Category: Stories

Remembering the fun part of church

March 23rd, 2023

Sarah Jarosz – Come On Up to the House

I didn’t much care for the Sunday service as a little kid. You had to sit still and be quiet and the sermons boring.

I do remember liking one sermon about monsters with lots of heads. Didn’t understand it, but it sounded like an awesome Godzilla movie.

Mom and Dad had church things to do, so I had to sit with lady who pinched if you talked. One Sunday my buddy stuck me with a hat pin. When I hollered, she pinched. Hard. He was a little bastard, which was why I liked him.

But after the service, church was a different place. The grounds became an awesome playground for hours, until our moms got done in the nursery.

The whole facility was our oyster, lots of places to hide and check things out. You could get into any room with a wire hanger.

We checked out Sunday School rooms, looked through closets, got into a room full of electronics which thank goodness we never touched. We slid down the stairs on our butts, flew paper planes in the sanctuary.

We showed some other boys and how to get in the steeple. We got caught before most of us could climb to the top. “What are y’all doing up here? I’m telling your parents!” The lady began taking names, but my buddy and I got away before she could ID us.

When we got hungry, we barged in on the nursery, stuffed handfuls of crackers in our mouths, drank Kool-aid from the pitcher and pestered our moms till they chased us out.

When they finally packed up the nursery and began turning off the hallway lights, we’d fling ourselves around the corner and go “Raaah!” Got ‘em every time.

There was a point where I couldn’t sit in a Baptist church without feeling like a liar. Some of the doctrines were rather traumatic for me as a young adult, in fact. But I did have fun and met some of the best people I’ve ever known. I feel like I should talk about both.
Bigfoot eats apples

March 22nd, 2023

My favorite newspaper when I worked for a newspaper. Wish I’d saved the one about Bat Boy.

When I was a kid, I totally believed in Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. Whatever anyone said, Loch Ness could have a dinosaur. I’d read theories. (I was rooting for plesiosaur).

As for Bigfoot, there were still a lot of trees for him to hide in. Bigfeet and Yetis and Nessie were real until proven otherwise. I was like that about a lot of things, UFOs and whatnot.

I used to get a kick out of Art Bell’s show on AM radio. He was into things like that. I liked the one where people lowered a mic into a pit and heard the cries of the damned. Pretty entertaining.

Waking Bear – Bigfoot

Sometime during the recent Covid lockdown I went out for a meetup. The first one of those breaks where you could go out if you socially distanced. One of the ladies was a Bigfoot enthusiast. And boy was she enthusiastic. I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t want to spoil her fun. She seemed so happy.

She had just been on Bigfoot expedition and met the big hairy man himself. Well, not really met him, but she heard him roar, so she knew he was close. He sounds like Chewbacca, btw.

Turns out if you leave an apple in a field and give him a little privacy, Bigfoot will eat it. He loves apples.

Her apple disappeared and guess what was in her tent? That very apple. Bigfoot wasn’t hungry, so he carried the apple to her tent to let her know he was still glad to meet her. “I know it wasn’t a squirrel, because it was a large organic apple!”

Hearing that story made me think of Boy Scout snipe hunts. You might have heard of them. The older boys gave you a tow sack and had you bang two sticks together. They were gonna chase him toward you and you had to be ready to catch it.

Their descriptions were all over the place.

You didn’t know if it looked like an alligator or a skunk and the older boys wouldn’t say. You had to be ready for anything. Then when you least expected it, the older boys jumped out and went “Raaaaah!” They didn’t scare me. Much.

I thought Snipes were imaginary until sometime in my 20s. Turns out they’re a kind of shore bird. You’re not likely to catch one in a burlap sack. Not in the woods anyway.

I wonder if those Bigfoot expedition guides might’ve been Boy Scouts once?
When anonymous meant chickenshit

March 7th, 2023

Back in my newspaper days, most places I worked ost of the newspapers I worked at had a policy against anonymous letters to the editor.

