Blasphemy Was Never More Clever

"That picture of The Virgin Mary in a uterus is absolutely gorgeous." Comment from one of Barry's denizens circa 2009

Monday's Missives

• Recently (today is 02/08/2016) I had determined to buy a particular piece of outdoor equipment that listed for 120 bucks. As I was about to log onto my REI account to order it I took note of a similar product that was 30 dollars. It wasn't my favorite color (read- it didn't look as cool as the first product) and lacked a feature or 2 the other had but it was one fourth the cost and would do the job 93-98% as well as the more expensive product. It had me buffaloed. I still have not ordered either.
• Update (02/16/2016) so I went back to look at the object of my consternation. The 30 dollar one was no longer listed- at all. Assuming it was sold out but wanting to think the purchase over I went back later to reconsider the more expensive product. What was the first thing I saw? The 30 dollar product was then listed for 69.95...
• A person we knew as aunt when I was a kid has died. She was one of the few remaining links to my childhood. Her name was Daisy. I called her Daisy Duke or Daisy Waisy which made her laugh. When I visited her a few years ago in a hospital and then later a nursing home she would tell staff I was her boyfriend. She was hilarious and awesome. Road trips to her house in East Texas were a big deal when I was a kid and came as often as not from me and my sister wearing our parents down with begging to go as being their idea. In the yard of my ancestral home there are still multiple 20 foot tall evergreen trees my mom mucked from East Texas and carried back to Decatur in Coors cans that had the tops cut off by my dad.
• Someone I know is being asked to be involved in a wrongful termination/whistleblower lawsuit. Said someone has asked my opinion. My well reasoned and articulate response was, Avoid that like the plague. She is going down and wants to take you with her. She wasn't smart enough to consider the consequences for herself when she got fired and doesn't care at all what this would do to you.
• Trust me; I'm almost a lawyer.
• Recently I met somebody whose husband died 8 years after an IED blast near his head caused him to start having severe seizures. He had 5 children.
• Occasionally I still have a dream where I am suddenly transported to my Humvee in Iraq. It is dark except for the ghostly glow of the dash lights. As I look over at Blake my driver I know he is going to die. He looks ghastly. Every time I glance back at him he decays a bit more. He asks me for a dip and I oblige by handing off my can of Copenhagen. There ain't enough for both of us sarge! he says. I'm good man, save enough to freshen up my dip and I'll be good. I reply. He hands the can back to me and without saying a word he smiles through shattered and missing teeth. His face is shredded. I take a dip to add to that already in my mouth. It tastes good but also oddly salty with a bit of dirt flavor. I glance back over and see him starting to slightly slump to the side. I know I am killing him by trying to savor this moment. While looking down to my map (which I can't really see) the Humvee whines and kicks as it shifts. The terrain to my right looks like the surface of the moon as moonlight lights the desert floor. Tears start streaming down my face. I don't want this moment to ever end. I don't want this moment to go on another second.
• Then I awaken.

Meet My People

Let me tell you a story- a story of poor white trash. The following vignettes are correctly related and true as far as I know and stem from my families habit of telling stories in general and sharing said stories with anybody- even kids who had no business hearing some of them.

The grizzled old farmer is my grandfather born in 1883 in Scott County Arkansas. The picture would have been taken in Melissa TX where dad was born. There is an old family story that one time grandfather killed a cow and after butchering it, took the meat around to the neighbors and sold cuts. A hound dog followed the wagon home and was adopted by the kids. One of granddad's last requests was to be taken to the cemetery in a wagon pulled by a white horse. Uncle Cornelius made it happen. My dad told me when he went to the funeral he didn't own any shoes so he ran behind the wagon from shade tree to shade tree to get some relief from the hot surface of the road.

To your far left is my uncle Cornelius (also called Neal). He worked at rock crushers in the Chico area for years. We never liked him as he was mean to his wife who was a favorite aunt. He was also dismissive of my dad who we thought was way better than him. I was also aware Cornelius was only a private during the war and dad was not only a sergeant but became a drill sergeant after the war.

 Sitting beside him is aunt Rilla.  Rilla taught me how to fish. Oddly, I still have some of her old fishing tackle and a scar on my thumb from cutting fish hooks off an old trotline she gave me. As I think about these memories I can smell her tackle box as plain as the coffee on my desk. 

