or I was ‘over-medicated’ by my sister so I would be quiet in the ceremony. They were married by a judge, but she should have asked for a jury. The guy was a good kid but a lousy husband. Eleven months and a little girl later, the same judge ‘paroled’ her from her life sentence.

After graduating from high school, a classmate asked me to be his best man. I told him I was honored but wondered by he didn’t ask his best friend. “You ARE my best friend, Jack!” he replied. I felt like dirt. Blame it on the 1970s, but I was forced to wear a baby blue tuxedo with black trim and ruffled shirt. I looked like a host in a restaurant that you would never go to on purpose. I was more nervous than the groom. I knew the bride. I was dating her sister. As we stepped into the sanctuary from the pastor’s study behind the altar, I made the turn the center aisle behind the groom, my new best friend. The shoulder pads on my polyester blue tux was attacked by the enormous explosion of blue and white gladiolas. I slapped at it like a bee swarm but one persistent posey just invented Velcro on my sleeve. As we wrestled, the plant was about to spill so I turned to steady it. I completely twisted my back. I stood in my spot at the altar like an arthritic Quasimodo during the entire ceremony. At one point during a prayer, I had almost talked myself into lying in the first pew while their eyes were closed. It could have been a game like “Where’s Waldo?” for the guests in the back. The good reverend yelled an ‘Amen!’ before I could make the full decision and the crowd looked up as I demonstrated the first position of a Limbo lesson. I did to one thing correctly though. I refused to tie the wedding rings on a little pillow. I may have been fifteen years older but I still didn’t know sailor knots. Why do they call you the best man at a wedding but you aren’t marrying him? Sounds like you have set yourself up for failure, if you ask me. The two of them split the sheets before my back completely healed.

Fast forward some seven years. My reputation hadn’t reached our neighbors to the West so when I asked Shelley to marry me, she mistakenly said yes. Our wedding was beautiful. We were married on the front lawn at the home of my sister and her husband near the banks of a large pond. The weather was perfect. A light breeze in the June afternoon made it neither too warm nor cool. Our families were there proudly greeting the many people who came to see if Shelley would actually show up. I wondered why money was changing hands as I saw her step onto the front porch and walk down the stairs toward me. I lost $5 myself. She was radiant. Honestly, I had never experienced complete tunnel-vision like that before and would not again until the first born of my children were handed to me in a hospital delivery room.

My other sister’s first ex-husband (who hadn’t lost his license yet) did the honor of being over the proceedings. While divorce granted several men a reprieve from my sister’s, they remained as loved ones as a part of our rehabilitation program. He was so nervous too. He got half way through the ceremony and forgot his lines. I had to quietly whisper to him a reminder his place and assured him that he was doing a wonderful job. Besides being nervous, I had caught a summer cold two days earlier. Determined that I wouldn’t ruin our wedding, I took twice the prescribed dosage of three different decongestants. By the time the organist could hit the first note, my mouth and throat was so dry I was spitting dust. In almost all of our wedding photos, the tip of my tongue is out like a new puppy.

Seven houses, five sons and twenty-three years later, I still get that tunnel vision that I had back then. Trying to express my overwhelming love recently, I told her that I was a complete fool when I married her. She said she was in love then and didn’t realize that until it was too late. No she really didn’t. So the secret to a long and happy marriage is still a secret. But it helps to have a good sense of humor and a very short memory!

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

2011-01-01T01:37:00.000-06:00

2011. Seriously, where did 2010 go? I really believe that I have purchased a defective calendar. This calendar above my desk is marked in months and days when, clearly, 2010 went by in minutes and seconds.

New Year's resolutions are a waste of time. Or are they? Every year I put together a mental list detailing my sins and plans to overcome them in 12 short months. But by February or March, the battle is lost. I promise that this year will be different, at least for me. No more broken promises to myself or to you. Today I resolve to do the following four things for an entire year:

1. DIET: A) I resolve to limit my caffeine intake. I have to learn that Coca-Cola is NOT one of the major food groups. In my 50 years on the planet, I have consumed so many Cokes that the company headquarters in Atlanta send me a simultaneous Thank You and Christmas card. B) I will limit myself to three meals a day instead of the one meal that I eat now which begins upon waking and commences at bedtime. C) I will no longer look upon a buffet as a personal challenge. D) I will realize that I don’t have to compete with the guy on ‘Man Vs. Food’ and eat bags of chips as I watch him eat the country’s largest burrito.

