$40

Reason is a human activity. God is infinite and I cannot describe that. So I do not personify God by declaring that he has a “reason” for doing anything. I will be judged by what is in my heart and how I treat circumstances, people, and God. It’s not important why stuff happens. What you do next is important. 

Howeverrrrr, something happened to me that screams things DO happen for a reason. It didn’t change my beliefs but it’s in my heart to this day and reminds me that God is everything. 

In October of 1987, our family was in a pit. All our lives we had prepared well for the possibility of such a pit so it was more about despair than desperation. Nonetheless it was a world-on-your-shoulders-scared-shitless feeling. We were both unemployed, both seriously ill, living in the back room of her parents’ house, one child, eight months pregnant, and stone cold broke. The first bright spot on the way back up was a part time job at Sears. It paid above minimum wage, twenty hours a week, and a night shift that would not interfere with substitute teaching. Thank you, Jesus. 

Within two weeks we moved into an apartment and a few weeks after that decided it was time to tithe something. However, I was only getting ten days of substitute teaching a month and had nothing to cut out. I said to Sandy let’s pick a small goal and have faith. Having a carrot on the stick, even a small carrot, would at least get something started. We came up with $40 a month. That was only 4% of our income but we had to start somewhere. I prayed about it all day. 

That night at the shift change there it was on my desk, a pink slip, an actual pink slip telling me to report to the conference room. There were several new hires all holding the same slip. I was so disappointed, not frantic or stressed, just very disappointed. This was the perfect second job and everything had been looking up. The manager said, “Sears is raising its minimum wage. No one else is affected by the increase so you are strictly forbidden to tell co-workers. Your pay is being raised fifty cents an hour.” The four function school teacher calculator in my head from all that grade averaging told me the monthly increase before he even finished his sentence. It was…..wait for it……$40.

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. - James Thurber

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. - unknown

Consider what each soil will bear, and what each refuses. - Virgil

The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes. - Galileo Galilei

A cloudy day is no match for a sunny disposition. - William Arthur Ward

Coming Home

Some sailors in the squadron ran their households while on sea duty as if they were only gone for the weekend….writing a check for the light bill from 12,000 miles away. The rest of the family men had to put certain things out of our mind or it would greatly affect our performance and safety. We prepared our affairs, possessions, and loved ones before we left and then just let them go. Wives essentially became single mothers. We thought about them in a sort of helpless manner avoiding the details about what might be happening back home. This was a time when wives had a great need to express those details. Coming home after six or nine months was a shock to our system....an abrupt end to this emotional and perceptual freeze-frame. Our wives had different hairstyles, our babies turned toddlers strained to remember this man, someone else had repaired our cars, and the furniture was out of place. Yet we were very much the same person in the same place we had been before we left. We had counted the days, remembering what we were returning to, only to find that life had pressed on while our memories were stuck in a time capsule….and for a while….a little homesick even after we returned.

The worst things: To be in bed and sleep not, to want for someone who comes not, to try to please and please not. - Egyptian Proverb

One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night. - Margaret Mead, anthropologist (1901-1978)

Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes. - Jim Carrey

Oh yes we did.

They were the most lovable bunch of kids ever. I taught all three grade levels my year at Boerne Middle School (’83-’84). My one sixth grade class and homeroom was a crazy mix, including ESL students, all boys, that didn’t know a lick of English. They were the children of undocumented migrant workers whom ranchers paid $2 for a 12 hour day. Made my blood boil. They were tiny, the darkest brown, sat in the back, hunched over, and only looked sideways to giggle at each other. The rules in their world were to never look white people in the face and never speak to them. Just do what they’re told. When I spoke to them they just looked down until I went away. Not much science learning. Sometimes they giggled too much. My room buddy, Sam Champion, had a real human skull on our desk that was wired back together and hinged at the jaw and cranium. His name was Charlie or Carlos. When the giggling got to be too much I put my hand in the back of Carlos like a puppet and flapped his jaw while saying in an old witch’s voice, “¡Callete!” That was all it took to restore order in the back row for about a week. You couldn’t help but love those little boys. 

