As In Fish Belly White -- Back In the Day #4

I wasn't a bad kid.

That bit of news might come as a surprise given the childhood stories I've shared to this point, but those stories are more the exception than the rule. For the most part I stayed out of trouble, took care of my business, and made good grades in school. (except for the previously mentioned handwriting)

And contrary to the evidence on this blog, I was and still am a very good speller. Sure I transpose letters when I type but I blame than on my fingers not my brain.

So somewhere about 1984, could have been '85, I qualified as one of the two representatives from our elementary school to participate in the citywide spelling bee. I had grand illusions of winning that sucker and earning a trip to D.C., but I of course was thwarted. Not by a challenging word such as mystique or credenza. Oh no I spelled those correctly. I was undone by my own redneck tendencies. You see when my third word was read, my redneck ears heard P-A-I-L as in bucket, as in  ... Billy Bob carried the pail of slop out to feed the hogs.

I never asked for a definition.

I never considered the idea the word could be P-A-L-E as in ... Travis went pale when they said, "I'm sorry that is incorrect. You have been eliminated from the competition."

The Weather Up Here

In the comments of my lat post, the esteemed bearded one, the ever lyrical and poetic Walking Man, Mr. Mark Durfree suggested I follow up with a list of reason why it is good to be tall. Here they are.


10) Even in a crowd I can see what is going on. 

9) When the bullshit gets deep not much more than my ankles get sullied.

8) My height combined with ample girth and breadth of shoulders tends to dissuade aggression from others. 

My favorite story here involves a NASCAR race. A number of years ago my cousins husband and I headed down to Ft Worth to catch a race. Traffic after the even was horrible and we ended up behind a carload of young guys in their early twenties. I was in my late twenties at the time. When I say stuck in traffic I mean moving less than 500 feet in 3 hours time as 180,000 people tried to exit at once. The guys in the car took offense to me being so close to their back bumper despite the fact there was a two mile long line of vehicles doing the same thing.

These guys get kept out to retrieve beer from the truck and each time they did so they'd make gestures I needed to back deposit the fact I had maybe 6 inches of room behind me. On his third trip or so for beer this one fella starts creaming at me to  ... "BACK THE FUCK UP!"

I smiled and waved.

He shook his head with disgust and got back in.

Ten minutes later he was back, jabbing a finger at me through the drivers window screaming obscenities.

I rolled down my window  and told him to go sit his drunk ass down at which point he says, "Why don't you get your happy ass out of the car and tell me that."

My cousin's husband urged to stay put. he said I bet he has a knife or something, but I was tired hungry and fed up so I hopped out.

Mr. Beer Fetcher's nose lined up even with my chest when I stood. His eyes widened and he immediately started apologizing stating how they needed to fix this traffic situation so the crowd could disperse quicker and no one would get frustrated trying tog et out. I never said a word as he backed all the way to his car and slid inside. For the next hour no one from their vehicle got out for any more beer.

7) Everything is supposed to be bigger in Texas. And given that I am named for one of the fallen heroes of The Alamo it simply would be going against nature if I was five foot seven.

6) Big and hairy beats little and hairy. I'd rather be described as a grizzly bear than cousin Itt any day.

5) Trout fishing is easier when you are standing in rushing water that comes only to your knees as opposed to your waist.

4) I can change every light bulb in my house without first finding a step stool.

3) Nicknames. Being called Sasquatch, Big Country, and Big T is better than say Hobbit, Little Village or Tiny T.

2) People remember me. I dare say the phrase "You know the big hairy women's fiction writer with the Texas twang," does not create a long list of images for fold to differentiate from.

1) Tall, Dark and Handsome Hell, I'm not greedy, I'm perfectly happy to be two of the three.

Tall Tales

 Post before last I included a picture of myself and one of my weekly critique partners. Someone on Facebook then commented that I was either really tall or she is really short. I responded that I was 6'5" and than spawned a discussion about height. They complained that at only a hair over 5 foot life is harder for them. I wasn't quick witted enough to fire right back but after a bit of deliberations I have now created a list of hardships that plague we taller than average folks.

Y'all know by know I have a penchant for Top 10 list so here they are in reverse order or life altering impact.

 10) Due to my height, I will never be crowed world Limbo champ.

9) My odds of being struck by lightening, especially here in the tree deprived Texas Panhandle, are greater than those built closer to the ground.

8) I have a hell of a time folding my legs into most roller coaster cars and then when i do my knees stick up thus preventing the safety bar from fitting as snug as it does for others thereby increasing my fear factor and upping the potential of a life ending heart attack.

7) My feet tend to hang off motel mattresses increasing my chances of catching a cold due to frost bitten tootsies.


6) I am clumsy and despite this assertion I have routinely been selected far to soon in man a pickup basketball game only to gravely disappoint the person doing the picking. My vertical jump is just shy of 2 inches and that fact renders me useless beneath the net. it is never fun to disappoint others.

5) Airplane seats. They suck and those damn trays whack me in the knee and do not sit evenly if my feet are flat on the floor.  