2. EXERCISE: A) I resolve to admit to myself that walking to the mailbox at the end of my driveway equals a lap around the track. On a similar note, I will no longer fool myself that walking instead of driving to the order window at R & A’s will cancel the calories of my impending sweet potato fries. C) I will not drive my car around the block on the way home so the mailbox is on my side of the car. D) I will reward my good behavior with a treat on all major holidays including, but not limited to, Groundhog’s Day, Take Your Daughter to Work Day or the celebration of Leif Eriksson Day. Vikings should be remembered with chocolate.

3. READ & LEARN: A) I resolve to pick up a book and actually read it cover-to-cover. I can cut time from my busy hours on Ebay to read a novel, a biography or even the back of the cereal box. B) I will purchase a new Holy Bible that is in more understandable language. It is hard to get through all those thee, thy and begats. I have learned that there is some seriously good stuff in the Good Book if only I would take more time to read and listen to it. C) I will learn something new everyday. Why, just today I learned that your wife does not take personal criticism to heart well. I will also learn how to duck more quickly.

4. WRITING: A) Writing is like therapy. I'm delusional enough to believe that somewhere, somebody really gives a fig about what I have to say on any given subject. Whether it is the next great American novel, a researched piece that will change history as we know it, a note scribbled with a quick hand on a Post-It or a limerick on a bathroom wall, I will write daily. B) I draw the line at tweeting though. I'm pretty sure no one gives two hoots in Hannah’s handbag about a blow-by-blow accounting of my day and if they do, it's time to get a life.

So, do you believe that I can keep these up? I believe that I can, but a few family and friends will be placing bets on how soon these will all go the way of the 8-Track tape.
I'll need help after January 1, but that is still three days away and I still have several cans of Coke. No sense in wasting it.

O Christmas Tree....

2010-12-21T15:30:00.001-06:00

I read a story this week about a town that, for the first time in a very long time, placed a Christmas tree in their town square. Simple ornaments and strings of lights hung on it and everyone was invited to attend. Only a small crowd of citizens came to witness the lighting. The tree was in the holy city of Jerusalem. That shocked me that so few cared in the most holy city to Protestant Christians. Jerusalem, you’ll remember, is a divided city and home to three major religions: Christianity, Catholicism (which is also Christian) and Muslim or Islam. No wonder they didn’t come out.

When I was growing up, getting the Christmas tree was almost as fun as getting presents. For months, my father and I would travel the lower county in search of the perfect tree. No one had fake trees then. It was unheard of until my trailblazing Grandma Goff bought an aluminum tree one year. She got it from the Western Auto store complete with a light that shined through a rotating disk of colored plastic to change the color of the tree. It was scandalous. The northern transplants (who had infiltrated our community while we weren’t watching) spoke of how the Scottish Pine was the most perfect tree for decorating. We didn’t want any Yankee advice and we certainly didn’t want some stinking tree from Europe! One year, a neighbor took their advice and got a pine tree. Trouble was that there were no Scottish pines around so they cut a small-sized, regular Loblolly Pine. It looked sick. Kind of like the one on the cartoon “It’s Christmas Charlie Brown.“ Their pride wouldn’t let them admit such a mistake but it wasn’t repeated the next year.

We looked for a cedar tree with a full compliment of limbs that were filled with sticky, sweet smelling evergreens. It could be over six feet in height but no taller since our ceilings were somewhat shy of eight feet tall. My dad was 6’1 so, while he stood by the tree in the fields, I would eyeball the height to make sure it was perfect. But we needed to find two or even three perfect trees just in case someone else had scoped out the one we wanted.

Above Huntington Hill was a good place to find trees. Forested and untouched areas that harbored the coons and deer during their hunting seasons also held an abundance of suitable trees. During hunting trips, we could make a mental note of a good specimen and come back later for further inspection. A tree that looked perfect by carbide light would look totally different in the light of day.