The rest of the crew was a real mix of personalities. There was a boy suffering from a liver or kidney problem that made his skin yellow. He had the most positive attitude about everything. Very infectious. The attitude I mean. I don’t remember his name but he needs one for the sake of this story. We’ll call him Louie. My favorite student was a tall girl named Rachel Reibe. She was so confident, talkative and lived to debate anything with me. Even when she ran her ship aground, she just backed it up and stoked the furnaces. She was friendly and sincere. I loved seeing her come through the door. She gave me a sort-of-selfie of us at field day. Rare.

Field day at the end of the year was all about sporting events and much to my chagrin, the teams were the homerooms. Ugh. I would say we spent the day getting clobbered but it was worse than that as I tried to explain how the games were played and who was supposed to do what. Not only was English a barrier for many, they had never played or even heard of most of the games. The rest of the team didn’t have much more experience and even less physical coordination. We had fun but the final game was the biggest challenge. 

It was supposed to be softball but I am fairly certain we had to use a hard baseball. We were up to bat first. No one got any lumber on the ball so we just put kids on base and let them run with the pitch. There would be two or three kids on a single base holding hands or they would take off running, for no reason, in the wrong direction. So we switched them to the field. Not a single kid had brought a glove. Most of them didn't own one. I didn’t want any of them missing out so I spread their skinny little butts all over the field like oleo on toast. If the other team hit a grounder, our players just watched the ball roll between them. If it came toward them they scootched away. I finally convinced them to pick the ball up but instead of throwing it they ran to their best friend and handed it to them. By now the score was a zillion to nothing in the bottom of the first. I was ready to pack it in when Louie begged me to let him play. I had not put him on the field because he was four feet tall and seriously fragile. I would not be the teacher that got Louie hit in the face with a line drive. I said OK, but just one out. The batter was right handed so I put Louie on the opposite side between first and second. Jiminy, why didn’t I put him in the outfield? The batter hit a screaming one hop grounder right at Louie’s face. Then something happened we never could have imagined. He whipped off his oversized baseball hat, fielded the ball with it, and threw it to first base. The batter never took a step. I shouted, “We won! We won!” and the team took up the chant. They tried to pick up Louie to carry him off which scared me way more than the ground ball. As we ran away to tell the rest of the school I could hear our opponent exclaiming, “Hey! We were winning 28 to nothing!”. But no….we won. Oh yes we did.

What I am looking for is a blessing not in disguise. - Jerome K. Jerome

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else. - Margaret Mead

When it's nice, do it twice.

I had no idea that whole chickens are often sold with the organs returned to the cavity….gizzards, livers, whatever. We were grilling for Sandy’s family on the back porch. I flipped the raw gizzards to our dog, Nova. Isn’t that what you do with them?  You can’t pay me to eat organ meat. I burned everything else. I have never been any good with grills. It was the first and probably the last time we had the family cookout at our place. But we had fun as usual.

Sandy, Butch, and I went somewhere in the brown Ford pick-up. Butch rode shotgun and Nova sat on the floorboard with his head on Sandy’s lap. Just as we were driving under the freeway, Nova calmly refunded his lunch. Sandy was wearing shorts and her legs were closed so it made this slimy pool of up-chuck with a team of gizzards doing the back stroke. She screamed and Butch joined her. I said, “Cover your face and don’t open your legs! We are right in front of a gas station with a water hose.” Butch was out the window up to his armpits gasping for air. In the twenty seconds it took me to turn in and jump out, Nova slurped up every gizzard and every drop of barf with his tongue darting in and out of her legs. All she could do was howl with her hands over her face. I think Nova was starting to howl with her. I looked in the cab but it was over. There was Sandy all clean and shiny with dog lick, Butch still moaning, and Nova wagging his tail.

Dogs are a hoot.

Never have more children than you have car windows. - Erma Bombeck

Everything is funny, as long as it's happening to somebody else. - Will Rogers

Say What?

In forty nine years as a student and teacher I never said a cuss word in the classroom. It’s simple, really….I never heard a single curse word out of my parents, Boy Scout leaders, Methodist leaders, community center leaders, teachers, or neighborhood parents. As for children back then, things like cussing was reserved for the locker room when adults were not looking. Even as Mr. Collie cussed at Dan or Joe in my absence he addressed me with extreme civility. The enlisted Navy required every third word to be the F word but by then I could turn it on or off at will. To this day I’ve never heard Sandy or the girls cuss even once.

