South Texas Views

Growing up around great farm families brought countless blessings I often think about around Thanksgiving. From the value of hard work to understanding the harsh reality of trying to carve a living out of the land in the face of trying economic times and the fickle whims of nature, I learned enormously from my neighbors. For one small example, I discovered very early I wasn’t cut out to be a farmer, just ain’t tough enough, but still profited greatly from associating with fantastic people who “stand out in their fields,” the sort who stick around when lots of others don’t. One of them made me cry, but that wasn’t her intention.

Aside from homework, which I avoided if at all possible, there isn’t much to do on a 45-minute bus ride to school. Fortunately, while I tended to gravitate to less than appropriate bus behavior as did a lot of other knuckleheads, I was marginally smart enough to appreciate the real class acts I lived near; Sue Rouse is a perfect example. Continue reading “Thanksgiving Down on the Farm”

For most, the word “oasis” brings to mind cool water and palm trees surrounded by one of nature’s harshest climates, a refuge from a blisteringly hot and dangerous desert. In Cambridge “oasis” had a decidedly opposite reality in the mid 70s, beautiful lakes and countryside surrounding a festering sore that stands unique in my memory, big city sleaze in small town America. If the Cambridge area ever had a “Red Light District” in my time this was it, the red often human blood dripping down a fender from some unfortunate leaning on a car after losing a fight.

My father once called the Oasis “a den of iniquity,” the den on Route 22 just over Colfax Mountain from our house. To be fair, the Oasis was a respectable family establishment when I first crossed its portal in 1965 with Mom and Dad. I think we had some sort of meal there, what I don’t remember. At some point the ownership changed and what I do remember was what became of the Oasis years later and the typical environment during its last days that were shortened by a police raid, the only one I’m aware of at a public place in all my years in the Cambridge area. Continue reading “Midnight at the Oasis”

Teenagers, boys much more than girls, often don’t known when to quit, and had we just a scintilla of knowledge about reasonable limitations, my 18th birthday party might have concluded nicely. But the evocative lure of a never-ending party and way too much beer led to a most common bad scene during my adolescence. Over this time period I often wondered why a black cloud always tracked my life course. With age and slightly more maturity, I finally cleaned up the mirror some to see the real cause of most difficulties. Interestingly, it’s been my experience it’s this very same but often illusive mirror nearly all dysfunctional people never find. Almost all of the troubled people I’ve known, and this is a pretty big number, had the same blindness about the real cause of personal problems, and consequently always blamed others or bad circumstances. It seems there’s not a whole lot of accurate self-reflection on Cellblock Six.

I did have enough forethought to know my old Corvair breathed its last gas fumes as it limped back home in a haze of oil smoke to begin crumbling completely into a pile of rust, rotted rubber and broken glass. We all knew the belt now holding the generator instead of my pants would let go any second, the car finally a dead issue. Sadly, GM’s Zombie Ride would no longer resurrect and move on its own power, and previously planning for the car’s imminent demise, I’d bought another fifty buck special, my second Corvair, this one a chalky white and not nearly as rusty. Still, the price reflected mechanical qualities, or more correctly, the lack thereof, most specifically what I called a “Mystery Shifter.” Continue reading “A Short Career as a Driver’s Education Teacher”

Well, I got a baby’s brain and an old man’s heart
Took eighteen years to get this far -Alice Cooper “I’m Eighteen”

I can’t think of a much more potentially dangerous condition than four teenage guys riding in a car with almost no brakes and then adding a case of beer to compliment the occasion, and that’s just what this story is about. It’s was my 18^th birthday, a time in 1972 when authorities deemed I was old enough to drink while still too dumb to cope with the many consequences. Today, just celebrating my official entry into Old Codger World, my 65^th anniversary on this planet, I thank God for his grace in allowing me to tell a story a lot of people never get to tell because they’re dead and long ago buried. This story could have easily ended that way for all of us and does for far too many teenagers who mix booze and gasoline.

To begin, we pulled a fast one on Alice Ashton, and this wasn’t easy as she was one sharp authority figure who wore two hats when were all seniors. Like a lot of professionals at small schools Alice had multiple major responsibilities, one as school nurse and the other as truant officer. Alice knew every excuse known to us for missing school and cut through bull like a spoon through yogurt. It took months of strategy to trip her up. Continue reading “How Not to Conduct an 18th Birthday Party”

Thinking someone with a formal college degree is somehow superior to a person who can build and tune a high performance engine is a great example of pure ignorance. The same can be said for failing to appreciate the rare individual who makes something out of almost nothing through the power of creative engineering. Although many mechanics do possess formal degrees, they all studied at the College of Experience, their diplomas awarded in steel and aluminum. Fortunately, in spite of cultural and class prejudice, Cambridge has been blessed with a well above average supply of truly gifted wrench wizards, many also talented controllers of the machines they put together. Most seriously, if we study American history carefully, we’ll see it’s people like these who greatly helped build our country into the powerhouse it became. Continue reading “The Mechanical Wizards of Cambridge”