Doe’s Hill, a favorite hunting spot west of Mansfield, was also good. The property was owned by Theodore McKown, a good friend to three generations of the James family. We never considered a tree growing in a fence row. First of all, they were perfect for holding up barbed wire fencing and, second, they were always torn up by the time you could free them from the wire. The old coal strip pits were good places too!

The day would come and my dad and I would sharpen the axe and load up the two man saw. We drove to the spot of our first tree choice and, if it was still there, get to work on falling it. My dad always insisted that we cut the tree as close to the ground as possible. That way, he reasoned, hunters or wildlife or even livestock wouldn’t ruin a leg on the stump in the dark.

By the time we arrived home with our perfect tree, my mother would have the spot in front of the living room window cleared. She would have unpacked the old red metal tree holder and had it waiting on the porch for us. After her careful inspection, the tree was brought in and we began trimming it with dozens of mismatched ornaments that she had collected over the years. Some were handed down to her from her mother but most were yard sale or store bought.

The tree would stay there until after Christmas and until we feared the dry needles and limbs would burst into flames from the gas heater nearby. It was a sad sight to see an abandoned Christmas tree in the ditches of local dirt country roads. With the needles gone with remnants of silver tinsel still clung to the broken branches: an undignified ending to something that meant so much.

Dad would remind me every year about Christmas morning when he was a child. With nine kids and a father who mined coal and farmed, presents were indeed a luxury. My father would reminisce about how each of them would rise on Christmas morning to find a paper sack in their chairs in the living room or at their places at the family table. Each sack would hold an orange, an apple, walnuts, pecans and peanuts. Oranges were hard to come by then. Some years, Grandma James would have a dress or a shirt made from cloth flour sacks she had saved throughout the year or homemade handkerchiefs for each child.

We still put fruit and nuts in our kids stockings to commemorate the family tradition and I hope they will do the same for their kids and tell them why. As for me, I wish I had that aluminum tree. It would look beautiful in the window of the museum window in the dark block of downtown Lavaca at night!

Merry Christmas from all of the James’! May God bless you all!

Going through Life Backwards

2010-12-13T17:20:00.001-06:00

My son Caleb is studying so he can take his driving test. In just a few short weeks, another James boy will be turned loose on the streets of Lavaca. I took his twin brothers out to teach them how to drive when they were younger. I quickly found out that I do not have the nerves needed to be a quality driving instructor. Their mom had to finish the job. I was feeling pretty down about her getting to do that and how I was missing this great bonding time until, one day after a lengthy lesson, one of my boys came in and announced, “Dad, you don’t yell nearly as loud as mom does.” I felt redeemed.

In the early 1960s, my sister Donna was wanting to learn how to drive. The boy she was dating offered to teach her. His car was an early 1950s light green Chevy. It was a hunk of junk. The radio wouldn’t work and that was the best part of the car.

One Sunday afternoon, Donna was sitting at home, her hair in curlers and preparing for a new week of school when her boyfriend decided it was time to drive. They took to the streets of Hartford with her behind the wheel. They were gone for a long time. Hours later, the sheriff arrived with my sister. Seems they had been driving near West Hartford when Donna had over adjusted and had ran off of the edge of a freshly graveled road. The car flipped, rolled and came to rest in a cow pasture. When Donna was coming to her senses, she said she couldn’t see anything but white light and could hear angels singing beautifully in the distance. When her wits caught up with her, she realized that she was lying flat on her back in the field looking at the daytime sky. The music of angels turned out to be the broken radio which was now playing very loudly. Her boyfriend was almost crushed beneath the vehicle but was fine. Every one of her curlers were missing from her hair. Amazing.