So, what happened that spring day in 1982? It was not a cuss word but it was vulgar. It was a doozie. I took a class of ninth graders down to the empty cafeteria for a demonstration on the wide open linoleum floor. In those days there were very few designated learning disabilities, a term itself not widely used. This class was in the catch all category of “slow learners”. I was squatting down attempting to demonstrate and simplify a science principle when I looked up and only the girls were watching. The boys’ heads were on swivels...like dogs at the park that had to sniff everything. We had discussed that problem so many times that I just sighed and said, “We’re going back upstairs. You guys are just jackin’ off!” My gut clinched when I heard the words come out of my mouth. Their eyes were as big as saucers as they snapped to attention. In the pregnant pause that followed I could feel my heartbeat in my ears. Then from the back row came a timid male voice saying, “Mr. DeBord, I’m not jacking off.” Did not see that one coming. It took everything I had not to crack up as I replied, “Then pay attention!” And they did.

I’m sure the reason they shaped up was because that was probably the kind of last chance language they heard at home when they had gone too far. As for that anonymous ninth grader....well....I have to assume that somewhere in his past he was caught red handed.

Weather forecast for tonight: dark. - George Carlin

What did he say?

At Trinity Methodist, my smallish to medium sized church over in Leon Valley, we decided to raise money for a wireless head set. Our sanctuary was partly in the round so the pastor, if he ditched the pulpit, had to look several directions and swing the microphone cord like a nightclub act. It frequently tangled with his cumbersome robe. The excited lay leaders raised the funds, installed it and everyone was there on the morning of its unveiling. The pastor beamed at the congregation, opened his mouth, and blared at top volume "You mother fuckers get out of my sight! You stupid assholes are always showing up on Sunday! Just go home!" He stood there motionless, mouth agape, his face frozen in a terrified expression. Children covered their mouths, adults sucked air, and the elderly tapped their hearing aids loudly asking, "What did he say?” The blue spew continued while lay leaders leapt to their feet and clamored to shut the system off. The men had chosen the wrong channel and a trucker on Interstate 10 was abusing the airwaves on his citizen band. Apparently, he was not a fan of Sunday drivers. I am positive I will never again witness such perfect timing. Old Nick wins one for the visiting team.

I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die. - unknown

Teaching the Refugees

An excerpt from "Teaching the Refugees" - They were educated and possessed unrivaled work ethics. Every convenience store on Gessner was clerked by a South Vietnamese doctor, lawyer, or professor now working for minimum wage. Everyone in the family worked. Within a few years they bought the businesses. Many in the community hated them because of the war or their success or just because. 

I was given refugee children without a hint of support from the district. Our two languages may as well have been Martian and Venusian. Their names were short with few letters but still I could not sound them out properly. Many of them were Roman Catholic so I looked for Biblical names that we could both pronounce. On their first day, I pointed at the student and slowly tried simple names with a “what do you think?” expression after each. The first name they repeated with a smile became their new unofficial moniker. I passed these on to their other teachers which made it easier to discuss their progress. They never spoke a word, raised a hand, caused a problem, or asked for help. The only thing they did was make perfect 100% grades on everything! They carried small paperback Vietnamese-English dictionaries and furiously turned the pages as I spoke or wrote on the board. Most of the class paid little attention to the situation but I had one student who was the poster child for all the ignorance and prejudice toward the refugees. He made comments using a vernacular that could only have come from his parents at the dinner table. He never worked at learning so on test days his regret turned to resentment and anger. During the silence of one exam, he pointed at “Ruth” and bellowed, “Why do they get to look up words during a test? That’s not fair.” I walked over to his desk with heavy copies of a dictionary and science textbook, dropped them onto his table with a thump and said, “Knock yourself out. Nothing would thrill me more than to see you look up an answer.”