She was married multiple times. One husband had a prosthetic leg. After his death it was left under her bed. Us cousins (as all of us kids were called) would go and sneak peeks at it and dare each other to touch it. Her last husband was named Bill. He only had one real eye. The socket with a prosthetic eye would weep constantly and he always kept a handkerchief in his hand to wipe his cheek. I bought a 1966 Ford truck from him for 300 dollars. He had bought it new and when I went to Wichita Falls to look it over it was straight as an arrow. He drove it out to Decatur for me the next weekend and wrecked it 2-3 times on the way. I recall him hitting a gas pump and backing into the guy wire of a power pole but it seems I may be forgetting another incident.

Rilla was raped as fairly young woman and had a baby as a result. She named her Margaret. Margie as she was called had 3 kids- a set of twins (a boy and a girl) and another boy who was older than the twins. The elder boy named Jay went to Vietnam. My parents sent  .22 rifle cleaning kits for his and the other Marine's M16 rifles. They also sent socks as, Their socks rot off their feet in no time! When he came home his mom would have to tap his foot with a broom handle when waking him for work because the first time she tapped his shoulder when waking him he nearly knocked her lights out. He would survive Vietnam only to get killed several years later in a car wreck.

All 3 of her kids drove amazing hot rods. The girl of the twins drove a 66 Nova. She loaned it to a boyfriend who committed a robbery in it and abandoned it in an alley in Wichita Falls. Her twin drove a 69 SS El Camino with a 396 and a 4 barrel carburetor. It was fast enough he outrun local deputies one night even though he had to stop every few miles to reattach the carb linkage. Their elder brother drove a 57 Chevy truck. They were my idols. My parents tried to keep me away from them.

The girl to the left of Rilla is aunt Bertha Mae. She died of heart failure secondary to rheumatic fever in her 30s. She weighed well over 300 pounds. She was an exotic dancer at a club on Jacksboro Highway that catered to dudes who liked queen sized women. As kids we heard about her all the time. Aunts would say things like, Bertha Mae would have loved you kids. She always wanted children but could never have any of her own; so sad... We felt like we knew her and that her spirit was always watching over us.

The lady to the far right is my granny. My dad told me she would whip him with the inner part (the bead) of a tire she cut out for that purpose. By the time I knew her she had whiskers which would scratch your face when she kissed you. She did not have a tooth in her head by then either. She dipped powdered snuff and the juice from it would run out of both corners of her mouth. One of her last snuff bottles is on my desk as a pen holder- I am looking at it as I write this. Her skin was as soft as velvet. Her hair went nearly to her waist and she kept it in a pony tail. It stayed mostly salt and pepper colored until her death and was really more black than gray. She washed it with lye soap. I know at one point she made her own but don't know if she continued to do so in later life or bought it. She could grow anything and the tar paper shack she lived in by the time I knew her, in Burkburnett was filled with plants. It was like a greenhouse. Mom would say, Give granny a stick, a rock to plant it on, a cup of water, and come back a week later and she would have something growing for you. After granddad died she married Paul, whom she met through a "Love Wanted" ad in the newspaper. Paul was known as a simple minded person who did odd jobs around town. He loved us like I don't remember ever being loved by anyone aside from my mom. He would walk around town and pick up small objects like change and discarded toys and put them in shoeboxes and give them to me and my sister when we visited. We loved getting those boxes- it was like winning the lottery. He called the little things he gave us, "play pretties". He gave us pens and pencils which were often personalized with our names and stationary and stamps to write letters to him. I don't recall ever being mean to him in any way but I wish I were nicer. He just deserved it. He was a decent and kind man- a good person.

The baby in granddad's lap is my dad. He had a third grade education and didn't get his driver license until he was 40 years old. He got his first job as a turkey herder at 9 years of age. He served in the Army as an air defense artillery man and more or less an infantryman in France and Germany. We have a cool picture of him with his head bandaged. He was at the invasion of Normandy + 3 days and fought all the way to Hitler's old retreat at Berchtesgaden. I asked if he ever killed anybody during the war. He replied, Well, you just don't always know. You're shooting at shapes really- moving shapes and they go down but everybody else is shooting so you don't always know. I knew though- that he did know. He crewed a half track with twin .50 caliber machineguns and a centrally mounted 37 mm cannon which were for antiaircraft work. I asked if he ever shot down a plane. He replied, Nah, never shot one down directly but 4-5 left trailing smoke pretty heavy.