My mom learned to drive after she met and married my father in 1947. My dad’s old truck was from the early 1930s was his pride and joy. I have a beautiful photo of him standing by it with his coon dog on a fender, his rifles and bamboo cane poles leaning against the front bumper. That photo is a snapshot of his life. Problem was that by 1947, it was worn out. The transmission was bad and only one gear worked…reverse. So Dad drove everywhere backwards. He taught my mom how to drive it backwards too. The seat was gone and my father had built a wooden bench to sit on and secured it to the floor. My dads sisters and brothers told me that it was pretty comical watching my mother drive across the valley near Jamesfork. She didn’t know any different so it never dawned on her how strange it was. My Aunt Bessie told me that she and mom went to Mansfield one day in the old truck. Mom had her head looking out the back glass while keeping her feet on the accelerator and clutch in the front. Bessie said that she would drive up to 45 MPH down the dirt road of Highway 96 just as smooth as if she were driving a limo. She recalled how they were visiting while driving with mom turned and Bessie sitting on the bench, staring out the front window across the hood and into the front window of a car behind them! When the old truck finally gave up, Mom had to learn to drive all over again looking out the front of the car.

I remember wanting to learn to drive. I would mock my parents actions as they drove to town..memorizing the movements of the wheel and pedals. I could make hand signals at a very early age. I thought it would be pretty cool to get to drive alone. But, when I got that license, I became a gopher. Go for this or that. I had to go to the store at their every whim. Running to get dog or chicken feed became no problem for them. I was now a licensed driver.

I was taught how to drive on the old dirt roads above Huntington hill on the back roads to Mansfield and Dayton. It was the perfect place to drive my parents bright pink Rambler…far from the teasing of my friends and classmates. Plus, no one could hear my parents screaming on the lonely wilderness roads.

MOM THE COOK; DAD, NOT SO MUCH!

2010-12-01T10:05:00.001-06:00

I am going to tell you all something that I have been hiding from most of you. It is an addiction that I have had since my teen-age years. I have quit a hundred times but always break down and start again. I see others doing this at parties, at restaurants and even in their own homes. The don’t seem to have the problem that I have. I hope that I can start the healing process by telling you, the public, this now. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a stress eater. There. I said it.
When the world is closing in on me and the tension builds, I turn to food. I have friends who find comfort in drink at this moment of their lives. I have had friends who have sought help for drug addiction. Some have turned to cigarettes. I turn to potato chips.
I show no partiality to a bag of chips over another. Racism has no place in the world of fried spuds. Plain. BBQ. I don’t care. Just pass the bag and don’t expect it back. And, when the contents are all gone, I have a stupid ritual. I fold the bag lengthwise three times and tie it into a knot. It’s a sickness, I know. Don’t judge me.
My mother was one of those cooks that could take a cup of flour and anything in the refrigerator or shelves and make Thanksgiving dinner. While I never saw her do wonders with loaves and little fishes, I am sure that she could have at least fed a couple of dozen people.
She learned to cook at the age of four years old. Her parents and two older brothers were sharecroppers. They traveled all of Arkansas at that time working any field or orchard that would let them. They even spent one year living on a houseboat on the Mississippi River near Marion, Arkansas as they picked peaches for a season. My Grandpa Goff built her a stool so she could reach the stovetop, taught her how to add the right amount of wood to the fire and Grandma Goff taught her to make gravy, how to fry chicken and potatoes. When they came in from the fields or wherever, Mom had supper cooked. When her sister was born in 1938, my mother was a babysitter as well.
When they moved home to the Arkoal Community in South Sebastian County, the family was still very poor. When my grandparents would leave, my uncles would quickly kill one of the chickens, clean it and bury the feathers in the field behind the house. Then they would make my mom fry it for the two boys to eat before their parents got home. Grandpa just knew that someone or something was stealing the chickens. One time my mother couldn’t find the lard and found a bottle of Castor Oil instead. She fried the chicken and the brothers ate the whole bird. After two days of fighting over the outhouse, they never had her cook another chicken.
Mom worked at the Kate and Dolly Café on Highway 71 in Mansfield at the age of 14 years. It was 1944 and she cook for the truck drivers, lumber men and the soldiers as they stopped for lunch. It was nothing, she said, to have 30 men waiting on a burger. During one rush, she hurriedly slung hamburgers for a large group of men. They grabbed their food and left and the only customer left was a man in a suit who sat quietly in a booth in the corner. He smiled at mom and she smiled back, gave a loud sigh and wiped the sweat from her face with her apron. As she turned, she noticed that there was one hamburger patty burning on the grill. She turned back to the customer and looked carefully to find she had given him a burger with only bread, lettuce, onion and tomato…no meat. She was mortified but when he left the café, he left her a dollar tip…almost as much as she would make that day.
I will never forget when she called me and my father into the living room one day after supper. She had an announcement to make, she said. Her words still ring in my ears. “I have cooked since I was four years old. I have raised two brothers, a sister, a husband, three kids and now grandkids. Gentlemen, I resign. I am no longer cooking. From now on, it’s toast in the morning and sandwiches in the evening. If you want something more, buy it or cook it yourselves.” We sat motionless after she turned and left. My brain was still trying to comprehend what my ears were telling it when my Dad winked and said, “This won’t last long!“ He was horribly wrong.
A year or so later, my Mother had to have an operation to remove a cyst from her wrist. She was hospitalized for two days. That afternoon after we came home alone after her surgery, Dad decided to cook. I was sitting in the living room watching television when he stuck his head around the corner and asked if I liked Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup. I said sure and he returned to his clanging of pots and pans. A second later he asked if I liked Campbell’s Tomato Soup. I said sure and he returned a second later and asked if I liked cabbage. I said “Not at all!” He frowned at me and said, “If you get hungry enough you will eat it!” About a half hour later, he called me to the table. Sitting in the center of the table was a large Dutch oven with a mixture of chicken noodle and tomato soup with quart jar of cabbage in it that Mom had previously canned. It looked horrible and smelled worse. When I refused to eat it and it made him mad and he pouted as he ladled himself up a heaping bowl of the toxic waste. I turned and called the little diner downtown and ordered myself a cheeseburger. As I returned to the living room I saw him wincing. He threw down his spoon and dumped his bowlful back into the pot. He asked me to get back on the phone and order him a burger too. Later that night he got mad again when the dogs wouldn’t eat it either.
Food is my drug. My alcohol. My nicotine. My bingo. My addiction. When I am happy, I celebrate at a good restaurant. When I am sad, I mope with chips. When I mourn, I turn to casseroles. But even after saying all this, I would be so terribly happy if any of the local Lavaca restaurants had a buffet!!