I doubt we taught them as much as they taught us. I learned that as happy as they were to be alive and have this opportunity, this was not what they dreamed of. They had been violently displaced and silently mourned the life and loved ones they had lost.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. - Albert Einstein

Oh Dark Thirty

Veterans Day should be more significant to me. The nation has turned troop recognition into a past time but for me it seems strangely impersonal. We were treated differently when I served. We rarely wore our uniforms in public. No one here today knew me then. No one knows my rating or in which branch I served. Only one person all day, a student, addressed me as a veteran even though I was wearing a large ribbon with the word on it. No friend or relative, not even my ex-wife who was my partner in service, dropped a note of recognition. And I can’t think of a decent word to say about my VA treatment. All that said, I don't mind. Tracking Soviet nuclear subs is not what I remember the most. What lives with me is how the experience changed my personal life. Some are good (living abroad), some are bad (discovering epilepsy), some are ugly (standing night watch on the suicide ward on Treasure Island), and some are most curious. Concerning the latter, when I get up early for work and leave the house before there is any morning light, a small part of my guts are back at RTC Orlando. I smell something that is not there...the peculiar odor of the metal paint pens used to stencil our clothing, ditty, and sea bags. My head is a bit heavy as if I pulled the middle watch....wandering alone in the cool, dark air without much direction, waiting for eight bells.

So I guess Veterans Day for some is all about serving our country. At various times today I felt that. But when the alarm goes off every morning at "oh dark thirty" it's way more personal.

"Tattoo, Tattoo, lights out in five minutes." - (uncredited voice)

Got Crabs?

Papaw phoned a man called game warden to tell him he was taking his grandson crabbing on the seawall across from Pleasure Island. I asked my dad who Mr. Warden was and he told me, in an irritated voice, that crabbing was illegal this time of year. The man in charge of wild animals was going to break the law and Papaw would fix a speeding ticket for one of the warden’s relatives. I never asked my dad for explanations. 

Papaw and I drove to the low concrete seawall that protected the town of Port Arthur. He brought three round metal hoops with closed nets. We tied a chicken neck to each net and dropped them into the water. It was so easy. Pull up a net, put the hungry crab into the giant cardboard box, drop the net back in, and move to the next. My hands were too tiny to handle the crabs. It was nice to be with someone that did not call me a sissy for not grabbing animals with claws and attitude. In less than an hour the box was full of crabs pulling each other’s legs off. The clicking noise was eerie. 

We took the giant-box-o’crabs to a tiny Chinese cafe on the aging town square. I had never heard of China or Chinese food. My dad rarely took us to eateries so this was all quite mysterious, exotic, and……nasty. It had bare walls, ragged furniture, unrecognizable odors, and a sticky floor. The kitchen was about as appetizing as a janitor’s closet. Papaw spoke with the diminutive owner/chef/chief bottle washer while his enormous wife moved around the kitchen. He was giving him the crabs in exchange for his aid in getting the non-English speaking Chinese to vote for him in the next election. There it was again, that mysterious recurring theme in Papaw’s world. We were putting the bulging, squirming box onto the only table in the room when one of the prisoners escaped to the floor. The wife screamed and leapt onto the table which promptly collapsed flat as a pancake. Crabs ran sideways in every direction. The clickity-click of hundreds of exoskeletal feet and claws was unworldly. The wife was rolling over the crabs, waving her limbs trying to get up, and screaming in that undiscovered tongue. Most of the crabs managed to run under and behind the ancient appliances. We had to move the ice boxes, gas burners, etc. and drag the angry crustaceans out, one by one. If we didn’t, they would die and stink although I doubt anyone could tell. We counted them for the first time as we put them back into the box. There were seventy blue crabs and this was when blue crabs were still a decent size. After a lot of bowing, again something new to me, we left the kitchen and passed through the dining space. The owner came running after us, holding up a crab which was frantically waving it’s legs, and exclaimed with excitement….seventy-one!!!

An optimist is a fellow who believes a housefly is looking for a way to get out. - George Jean Nathan

Stand Out of Their Light

When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: “Only stand out of my light.”

One day my seven year old daughter Roxanne, the namesake of Alexander's Persian wife, came to me with a jar. It was a tiny baby food jar that she had filled with water and a single marble. She asked why the marble looked small on this side of the jar but, when rolled to the other side, it looked larger. I was filled with joy…such a little girl with such a keen eye. Should I attempt a tiny lesson on light and refraction? Too late. Within seconds she was off on another adventure. Someday we will return to the event and celebrate her curiosity. In the meantime, she thinks mostly of dancing and that makes me happy. You never know where a rolling marble will lead them if you stand out of their light.