He dabbled in dice but was an expert pool player and would hustle in pool halls around Fort Worth. He was oddly equally good at 9 ball, snooker and straight pool. When asked what game he wanted to play he would reply, Make it easy on yourself. When I was little, he took me to the pool hall on the square in Decatur and also a domino parlor. Old guys there would give me chewing tobacco and wait for me to get sick. I never did. The pool hall  was run by an elderly white haired gentleman. His hair was the whitest I have ever seen- literally whiter than cotton. For years into my adulthood I could recall his name but couldn't right now if my life depended on it. It thrilled me to be there. It smelled like leather, stale beer, old building and tobacco. It also seemed a little dangerous.

Dad was buried in the same cemetery as his father- the same cemetery where he ran barefooted from shade to shade following a horse drawn wagon that carried grandfather's body. I rode to that cemetery in a new Cadillac limousine which the driver oddly showed me around beforehand while telling me some of it's specs.

At the funeral were multiple women who were way too upset considering the fact that no one knew them. Maybe coincidentally, there were also several unknown women's phone numbers in his wallet.

He was a life taker, a life maker and a heart breaker. I still have his pool cue. I still have the 12 gauge shotgun that killed him.

Two things I learned writing this: Rilla is buried in an unmarked grave as her headstone was blown away in a tornado. There is a child named Randal missing from the picture- he only lived one month. Why were we never told about Randal? Yes, children died all the time back then- but stories would be told and they would be remembered- especially in a storytelling family. Was the memory just too painful- too heartbreaking? Did the birth nearly kill granny?

 The two things I think of as I write this are:

Some things you just can't make up. 

Did any of these people ever think their lives would play out how they did?

Thursday's Thoughts

Found in Town creek lying just like this- waiting to cripple somebody. A connected thought: I found this within 5 feet of where my friends girlfriend found an arrowhead. Another connected thought: you never notice how trashy your favorite outdoor places are until you make an active effort to watch for the garbage and carry some out. Then it seems sad, pointless and overwhelming.

• Stairway To Heaven was playing on the radio yesterday (01/03/2015) and I heard it for the first time in years. I sang along and used hand gestures to express the lyrics. The high falsetto parts were even attempted. FG laughed. I was surprised at how much of the lyrics I remembered as in really- I cannot even guess the last time I heard it.
• She says we're done. No, not because of my awful singing- just in general.

  

  My thrill seeker daughter

• During the trailers at the theater yesterday I am positive one of them had the release date of 01/17/2014. That would make it a Friday of January last year or Saturday of this if they meant 2015- unlikely as movies are not released on Saturday. The name of the movie eludes me now but it looked stunningly terrible from the trailer.
• Roger Daltry was in a movie where he plays a bank robber. I had to look it up but it was called McVicar and wasn't awful.
• FG's dumb cat has a strange loyalty toward me even though i hate his guts. FG says to me, He is gay for you and You're  his boyfriend.

  

  Another one of FG's tattoo designs for me

• Last night after gassing up the econo box we call Bullit I pulled around by a bunch of hot rodders/street racers/miscreants hanging at the car wash and putting the car in neutral as we slowly rolled by I revved the engine- zoom, zooooom, zoOOoooOOom as their mouths hung open in disbelief and they said, What the...!? We were still laughing halfway across town. I thought I was going to hyperventilate. I was seeing spots and my diaphragm was spasmodic.
• Maybe you had to be there.

  

  This is a fork on the seat of my truck. You're welcome.

• If money were no object- I won that proverbial lottery or whatever, my dwelling would be awesome of course but not ridiculous. However, the wall separating the garage from the house would be glass so I could see all my cool cars and motorcycles.
• Now all I have to do is sit here and rock back and forth wanting all that money.

  

  A drive by shooting: this place has always gotten on my nerves- it isn't on a corner! ARRRRRRRH- you can't do that!