I LOVE A PARADE!

2010-12-01T10:02:00.000-06:00

The sin of gluttony was well represented in our home today at Thanksgiving dinner. Shelley, who is a tremendously talented cook in the first place, made her first attempt at pies. I am testifying that she was extremely successful! All made from scratch, I sampled her coconut cream, chocolate and pecan pies. Just to be certain, I sampled again. Yes. She rocked.

But even though the dishes are barely off of the table and I am full at a tick, I sit here in anticipation of December 3. That is the day that the Lavaca Area Chamber of Commerce holds their annual Chili Supper at the City Park by City Hall. A free bowl of chili, cornbread, dessert and drink will be yours if you just attend. The season is officially kicked off with the park lighting ceremony that night as well!

The annual Christmas parade will be coming down Lavaca’s Main Street the next morning! It is the most wonderful time of the year! A helium-filled Bullwinkle balloon won’t be floating by or elaborate floats of roses, or posey’s of any kind, for that matter, will not grace our streets. But it is amazing just the same. Be there.

I can’t help but recall when (many moons ago) I was preparing for my last day as a senior at good old Mansfield High School. It was May of 1978. We prepared to make the traditional parade of seniors through the streets of Mansfield and Huntington. Every senior who could get a car drove it that day.

When the forty-seven of us finished our practice for the graduation ceremonies, we were dismissed for the last time as students. Whooping and hollering, we ran to the parking lots to get our cars in line. My 1962 Dodge Dart was gassed up and ready. I was to take the final position in the caravan of cars with some of our local football heroes (who should have played with their helmets on) took the lead. I borrowed an Arkansas flag from our auditorium and stuck it through my driver’s side window, holding it in place with my left foot and held it against the wind with my left hand. I had a fancy machine that I had purchased at Kmart perhaps a year earlier that played five different horn tunes. I chose the “Dixie” song from the Old South anthem. It was also the very popular horn sound of the General Lee on “The Dukes of Hazzard,” which was at its height at that time.