If you allowed it, people would get in nastier and nastier fights and pretty soon you didn’t have any place to jump the front page news.

Funny how different things are now. Anonymous people are still stirring up trouble. At the same time we’re not anonymous enough.

Every time I open YouTube, I get an ad for the thing I was just talking about. Creepy.

Back then I just thought anonymous letters were chickenshit. I had to sign what I wrote.

If you got mad at something I wrote, you could call me up and chew me out.

Once a preacher got so mad at me, he preached a whole sermon about me. (He invited me tok the service, but I smelled a rat.)

One day I opened an anonymous letter that really pissed me off. They were mostly mad at us for making them buy political ads a month before the election.

Candidates had been getting their buddies to send letters to the editor so they didn’t have to spend money. They also thought I was slacking on local news and they hated my “worthless” features.

I was mainly pissed because they were right. I did write a lot of features. I liked ‘em and they helped fill up the paper.

Truth be told I liked covering the news, but I liked features more. If someone raised llamas or raced pigeons or flew a bomber during WWII, I could nerd out and produce a lot of copy. Plus pictures take up a lot of column inches.

At least I never did like an old editor of mine, who wrote features so long they had to be continued, sometimes over six editions.

One day a lady from the Republican Women came in and chewed me out over our letter policy.

She had an expensive cane she probably wanted to hit me with. She said something that sounded a little too familiar and suddenly I was hopping mad.

I heard my mouth say, “So you’re the one who sent me that anonymous letter!” I thought, Oh shit, I said that out loud. I am so fired.

But she grinned real big and said, “If I have something to say to you, I’ll sign my name to it, don’t you worry about that!” I think she liked my gumption. Ended up kinda sorta friends.

I still think she wrote that letter though.

#Stories, #Newspapers, #Journalism, #Anonymous, #ThieveryCorporation
Fair enough

March 6th, 2023

This fits the theme at any rate. I read a book written in Spanish (that was hard!) about Spain’s relationship with the Native Americans. Really cool book. Kind of cool to get a look at that time from a Spanish speaker’s perspective. I’ll blog about it soon.

I wanted to pass along a story my parents told me about living in New Mexico in the early ’60s. They were watching an Old Western one day and a crowd of Navajos were in the theater.

They were there because a local elder was playing a chief making peace with the white man.

Whenever he made a speech, the whole theater would roar with laughter. The caption was in stereotypical broken English. A Navajo friend told them later, he was actually insulting the white man in Navajo.

I’ve always thought that was hilarious. Get your digs in when you can 🙂

#Navajo, #Westerns, #Paul Revere and the Raiders
Rescued by Chameleons

February 27th, 2023

The Chameleons UK are more than just a band to me.

I once used “Second Skin” as a user name on a dating site. The Chameleons are criminally unknown, so anyone else who loves them was bound to get me.

I never got any hits.

I finally realized how it looked if you didn’t know the song. Girls probably thought I wanted to wear their skin like Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs.

I didn’t realize till later, but I kind of tested my wife before we got serious. I had shared “As High As You Can Go” with a girl I was crushing on and she texted back, “IDK if I like that.”

I lied to myself for a while cuz she was cute, but I knew it was never gonna work.

My compromise position was my future soulmate had to at least like the Chameleons. I played “As High As You Can Go” for my future wife and she loved it. Score!

Why such a big deal?

I discovered them during a rough time in my life. Editing a newspaper is hard anywhere, but I was a real fish out of water. I wasn’t used to East Texas and had few friends. Dating was out of the question. I didn’t belong, but I didn’t know how to leave.

Luckily my boss introduced me to postpunk (think punk, but more artful). He had been a college DJ. I was mostly a hard rock guy, so this was strange stuff to me.

Until it completely transformed my taste in music.

When I heard The Chameleons I was sold. Lush, beautiful, passionate, intricate, hard-hitting, entrancing, thought-provoking… I played them non-stop as I drove to interviews and delivered papers.

That was a short period in my life, but postpunk became my new musical home base.