  
  

  

  Another : looks like there was a gun show on the Wise County _________ Grounds Nov. 22nd & 23rd. Good to know somebody is standing up to Obama and his liberal agenda.

  
  

  

  Otra: I haven't been to Casa Torres since they built the new building

  
  

  

  Autere: I love Decatur's library building and was always proud of it. It would be a pleasant surprise if it doesn't (or hasn't in the past) leaked like a pasta strainer.

  
  

  

  Anutter peanut butter: These things in the middle of the road make me nervous.

  
  

  

  Andere: As wrong as it is, you know what I think when I see these signs (and always have)? Deet dah dee...

• Donna Douglas as died. I was reading about her at 4 o'clock in  the morning before the announcement was made- she wasn't dead and the article wasn't about her death. How random and wild is that? I do not know the last time she crossed my mind.
• Does the apostrophe in o'clock connote, of the clock?

Monday's Missives

• It is 1720.33 on 07/02/2014 and I am literally dying for a cold Coke- an ice cold gallon size coooooold Coke. Omigosh that sounds good.
• An article about the NSA reminded me of a controversy I've been curious about for a long time- polygraph. It is a modern day form of witchcraft in that it isn't real- it only works as far as people believe in it and that bothers me. It embarrasses me for us.
• At a facility I worked in I tendered my resignation after being informed all the nurses would be required to take a polygraph. The short story is a demented patient was found to have drugs in her system for which she did not have an order. Again, the short story is the daughter to the patient had been slipping her the drug and when it wasn't giving the desired effect of bringing the patient back she felt guilty and demanded the urine test. The daughter showed her hand too much too early  though- freaking out over the patients behavior, demanding to know what was wrong with her and saying things like, This isn't her- she's on something! etc. We all knew what was going on and I said so in the letter that made its way up to the ivory tower.
• I didn't take the stupid test and I kept my job- in fact nobody took the stupid test.
  
• The stereo project is if not harder than I anticipated definitely more time consuming. An amazing thing: when part of it had me baffled I Emailed a tech at Crutchfield. He sent me back a picture of my sub with hand drawn blue and red lines detailing how the wiring for my specific application should look. I would have gotten it wrong swearing it was right and burned  up a 200 dollar piece of equipment.
• Last night (today is 06/30/2014) I dreamed very vivid and real feeling dreams about Decatur being blown away by tornadoes. I awoke to the sound of the roof turbine screaming and thought it was FG bawling.
• It only hit me as I read Voyage of the Beagle last night that Ecuador is Spanish for equator.
• A thing among ropers when I was a high school lad was to wear a belt that was 8-10 inches too long so the end would be hanging down over their crotch.

  

  When they hung Blackjack Ketchum it decapitated him.  His last words were,  Goodbye. Please dig my grave very deep.  Aright; Hurry up. Hal Ketchum is said to be a direct descendant.

Friday's Dispatch

• People who have an inkling of historical context may think the Tet offensive was a military failure in 1968 for the US military. It is often cited correctly as a if not the turning point toward a lack of support for the war. So the US lost that battle right? No, it was a resounding and complete military victory for the US, so much so what we call the Vietcong was so decimated it was never able to reconstitute.
• The sun feels good at 1240.32 hours on 06/08/2014 as I sit by the pool.
• When I was Zac's age I went to the pool by myself and would stay gone all day. Sometime I would dive for change and when I had enough added to the money I got picking up Coke bottles to sell I would buy something from the snack bar to survive. Those days are long gone now- in more ways than one. The pool in Decatur Texas by the football field was long ago filled with dirt. People have even argued with me it was there in first place.