Somewhere near forty cars and trucks pulled out in line and proceeded to travel almost every main street in Mansfield. People came outside from their homes and businesses to yell and wave and to join in our celebration. I hadn’t gotten two blocks from the school when my Kmart horn stopped working. All those years of anticipation died when that switch broke. I took some comfort that everyone had a horn, but no one had a borrowed USA flag from our school auditorium.

After hitting all the streets in Mansfield, the leaders pulled us onto Highway 71 and began traveling north on the two mile journey to Huntington. When we rounded the first corner, I noticed that oncoming cars had pulled off of the road and onto the shoulder of the pavement. What respect! As we passed, they stared at us with eyes and mouths open wide. Strange, but we all waved and yelled like a lunatic as we passed by. As the second long turn straightened out to the prairie more cars were pulled over. I looked ahead admiring the long line of cars and my friends when I thought how the line looked like there were many more vehicles than we had started with. As the leader began to slowly go up the foot of Huntington hill, my heart sank. Leading our celebration line was a shiny white hearse followed by a stretch limousine. Our bright football boys had pulled out just behind a funeral procession! No wonder the cars had pulled over to the shoulder! And there we were: forty car loads of kids, honking and yelling just behind the mourning family. And there I was, last in line, yelling like a Ubangi witch doctor and waving the US flag! They must have thought we were sure glad to see him go! A funeral should be a celebration of a persons life, but this was ridiculous! I was mortified.

Several of us pulled out of the line at the top of the hill. We were really bothered by what had happened, even if it wasn’t a mistake on our part. I decided just to go home and lay low. No one would ever find out it was me, I reasoned. Seriously, there had to be dozens of 1962 Dodge Darts that were painted lime green with a paint brush around town.

I am not sure that my football classmates didn’t follow the poor hearse all the way to the cemetery.

If you come to the Lavaca parade, I promise that you won’t see me following the floats, yelling from my bright yellow Aztek! I will be respectfully standing at the announcement table in front of the Museum. Please drop by and say hello!

Thanksgiving on the Ground

2010-11-23T22:56:00.000-06:00

Thanksgiving was an idea that the Pilgrims brought to the new world from England. They celebrated with a feast offering thanks to God for a good growing season by having a banquet featuring the foods that they had grown. The first “thanksgiving” in 1621 wasn’t for a good harvest at all. It was a celebration of survival and the debt they owed to the Wamapanoag Indians for their help. These Native Americans, one of which was a guy named Squanto, taught the poor pilgrims how to fish and how to farm. Without their help, the settlers would have starved and, without the settlers success, you and I could be enjoying a spot of hot tea at 2 PM this afternoon

Ninety Indians, not counting old Squanto joined the pilgrims for that first celebration. They didn’t come empty handed either. The brought along four large, cleaned deer (venison) as their part of the meal. One can assume that four deer for 90 Indians and countless settlers made having seconds an impossibility. Four women settlers and two young girls did all of the cooking. I wonder who did the dishes? Along with the venison, they served plenty of local fowl, fish and many varieties of local vegetables. History doesn’t record anything about jellied cranberry sauce or Grandma’s suspicious seven-layer-salad.

In my family, Thanksgiving was a major holiday. No one in our clan would dare to entertain the thought of not spending the day at my parents house in Huntington. Mom cooked for days. Pies and cakes were made the day before and lined the top of the long oak buffet. The ham was cooked in the evening so the turkey would cook all night long. Cornbread dressing was made in two pans. One had all of the regular ingredients and included the giblets, turkey neck, chopped onions and celery. The other was made especially for me and my nephew Joe. We despised all of those things but loved dressing. Ours was made with onion powder and celery salt. Now I am not so picky.

The dining table would be turned sideways and Dad and I would bring another table in to push up next to the first. A couple of long white bed sheets would act as table cloths and the dishes covered every inch of the surface. At about 10 AM, family would start coming in. Local neighbors and lonely widowers were invited earlier and would come and bring a covered dish of their own to enjoy the day with us. At one dinner one year, my brother-in-law was found sitting quietly behind the front door. He came from a small family and exclaimed when questioned that “any stranger could come off of the street, eat a full meal, dessert and visit for an hour and leave and not one of you would know he was ever here.” He was probably right.