"If I worked in a big laboratory I would shout "Eureka!" every now and then just to boost morale." - unknown (greeting card)

Buzzards and Mockingbirds

Mrs. Tucker taught 7th grade RWS (reading, writing, and spelling). When I say “taught”, I use the term loosely. She was quite old, drove a beat up shell of a pick-up truck, called us buzzards and towed her books down the hall with a red wagon. Each time the book club took orders she reminded us of her personal ban on "To Kill a Mockingbird.” We were to never ever read that book. We could only guess why. But it showed up on NBC Saturday Night at the Movies and we were beside ourselves. She couldn't stop us! I liked the movie but never figured out her objections. At thirteen, veiled references to sex or race just flew right over my head unnoticed. But in my house I could sense when to let sleeping dogs lie. Asking my parents a question never ended well anyway but queries about this movie would surely produce a calamity.

Mrs. Tucker would empty the wastebasket on her desk and reassemble torn up notes. Anything she did not finish went home in a paper bag. One day a kid threw a wad of paper and she conducted a half hour investigation involving the projectile’s direction, speed, distance, cross winds, and bad seeds to determine who threw it. It was remarkably similar to the courtroom scene in JFK about the magic bullet. Oliver Stone had nothing on Mrs. Tucker. 

She never got out of her seat and always had a half empty six-ounce glass coke bottle on her desk. She wore sunglasses with her elbows on the desk and her head resting in her hands. She told us the sunglasses prevented us from knowing who she was eyeballing. It turns out she was right. But one day the toughest hood in our class, a fellow with two first names, Scott Thomas or Thomas Scott, stood up without raising his hand, sauntered right up to her desk, picked up her coke bottle, hocked up a loogie, spit it into the coke, placed it back on the desk, and casually strolled back to his seat. She was asleep! The class was absolutely breathless. We sat in terror until the end of the period. When the bell rang we stampeded like cattle. It was a miracle we didn’t break bones getting through that door.

Twenty years later, I read the book for the first time and have since read it seven more times.

Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing. - Robert Benchley

Forgive Me

By twenty-one I had rebuilt three dead cars from this yard or that barn but had never owned any of them. I bought this one with my own savings. I did not ask permission so there was no advice from my parents, only grim silence. The old ‘66 Mustang only had the straight six, no a/c, no FM or stereo, had junkyard hubcaps (which Sandy called baby moons), and was on its third paint job, a dark turquoise over coral pink over a mystery factory color. I paid $500 cash to a passing stranger from Utah who took six months to mail me the title. I drove it for a year before we married and a year afterwards, with no registration, no inspection sticker, expired out of state license plates, and no insurance. No one ever found out because it couldn’t go fast enough to warrant a traffic stop. When we sold it, the buyer took his son and I on a test drive where I heard a body part fall off the front end! I turned to look out the back window and there was the chrome running mustang bouncing down the street. I turned back holding my breath. They had not noticed it amongst all the other rattling bits. He gave me $450 and I signed the unregistered title over, not knowing that jumping the taxman would prevent him from registering the title in his name. But, it never came back to me. He probably slipped a $5 bill to the clerk.

The things we did that we pray our own kids never have to. God forgives me because he sees all. He knows I drew the hand called trial and error. It’s not a bad deal but it wears me down because it shortchanges the ones I love. I know, it’s not something to worry about. But I pray my then wife has forgotten a few things and I hope my daughters forgive me for asking if they are taking care of business. They can’t see the map in my mind, the one marking where the all bodies are buried. 