  

  Here I demonstrate how to properly eat a yellow jacket maggot. They're sweet and slightly nutty, tasting vaguely like sweet corn

• My no dry cleaning experiment is now completing it's second month. I am not spending money on dry cleaning and instead I hit my clothes with a freshener, wipe the inside of the collars with a wet washcloth and pass the iron over them. Then I leave lots of breathing room between them in the closet and spread the wears out of each item as much as possible.. There are no odors and they look like new. As time goes by unless I reach some kind of critical mass and there is an explosion of funkiness in my closet I'll use the money I save to buy new clothes to improve my rotation. I'll buy 2 new shirts and some socks today.
• The fly catchers are back- working the trees over the pool. You see a black dot flying near them, the bird darts up and does some fantastic aerobatics, the black dot disappears into their beak, they then alight for a minute on an open branch and this repeats every few minutes.
• The Cramps song New Kind Of Kick has been playing in a loop in my brain for over 2 hours now. It is a great, in fact favorite song but enough is enough. Quit it head-brain. I mean it. Here, together we'll watch what cricket looks like to Americans and see if it helps rid us of this earworm.
• About 20 minutes ago (on 06/08/2014 @ around 4:20) FG said, I'm going to try cutting Zac's hair. About 15 minutes ago she called out, Hey Kevin, look up a hair place in the area that is open on Sunday. Ten minutes ago she said, I'm quitting while I'm ahead and getting out of here before they close. Five minutes ago they were a blur as they ran out the door like he had drunk a quart of antifreeze and she was afraid the emergency department was about to close. How bad was it? I didn't take a picture to put up here as I didn't want it to haunt him for rest of his life.

  

  Not for everybody (even car guys) but this is a perfect hot rod in my book.
  The long wheel base and color besides red and the factory-ish two tone colors make it look different  for a hot rod and work great.  It has an up-gunned small block and two turbochargers.

Thursday's Thoughts

Found on Craigslist. Nobody was more surprised than the owner that no one had jumped on it after a month plus with the advertised price of  5,000 dollars. Your unsolicited car guy advice for the day: Being old and previously identified as a sports car does not make a car valuable kids.

• Frequently I have a dream where I ride with an old friend to drop my kids off at a baseball game in Decatur. The car she is driving is an old, huge tuna boat of a car which she bought from an elderly family member. It has 278,000 miles on it. We leave the kids there even though they're way too young to do so and tell them to go to Allsup's for a Coke when they're finished and we will pick them up there. When I go back the're not there and I inevitably wake up in a panic- so literally terrified I'm confused as to where I'm at and can't breathe.
• The Raven- what I'm reading. There is no telling how many times I have read it through the years- hundreds I suppose.
• I would like for EAP to know people are still reading his work over a hundred years after his death. He was one of the first Americans to attempt to make a living on writing alone. It is rare I meet somebody who knows he was a West Point Cadet. In fact, his first book was funded by subscriptions from his fellow Pointers. At age 27 he married his 13 year old cousin. She was playing the piano when a blood vessel burst in her throat. The loss of her figures in a lot of his work. He was found on the street wearing clothes that didn't belong to him. He died at 5:00 in the morning.
  
  
  
  

  

  Clark Gardens

• During Theodore Roosevelt's exploration of the River Of Doubt one of the crew drowned in some rapids. They named a nearby falls after him. The impromptu inscription read," In these rapids died poor Simplicio."
• Poor Simplicio
• When self serve gas stations became more prevalent in the 1960s people didn't know how to pump their own gas so clerks would often have to show people how to put gasoline in their cars.
• Rosie Odonnel or Roseanne Barr? Are you kidding me?! Roseanne of course.

  

  Here, I demonstrate how to rock- with GH Bass Bremmers.

• The release of Bowe Bergdahl doesn't mean his case was one of the US negotiating with terrorists as he was a prisoner of war and he was exchanged for other prisoners of war- and nope, it doesn't matter how he was captured.
• During a long ago relationship I strayed. The vile temptress had a name starting with J. After the fence was somewhat mended I was listening to a version of Jolene. Woman formerly known as woman told me to turn it off. I thought she said turn it up so I obliged. She walked in and unplugged the computer. Funny. Here is a favorite version of Jolene by the modern day troubadour- the inimitable Jack White.

Yes, My School

had a clothesline in the back.

Shoot Out The Star

Has anyone ever shot that red star out? I saw a guy argue with the carnie over it once. I was afraid they were goin to come to blows. The guy snatched the target away and stomped off. The next night at the pool hall (there have been 4 that I recall in Decatur) He would show it to anybody that would listen. One girl pointed out a thin line of red on one side of a point. He said something like,"You are just as stupid as that carnie." I looked at it myself -there was one line of red as thin as a hair that was even more difficult to notice because it was actually folded back by the BBs passing through the target.