After the big meal, printed tablecloths were draped over the bowls of food as the women scraped dirty dishes and formed an assembly line in front of the sink to begin washing them. The men sat in the living room with their belts loosened and perhaps their pants unbuttoned as they visited about hunting, sports or current events. Kids napped or played in the yard and teenagers sat on the porch or on the tailgates of trucks and visited if the weather permitted.

It wasn’t long before the desserts were cut and we ate more than our stomachs could hold. The people would begin to leave slowly and go to their own homes to rest. Later in the afternoon, many of the family would wander back in and fill their plates for another go at the leftovers. The bowls would empty and, as they were removed, the need of the extra table was no more. It would be returned to the carport to wait for another occasion.

Our family is all gone now. It’s just me, Shelley and the boys. My parents, aunts and uncles and many cousins have passed away. Those who remain have scattered to the wind and relocated as their own children and grandchildren demand new traditions and attention. We now have our own traditional dinner and invite my one unmarried sister-in-law. The traditions of my younger years still remain, just scaled down tremendously. Most of our vegetables we cook come from cans and heat quickly in the microwave. The rolls are bought in bread sacks and our pies and cakes are bought from Sam’s Club. It bothers me that this will be my kids memories when they have their own families.

I thought we would be smart two years ago and go to a restaurant to have Thanksgiving. We traveled to Alma to let Cracker Barrel do the cooking. When we arrived at 10:30, we were greeted by a hundred other smart people who had the same idea. It was almost noon before we were seated and, if it hadn’t been for my sister-in-law, we might still be waiting on a table. We found out that day that she suffers from low blood sugar. We found that out when she passed out hugging a fake Coca-Cola machine. She was revived by the cool bottles of soda as they caressed her face on the way to the hardwood floors. Say what you will, but strangers can really be thoughtful when you are resting on their Sunday shoes. And the hostess at the Cracker Barrel was very helpful in finding us a perfect table quickly.

Needless to say, we have eaten at home since that lovely day. But, sometimes, perfect strangers will come up and ask how she is doing. Well, at least I thought it was nice.

Throw Momma from the Train

2010-11-17T21:18:00.000-06:00

What is it about guys and trains? I swear that I can tell you everything about a train but I have never been on one! I haven’t touched an airplane either. There is something keeping me from mass transit. Maybe it’s because I don’t go anywhere. There are few flights to Wal-mart from Lavaca.

In researching Lavaca history, I found were William McKinley made a stop in Lavaca in 1900 as he campaigned for President of the United States. My father told me a story about seeing President Franklin D. Roosevelt as he campaigned from the back of a train car as it stopped in Fort Smith in 1940. He never knew that FDR was handicapped until after his death. Reporters treated the president’s better back then.

My Uncle Joe James told me interesting stories about his ‘hobo’ days in the 1930s. He would jump onto a moving train and ride as long and as far as he could on his way to California where he hoped to get work. My father used to ride the train to San Pedro, California….but he paid for a ticket.

It was in the early 1950s when my mother and my two very young sisters made the journey to San Pedro to be with my dad. She had never been on a train until the day they boarded one at Hartford and headed west. She told me that the train ride was a bit rougher than expected and the swaying side to side was pretty nauseating. There was no food on the train and no dining car. The train was much like a bus in that it stopped occasionally for the passengers to get out and go to a nearby diner or roadside café.

There was a middle-aged black woman in the train car and my mother was the only one who visited with her. She made polite conversation and talked about family and traveling. Mom noticed that the lady had never gotten off of the train to get food since she had boarded. The lady finally told my mother that the reason was that the diners wouldn’t wait on her because she was black. If they would wait on her, she had to go last. Mom was smart enough to pack a few sandwiches and snacks for the girls but those quickly ran out. She made a deal with the lady that if she would watch my sisters, my mother would buy her food when the train stopped. At the next stop, all the passengers but the black lady and my sisters got off of the train. The sign announced “No Coloreds” and but mom was in the rear of the long line. As she was getting her food, the train began to pull away. She turned in a panic to see both of the girls screaming with their wet faces pressed against the window. She got on board before the train had pulled away. The next time she got off, she fought her way to the front of the line!