I still have times like today, where I need my Chameleons fix. And my wife loves them too, so I don’t have to use earbuds. Score again!

#Chameleons, #Postpunk, #Journalism, #Newspapers
Bickering = bonding

February 25th, 2023

Last night I asked my wife when she expected get back from a shopping trip I had no interest in joining. That’s all I wanted. An approximate time.

She started listing her whole itinerary of girly shopping plans. “First we’re going to a store to look for maternity clothes (her friend has a bun in the oven), then we’re going to Target, then we’re probably going to eat at Cracker Barrel, then we’re going to…”

I said, “Babe, can we just get to the part about where you give me a time? I don’t need to whole rundown.” She got a sparkle in her eye and finished her story. “…and then we’re going to stop at a 7-11 and get gas.”

We both busted up laughing. It’s like she was saying “touche asshole, if you can be an asshole so can I.” We laugh a lot. It’s one of my favorite things about married life.

My wife and I have never fought for real. We’ve been friends since Day One. But we bust chops constantly. It’s just something we do. I pick, she picks back, we get distracted and forget what we were talking about.

I’m usually the instigator, but now and then she gets me with a burn so sick I’m like, damn, what have I done? I taught her too well. Usually it’s something like whether I’m right that the Beatles are awesome (They are. I’m not budging on that one).

When her mom was with us, she used to hear us from the next room and think we were fighting. She was like, “Baby is your marriage OK?” Which cracked my wife up. Eventually her mom accepted we were just being us.

It’s just how old couples are, when they love which other and are both massive nerds.

#Marriage, #Relationships, #Laughing, #Arguing, #Triumph
Vibrating back massage at a job interview? Really?

February 24th, 2023

My favorite scene from the TV show Taxi.

I swear to God this is a true story. If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’.

I had a hell of a time breaking into the working world. I made some spending cash mowing lawns. I spent a summer working at an instrument repair business, painting cases for trumpets and saxophones. Tedious and shit pay.

One day I saw a classified ad in the paper (remember those?) that read:

“Creative, hardworking people needed for display and demonstrations.” Display? Creative? I was an arty kid so that was right up my alley I thought. Paid well too, according to the ad.

The office was in a mall, an hour from the house. The sign on the door said something like “investments.” I sat in the lobby and began filling out an application.

Suddenly a middle aged man came out and said, “Finish the paperwork later. Let’s talk.” He led me through a door – into a room full of vacuum cleaners. Same loud brand my grandmother got from a door to door salesman.

Display job, right…

He went a blackboard and wrote down the weekly pay amount from the classified ad. “Now let me explain to you why this ad is not a lie,” he said. “If you sell X amount of vacuum cleaners a week you will definitely make that amount.”

A young man in a suit and tie came in, picked up some papers and left.

“You see that guy? He’s our biggest success. He’s made so many sales he’s about to start his own operation. You can be like him.”

I was too polite to leave, but I smelled a rat. “We have all the latest technology,” he said. “Come here and let me show you something.”

He took the front off a vacuum cleaner and attached a hand-held device. He turned on the vacuum cleaner and the little machine in his hand buzzed loudly. A vibrator. A vacuum cleaner-powered vibrator.

I wanted to leave, but I was still in polite mode. He pressed it against my back and said, “doesn’t that feel goooood?” Was this really happening? Was I being molested?

Worst job interview ever.

I said I would finish the application and bring it back later. I tossed it in the trash can on the way out. When I got home my brother said they had called asking when I was coming back. “Never,” I said. “Long story.”

#Employment, #Vacuum cleaners, #MLM, #Multi-level Marketing, #Taxi
‘Winning’ the dirt clod war

February 22nd, 2023

It was a dirt clod fight, not a rock fight, but that’s the best I could do for a song. We did have a pine cone fight that turned into a rock fight on one campout…

It was just a dip in the creek at first. Then it turned into a war. The Scoutmaster lost track of us like he sometimes did on campouts. He was old. Several of us Boy Scouts took off through the pasture.