I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said 'do the best you can with these, they will have to do'. And mostly, against all odds, they do. - Anne Lamott

The Barber of DeVille

The small barbershop was right out of Andy Griffith’s Mayberry (think Floyd)…..a red and white striped rotating pole, windows with painted words on them, the smell of talcum and disinfectant, wooden venetian blinds, a mirrored wall, glass containers filled with scissors and combs soaking in bright blue Barbicide, and two old fashioned red and silver barber chairs. When it was my turn, the old man put a fancy upholstered board across the armrests for me to sit on, a paper collar around my neck, and a cloth cape. When he was done he brushed me all over with talcum powder. A large framed print of the dogs playing poker and smoking cigars was the coolest art I had ever seen. The coke “machine” on the floor was an antique even for those days. Inside a metal lidded box, the 6 oz. bottles rested in cold circulating water with their necks trapped by a pair of metal rods that snaked back and forth. You slid a bottle around the track until it got to the end where it would let go for a nickel. The use of vending machines was not allowed in my family. But the best thing about a visit to the barbershop was the luxurious blessed cool air from the window unit. I could have sat in that room all day long. I think some of the old men did just that.

The shop closed a few years later so my mom drove me up Telephone Road and dropped me off with the motor running in the middle of a row of bars, dance halls, and strip joints with names like The Owl Lounge, The Four Aces, Roseland, etc. It sounds sketchy, and it was, but the truth is that it was on the same stretch as The Kolache Shop, Wieners (family clothes), the pony rides, and the Santa Rosa Theater. The crusty parking areas had an odd assortment of decrepit pick-ups, town and country family wagons, and Cadillac Coup de Villes that we would call pimped out in this century. My new barbershop was very dark inside. The walls were paneled with fake wood and hung with stuffed fish….real stuffed fish. The barbers and patrons were thirty-something to forty-ish, listened to country music, smoked, drank beer, and were pretty rough around the edges. The coffee table was piled with two kinds of magazines….fishing and detective stories. Some of them showed photos of murder victims at the scene…think of the photographer played by Jude Law in Road to Perdition. One day, I was astonished to discover a photo of my own maternal Grandfather in one of them! He had been the coroner of Jefferson County several years earlier. In those days it was not a medical job in small towns but one that was filled by whoever owned the local funeral parlor or a station wagon in which to transport the occasional corpse. I always wondered what the family of the coroner thought about that. The most fascinating thing was the shady graphic art on the covers of the pulp fiction magazines. They all had the same theme….women with pinup figures, flowing manes, wearing the tattered remains of clothing, tied to something, and being whipped by Nazis. Whaaaaa? Later in life I realized why it was always Nazis. If you are disgusting enough to print sexually violent images but you don't want the public to burn your door down, blame it on a Nazi. Everyone hated them already. It’s not the publisher’s fault, it’s that dang Nazi on the cover. One day I opened one and there was no story inside about Nazis. Thank goodness but still only a small favor for the woman on the cover.

Overall, I had no objections to that shop but forty years later I said, “Mom, we have to talk about your choice of barbershops.” Her explanation, “I just started driving, it was the first barbershop I came across, and no woman in her right mind would get out of the car on that stretch of Telephone Road.” “Ya think?”

I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing. - Johnny Carson

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. - Mark Twain

K - i - T - i - R - i - K

Kitirik was our after school children’s TV celebrity. The station's call letters were KTRK. They just put an “i” between all the letters. In the late 50's, Kitirik was to make an appearance at our annual Garden Villas Grade School carnival but could not make it. At the last minute my mom volunteered to "be Kitirik". I have practically no memory of it so I don't know if she presented as a stand-in-mom or they tried to pass her off as the real thing. I'm sure she didn't own any black fishnet (shudder). These photos of the two are a decade apart but at approximately the same age. I've said too much already.

To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone. - Reba McEntire

Fat Albert

I was a dude, in it just for the fun, and didn’t ride in anything higher than NIRA sanctions. But one night in Elgin, my very first show, was kinda crazy. A retiring Darrell Royal christened the new arena with a bottle of champagne against my gate, leaving all the glass right in front of my chute. My draw was Fat Albert, named for a character in Bill Cosby’s night club routine. He was ranked 15th in the world which is not uncommon for small shows. World class outfits like the Steiner Ranch have to keep the cash flow steady. My teammates said, “He doesn’t do the normal spinning or rocking. He twists in the middle like you’re wringing out a wet dishrag and he does it with all four hooves off the ground. At the same time he kicks his hind legs backward so it launches you.” I said, “You know you’re describing a house cat, right?” All I remember from those 1.2 seconds was the gate, me face down in the “dirt”, and the clown, a young Leon Coffee, sailing over me like an olympic hurdler. Forty years later, Leon is in multiple rodeo halls of fame. In his profession they should be called balls of fame. All joking aside, we had some life altering injuries and one death. There were no flak jackets, helmets, etc, as there is now. I believe we were idiots. Handsome, charming, and toting a UT degree, but seriously, idiots.