It was in the middle of the night when the train pulled into extreme south Texas. The conductor came through and announced that they would be traveling on a different route and passing into Old Mexico. Not only would they be going through Mexico, but the tracks would have to go through a prison yard. They were told to pull the shades and that the lights would be out. Of course, Mom peeked out of the window to see dozens of armed men carrying large clubs climbing up and hanging onto the side of the train. Slowly the train began to move forward and the quiet was deafening. The slow clicking of the train made a rhythm like a heart beat, she said. Sudden noises broke the silence and running steps were heard on the top of the train car. Scuffling feet and yelling voices were followed by screams and gun fire. It didn’t take long to get through the prison, but it seemed like forever and scared her to death for herself and for her daughters.

I lied. I just remembered! I HAVE been on a train. It was in the Little Rock Zoo. My wife and I, along with our four sons boarded the small train for a wonderful little ride that would let our tired feet rest and get some much needed cool breeze in the summer heat. We had just traveled through the long tunnel and had made the small incline when it happened…we derailed! Now, the engineer was cordial but I know he was pretty ticked that four large people and two kids had proved too much for his little train to handle. He was more than snippy when he told us to walk back to the station on the other side of the zoo.

Jesse James may have died in the 1880s, I can tell you now that it wasn’t the last time the James Gang caused terror on the rails!

WATER! WATER!

2010-11-01T22:21:00.000-05:00

Water is a pretty precious commodity on this planet. Did you know that 71% of the planet is covered by water? Did you also know that only 1% of the world’s water is freshwater that is suitable for drinking?

My family drinks bottled water. I drink a lot of water but I like tap water with lots of ice. I still drink from a metal water dipper that hangs by our kitchen sink. It saves all kinds of dirty glasses in the dishwasher. My family has always had a dipper by the sink as long as I can remember.

We didn’t have the luxury of running water when I was growing up. We had a well in our backyard that supplied all of our fresh water needs for years. The water came from flooded underground coal mines and was as sweet as sugar water. All you could see of the old well was the clay pipe that came up from the ground. A couple of tall cedar posts held up a small roof made of scrap lumber and old sheet iron. Every part of the wood was covered with white wash, homemade paint. Dad would go out back and lower the old well bucket down using an old iron pulley on a long length of chain. It was tough pulling the full bucket back up from the deep cavern.

The water was released in a white enamel pail with a red, painted rim, a wire handle and a worn, red wooden hand grip. The rest of the water filled a large aluminum pitcher with a tall handle. The water pail was taken to the kitchen and covered with a thin board over a thin piece of a worn dish towel. The old metal dipper rested on top of the board. When you got a drink, you got only as much as you wanted to drink because you couldn’t be wasteful and didn’t dare pour it back. Leftover water went into a different pan to be used for other purposes. Water from the old pail was used for cooking and needed refilled several times a day.

There was an old weather worn table that stood by the door on our back porch. The aluminum pitcher filled with the cool well water sat near a white enamel wash basin. There was always a towel hanging on the edge of the table or on a nail beside a mirror, surrounded by an old homemade frame that hung crookedly on a stretch of old bailing wire. There is no telling how old that mirror was with the silver so thin and poor on it from years of being in the elements. It was here that we washed our hands and faces after a long day of playing in the yards and alleyways around our houses before we could come in to supper.

In the summer time, we bathed on that back porch in an old galvanized wash tub. A trellis filled with morning glories and roses filled the wooden slats of the tall trellis and an Elderberry bush helped us to keep or dignity from neighbors. In the winter time, we would heat water in the kitchen and take a quick bath in the same wash tub that sat by the stove for warmth. When we didn’t want to go to the trouble of filling the tub, we would warm enough water to fill the basin and wash with a ‘worsh rag’ as we called it.

When Huntington hit the big time, they drilled a city well near Highway 71 coming into town. We could take five-gallon buckets and pails to the city well and simply turn on the faucet. I remember sitting in a long line of our friends and neighbors as we took turns filling our containers.

When city water pipes were eventually laid in the neighborhood, we gave up the basins and pitchers, the water bucket and wash tub. But we never gave up the dipper. And it was even harder to give up the old outhouse. It felt as if there was just something very wrong with using the bathroom in the house.