4)  Dance partners. Now I'm no Fred Astair but on occasion I enjoy a bit of two stepping and it's cumbersome to bend to accommodate shorter women. Luckily, Jennifer is my dance partner throughout life at at 5' 10 she is on the taller side herself. 

3) Low Hanging Ceiling fans do not make the best barbers.


2) You go out and try to find jeans with a 40" inseam. 


and the numero uno disadvantage to being taller than the average bear? 

1) Vertical Sex - yep you've seen those steamy shower scenes in movies. Read about the viral man pinning his lover against the wall and engaging in some sultry lovemaking while standing.

Well guess what? That section of the Kama Sutra doesn't work too well when you gotta turn into crouching tiger, in order to hide your dragon.

The Handwriting Is On The Wall

This post may seem a tad familiar to longtime readers but trust me when I say it's different, even if the story I tell is one I've told before.

I made good grades in elementary school. Save for 1 particu;ar class I made nearly all A's with an occasional B. And yet, only once did I make the A/B honor roll, because there was one subject that never, no matter how hard I tried, could I earn higher than a C.

 That subject ... handwriting.

My cursive was, and is to this day horrendous. I tried hard. my mom made me sit and write for hours but I simply could not turn those curves into anything resembling nice handwriting. Trust me when I say doctors are envious of my shaky penmanship. One a very nice teacher gave me a B in the last 6 weeks. She even said to me,  "Travis you're handwriting has not improved one bit, but I know you work hard at it and you are so smart you deserved to be on the honor roll at least once."

Thank you for that Mrs Davis!

Then there was my 3rd grade teacher. One Mrs. McCarty. She had no pity, love or undersatnding for my plight.

But one day I was being forced to wait no so patiently at the beauty shop where my mom worked. The magazine choices were dismal so I was only perusing pictures when I spotted an article. Long story short this article was about a study that concluded people with the worst handwriting often have high IQ. It stated that sometimes peoples brain works faster than their hand.

So I clipped the article and carried it off to school.

however i erred when I handed to Mrs. McCarty and said, "Look, this explains why my handwriting is not nearly as neat as yours."

Boy was she pissed. I got a D that six weeks. The only one I ever got in all my school years.

Flash forward a quarter of a century.

My oldest son writes just like I did. He struggles mightily to lay down legible sentences.

Recently, I heard many states are cutting cursive handwriting from the curriculum.

I spotted at least three facebook message crying foul over these plans, but I for one think the time has come to ax it.

Wasting precious class time to teach kids cursive in this technological age asinine. When was the last time you used cursive for anything other than your signature?

Some people will rally around tradition and bemona its departure as a shame. They will yell but cutting it from school will makes lost art. Yeah, so is churning your own butter, but I don't see you getting up at 4 AM to milk Betsy.

What say you?

Tuesday #4

Tuesdays, here on the blog, are dedicated to holding myself accountable. Each week I going to toss out the facts and figures of my goals.

On this Tuesday, January 25th I weigh in at 280 pounds.

Again only a one pound drop. I think I'd have dipped below the 280 mark if not for those blasted Girl Scouts. jennifer brouhg home a box of those tasty little chocolate, coconut, and caramel circles. Those Caramel Delights taunted me until I ate every last one. To give you an idea of my current look, here is a shot taken of me and my friend Caron Guillo at her booksigning party on Saturday.

Caron's debut novel is out and titled An Uncommon Crusade. Buy a copy today.




My goal is to read 75 books this year.




I finished one book this week to bring my total to 4 on the year. Several people had told me how much the Sweet Potatoe Queen books reminded them of my Feedstore Chronicles so I finally read one, The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love.



To be honost I was disappointed. Sure there were funny parts but I truly think this is one best read by women. I din't usually say that as I have read and enjoyed a good many romance and women's fiction novels, but this book struck me as sort of a southern Sex and and the City. Sex in the sticks if you will. I'm taking HBO series as I've never read Candace Bushnell. My wife was a fan, but Sex and the City's humor missed for me as did the Sweet Potato Queens'. Here is a sample to illistrate my inability to relate ...

And panties -- Lord, deliver us from pretty panties. You just put them on and they immediately wedge up your butt, you don't even have to move. Thongs were a perfectly natural progression -- why not save all that extra material, they all end up in the same place anyway.



I sent a dozen queries on a variety of projects this week, but once again I ... 


Failed to so much as open the file on my bull semen story so that word count stays at 16,212.  this week. I did finish continued editing and tweaking Waiting On The River to get entered in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest.I also entered the opening of the bull semen story in Nathan Bransford's ...
The 4th Sort-of-Annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge.

I was fortunate enough to beat out over 2500 other talented writers to win the 3rd Sort of Annual challenge with the opening of the Feedstore Chronicles and I've entered again to try and defend my crown ...

Grace McEwen was eight the first time she stood outside a closed door and listened to her mother squeal and sigh with pleasure. Thirty-one years later, she found the sounds just as awkward. Maybe more so, now that she fully understood the source of her mom’s vocal gratification. 