If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough. - Mario Andretti

Hook, Line, and Sinker

Interviews were important. How much resume does anyone have at twenty-one? You need something to set yourself apart from the herd. I decided to apply for the job of refilling vending machines. It was a small vendor with just one contract, the seven acre IBM plant. Fill, clean, and repair broken machines alone in the dark until 3 a.m. I had never seen vending machine innards but I needed work and it wasn't going to cost me anything to try. I reported on time to the owner’s home. He was in a wheel chair wearing nothing but a towel and dripping wet from the shower. The languid interview told me this was a chore he detested. He knew nothing of mechanics which made it difficult to show him that I did. He shelved his decision, I walked outside, looked at the sky in disgust, then looked at my ’69 Cadillac Fleetwood. This will make a dandy prop. Turn the key but not long enough to start the engine. Do it again. Raise the hood and get my tools from the trunk. Crawl under the car and remove the starter making lots of superfluous clanking noises. Rub a little grease on my face and knock on the door, starter in hand. "Sir, my starter died. There is a Hi-Lo Auto Parts at the end of the block. May I leave my car in your driveway just long enough to get a new starter? Thank you.” Walk down the block with the starter, a can of WD-40 and a rag in my pocket. Spray the starter all over and wipe it clean. Walk back and reinstall the “new” starter. Don't forget the clanking noises. Crank her up and let her hum. As I'm packing up to leave a teenage boy comes outside and says, "My dad asked if you could come back inside for a minute." I smile. Hook, Line, and Sinkaaaahhh!!!!…free Twinkies all summer.

A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that individuality is the key to success. – Robert Orben

Change is inevitable, except from vending machines. – Larry the Cable Guy

Green around the gills….

My grandparents lived in Port Arthur, 100 miles away down a two lane coastal highway. For the sake of drainage, it crowned sharply, leaving all the vehicles leaning to the right. There were no seat belts in cars back then. If I sat on the uphill side of the backseat, I had to cling to the door handle for dear life. If sat on the downhill side, I got squashed against the door by a couple of big sisters. But the constant reality was that I never sat next to a door, always in the middle with nothing to hold onto. Between the ages of five and nine, my parents sent me alone on the Greyhound. I will never forget one particular return trip. We were waiting at the stop when a brand new bus rolled up. It had air-conditioning! The man in front of me got the last seat so I had to wait for the next bus. My grandfather was livid and vocal but Greyhound didn’t care that he was a small town JP. The second bus was ancient and like most vehicles had no A/C. I ended up in the middle of the rear bench which sat five across. A body as small as mine left the seat by an inch with every bump. I was between two men smoking green cigars on a hot/humid summer day. The floorboard was loose and rattling. This allowed engine odors, noises, and fumes to enter the seating area. Early on, I refunded half digested candy corn all over myself and the aisle in front of me. In those days, people traveled in suits, ties, dresses, and heels. Everyone scootched and turned away, the ladies covering their noses with handkerchiefs. The men just kept smoking. No one said anything to me and the bus never stopped. I wiped my chin and closed my eyes. At 50 mph, it was going to be a very long trip.

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Fly Me to the Moon

We lived next to the airport as NASA was starting up. When the astronauts came to town they stayed in a motel on Telephone Road called the Skylane Inn. It had a cocktail lounge with a neon sign that read "Orbit Room". I remember riding my bike over there and just staring at it from the other side of the road. My parents would not tell me what was in the Orbit Room but they assured me none of the astronauts would go into that part of the motel. When I asked my elderly school teacher, she would only say with a sniff, "That is where Frank Sinatra would loiter if he stayed in that motel." Of course, all my grade school teachers, when asked where babies came from, told us they were found in the cabbage patch. That was confusing since no one on the bayou had a cabbage patch. The critters would eat it up in one night.

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer. - unknown