We climbed a couple of fences and found a swimming hole.

A farmer had scooped out a hole next to a 9-foot mud embankment. The water smelled like cow shit, but no one cared. A deep spot in a muddy creek might be as close to a swimming pool as you’re gonna get in the country.

And who needs a swim suit when you already have underwear? It wasn’t really deep enough for swimming, but we had a hell of a time splashing each other in the face. An older boy got out and pelted us with dirt clods.

They weren’t rocks, but they still hurt like a bastard. Soon the water looked like chocolate milk. The war was on.

My buddies and I got up the cliff first. We had the high ground and plenty of ammo – the embankment was made of dirt clods. I can’t throw for shit, but I got off a couple of good ones.

I saw my patrol leader, almost at the top. He was a cool guy, but also kind of a badass. He could beat up his brother, who was fully able to kick most of our asses. If he got to the top my team was done.

I found a basketball-size dirt clod and rolled it over the edge. As soon as I did I knew I fucked up. It hit him on top of the head and down he went. I saw the look in his eye just before he fell and forgot all about the dirt clod fight.

I ran through the pasture and hid in a gully until dusk, then wandered back to the campsite. He was waiting for me next to a galvanized tub of warm water.

“You better be glad I didn’t catch you,” he said. “I was gonna break your arm. Now I’m JUST gonna make you wash the dishes.”

All in all it was a good day.

This was my dad’s Boy Scout Handbook. I don’t know what happened to mine.

#Boy Scouts, #Camping, #Boys, #Country Life
‘I sure hope you don’t get the electric paddle’

February 21st, 2023

Found this in a box of Dad’s things. He must have gotten it in college. Never used it on us. I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt more than the electric paddle!

That was something cold you could say when you and your friend got into something and it was his turn to see the principal and get paddled.

It was a legend at my elementary school. “Mister Blankenship used it on a kid last week and it flipped him over the desk.”

If you’d been there before, you knew it was bullshit. There was no electric paddle and he never hit hard enough to flip you over a desk. If he wasn’t mad enough to do it after my friends and I peed on the little girl’s hat, it wasn’t ever gonna happen.

It was fun to scare the second graders though. In fact, it was kinda fun getting licks – it made me feel like Evel Knievel every day. It didn’t really hurt, and you could sometimes negotiate licks in exchange for them not calling your parents.

I only started behaving when they came up with detention. Licks only stung for a few minutes. Detention could take weeks.

I’m just as glad corporal punishment is out of fashion. At least for me it wasn’t abuse. Or not intentionally so. Most adults who spanked me were doing what they were taught to do: “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” But after meeting enough unspanked kids who were better behaved than I was – at best it’s ineffective.

It probably just made me sneakier. It never stopped me from any shenanigans. A kid in my high school got licks for jumping off the back of the football stands onto some pole vaulting cushions. How was that supposed to scare him? He already jumped off a stadium.

#Discipline, #Education, #Corporal Punishment
Don’t know shit about sports

February 20th, 2023

I may not be typical, but I never gave a shit about sports. I don’t even watch the Super Bowl. It was hard to get interested in something I was so bad at.

I never hit or caught a ball in Little League. Struck out every time.

Junior high football was just PE with extra equipment. It was a contest between me and this other guy to not come in last during laps. He was also the only one I managed to knock over during practice. I said, “Sorry about that,” which really pissed the coach off.

I let the quarterback get sacked the one time they let me off the bench. Worthless at football.

How about bowling. That’s the everyman sport right? I took bowling in college and on the first day, rolled the ball into a pole, rang like a gong. The coach said, “You know it IS possible to fail this class.” Pulled off a C.

And ended up covering high school sports for years. I sucked at it (now and then a coach would call me and say, “Umm, that’s not a real play”) but I liked it better than I expected.

It got me out of minimum wage land and into the newspaper business. Yes I said I’d never be a journalist after I left my diary at the old sheriff’s house. But that was before I’d spent three years night clerking for motels.

#Sports, #Journalism, #Newspapers