Two Line Tuesday is a blog feature started by the fabulous Women of Mystery. Click on over to their site for link to other writers sharing their work

Back In the Day #3 a MTM post

A few weeks back, in one of these posts about my childhood here in Amarillo, Texas I mentioned that my neighborhood was on the far southeast corner of town. I wasn't joking and i recently captured some pictures to show y'all what I mean.


This is the view looking east from 32nd street where it dead ends into Eastern.

This is of course the sign at the intersection of 32nd and Easter.

And should you have your mind in the gutter and look down just a few few away from taht stop sign you will see this ... some of my earliest surviving writing.

 I scrawled my name in that patch of wet concrete  in the mid eighties. '85 or '86 if I had to guess. I got lucky in that we'd had a dusting of snow so the letters show up pretty good in this photo. My graffiti has not relevancy to this post other than it's location and to further prove I was a hooligan but I felt compelled to add it to the mix.

This post is actually about the only time in my life I've ever been shot at. With real lead and not paintballs or some other sort of harmless projectile.

The farmland that lay just beyond Eastern street belong to a grouchy, ill tempered man. He lived in a run down house that used to sit on this parcel of land but as you can see by this photo all that survives now is an old tin barn.

About half a mile south east of this shot, on the corner of this particular land there used to be a pond. it too is gone now, but back when this was a working farm actively growing crops the pond was what we call in this part of the world a tailwater pit.

You see farmers here have to irrigate their crops and back in the day they did this via irrigation pipe


Here are a couple of shots I borrowed from Google images to show you what I mean since the actual one of my childhood are no longer there.

The water that did not soak into the ground would run down hill and collect in the tailwater pit or pond where it could be pumped back up to the uphill side of the field and used again.

Some farmers stocked fish in these ponds.

Some Farmers do not like boys to grab a fishing pole and ride their bikes out to these ponds.

Some farmers do not like it when said boys catch the fish they stocked in their ponds.

Some farmers load up shotguns and pepper the the area to get their point across.

No I was never in any real danger given the distance the farmer would pop of shots at us, but when you are a kid that kind of logic does not enter your mind when fear kicks in.

Of course neither does the realization you really are trespassing. And even though we got "shot at" on several different occasion we kept venturing back. One it was the closest place to fish and two, the danger level added to the sense of of adventure.

So yeah, I can honestly say I've risked taking a bullet, or at least buckshot just to sink a worm.

You ever been shot at? Risked life an limb in pursuit of a hobby? Defaced communal property and had it last a quarter of a century?

For more My Town Monday posts check out the official MTM blog.

It Ain't the Starch Making Those Clothes Stiff

I've tried to resist blogging about this. Really I did but some things simply must be said.

I'll warn you. If you are have an intense liking for Jolly Rancher candy, or march in the Prude Parade you might wanna bail now and skip this post.

Now I give you Chelsea ...



Going beyond the info from that clip let me relay the gist of this gal's situation. Her husband is uanble to please her sexually so in order to find satisfaction she flipped her laudry basket upside down and taped a jolly rancher to the corner.With the candy securely in place this woman would get down on her knees and gyrate her way to Happyville.


Let's start at the beginning of this trainwreck of a story.
 
Where the hell did Oprah find these people, and has there ever been anyone more desperate to get on TV that this couple?

Personally, I think Oprah has an agenda here. My guess is she own a large amount of stock in the jolly rancher company and is look to drive up demand. But let's toss aside Oprah's involvement and focus on the couple.

In the spirit of positive feedback let me applaud the woman for her ingenuity. I mean come on this is some MacGyver style masturbating ...

I've got a laundry basket, a Jolly Rancher, some sticky tape , and a a yearning deep down in my loins. What ever am I going to do?

And it does but the Jolly in Jolly Rancher. One has to wonder of she liked the cinnamon for that extra burn?


Now I've had a Jolly Rancher or two in my day. (When I say had, I mean consumed, not had in the sense this lady has had them.) And you have to be careful because if you bite down at all these suckers will really stick in your teeth. I'm a wee bit concerned this lady might tense up at the wrong time and give whole new defintion to the term sugarpuss.

 And what of this poor gal's husband? The Dude, couldn't outperform a Jolly Rancher? What is half an inch long? I cannot imagine heading into work the day after this aired. The guys I work with would be on me like a lonely housewife on a laundry basket.

I bet they nicknamed him the Candyman and keep humming that damned Sammy Davis Jr tune every time he walks into a room. Actually a look at the lyrics of the chorus kind of take on a new meaning after hearing this story.

Yeah, yeah, yeah
Who can take tomorrow, dip it in a dream
Separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream
The Candy Man, the Candy Man can
The Candy Man can 'cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good
Yes, the Candy Man can 'cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good
a-Candy Man, a-Candy Man, a-Candy Man
Candy Man, a-Candy Man, a-Candy Man
Candy Man, a-Candy Man, a-Candy Man
That song will never sound quite the same.