It Was The Best of Times, It Was The WOrst Of Times

Last week I had the pleasure of experiencing my 20th high school reunion. Caprock High -- Class of 1991.

It really is both strange, yet enjoyable to hang out with folks you mostly have not see in two decades. Some things change. Some do not.  Some turned out exactly how you imagined and others are shocking.

I can't say what people expected of me but they all seemed to be shocked by my size. You see for most of my school days I was of average size. Here is a shot of my 4th grade class.

Can you pick me out?

3rd row from the bottom. Right hand side. Dorky kids in the gimongous glasses and Nike sweatshirt.

Directly behind my right shoulder is my best friend Mark. He was the ladies man of our class and always taller than most.

Here is a shot of our group last weekend. 21  folks in this picture from a class of nearly 300. A dismal turnout but we had fun so it was their loss. There were a few others who attended other functions or left before this shot.

There are only four people that appear in both this and my 4th grade shot. I'll give a free copy of my E-Book Whispers to anyone who can correctly guess the two other than Mark and myself. I'm at the back over on the right hand side. Mark is immediately to my right. Despite our once being the best of friends, I have spoken to him exactly twice since graduation. First at our 10th and now at our 20th Reunion. And yet our conversation were never strained or awkward. We simply picked up chatting as if we'd gone to lunch yesterday. His wife shared a great story Mark's dad had told her about the first time Mark mentioned me in Kindergarten.

Mark went to his dad and asked if he could spend the night at my house. His dad said,  Son, I don't know these people and I can't just send you off to stay with people I don't know. "But Dad," Mark said. "Travis is one of my three favorite people in the world." "And who are the other two?" his dad asked. "Well," Mark said, "There's you, God, and Travis."

He got to spend the night and better than three decades later I'm proud to say we are still friends. Though I am fairly certain my ranks has slipped a few spots over the years given Mark is married with three boys of his own these days.

But truthfully, it was nice to see and talk with everyone, even the people I wasn't friends with in school. In one breath it felt like a lifetime ago since we were sitting in Government or History class and the next second it felt as if it all happened yesterday. Of course being a bullshitter of long standing I told a story or ten as I tend to do anytime I have a willing or at least captive audience.

 Here I am talking to Mark and his wife. Yes those are my Shiners on the table. One coworker worried after seeing this and several other shots on Facebook that people would get the wrong idea about me. As I told him, "I'm a writer, I have no kind of quality reputation to uphold. People expect us to be both liars and boozers. long as we are entertaining they are not disappointed by either facet of our being." 

But you know what I like best about this picture? The look on my wife's face to the left of me. No doubt she
has heard whatever tale I was telling a dozen or more times and still she graces me with that gleaming smile rather than a roll of her eyes, or a shake of her head.

Gobble, Gobble

For Day 5 of my blog every day of August campaign, I am over here, talking turkey.

Write Like Your Momma Is Dead

Write like your momma is dead.

This remains as perhaps the most useful writing advice I've ever received over the years, and it sounds simple enough, but I have not always had the courage to follow it.

Oh I thought I was being bold, daring, even when i wasn't and still there are times when I type out a sentence or paragraph and then delete it with the thought, No, I can't write that. Or I come up with an idea for a story and think wow, that would be great but people will think I've completely lost my mind. More and more, I eventually say to hell with what somebody might think. It's how or what I want to write and damn it I'm going to write it that way. I'm not all the way there yet, but I do believe of letting it all hang out these days.

Write like your momma is dead came from a fellow writer at a class I took some 11 years back, but an agent once told me something very similar. If your writing doesn't piss off somebody, chances are you are writing strong enough to truly reach anybody. 

At least for me this statement has a slightly different meaning as it's more about passion to your words than self censorship.It's the difference between the married couple that only has sex on the first and third Saturday of each month and the couple that sneaks off the the janitor closet when the PTA meeting gets dull. Passion, it seems to me is the key sustaining anything is this life. Which leads me to another statement about writing that has always stuck with me.

Talent, luck, and perseverance. To get published at least once, a writer needs only one of these things. To have a career they need only two.

I'm especially interested to hear what my fellow writer think about this statement.

I'd like to think I have some writing talent and generally speaking I've always considered myself extremely lucky in life, and given the fact I'm still knocking on doors and rattling cages better than a decade after entering this business I do believe I am persistent. And yet, I at this point I can't honestly call my writing endeavors a career. It's certainly more than a hobby, but given that it's my 40 hours a week at the Post Office that pays the majority of the bills I can't truly say I have a writing career.

Another literary agent once told me ... No one under the age of 35 should attempt tow rite fiction as they do not have enough life experience to pull it off. I was 28 at the time. Her words pissed me off, motivated me. I was certain I'd prove her wrong by publishing at least one, if not more, novels before I turned 35. I'm not 38 nearly 39. She wins. I lost, but I still think her statement was bullshit. So I didn't disprove it these people did.

Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird was released 9 months before her 35th birthday.  
Stephen King was a mere boy of 26 when Doubleday bought Carrie.
and here is more authors who published their first book before 35 ...

• Junot Diaz – 29
• Thomas Pynchon – 26
• Margaret Atwood – 30
• John Barth – 27
• Ayn Rand – 29
•  Ernest Hemingway – 27
•  John Steinback – 27
• Joan Didion – 29
• F. Scott Fitzgerald – 24
• Francine Prose – 27
• Kurt Vonnegut – 30
• Salman Rushdie – 28
• Italo Calvino – 24
• E.L. Doctorow – 29

So tell me, what do y'all think about these statements? What writing advice or statements have most stuck in your mind over the years? Ever had sex in a janitor closet? I'm only kidding about the last one. Unless of course you feel the need to confess. In that case I warn you, anything you say just may end up in a book. Yeah it will be a book published by an author older than 3 but then again it's never too late to chase a dream.  

Rise and Shine

There we were. me, my wife and our two boys watching Great White Sharks breach for whales. Shark week on Discover is a big thing in our household since Zalen, our 8year old considers himself the second coming of Jacques Cousteau.

A commercial for another show, Auction Wars I think, comes on. A husband complains that his wife spent 4 grand for a book and she retaliates by saying her husband spent 200 on a stripper pole.

Ten or fifteen minutes go by before Zalen says, "Mom, what is a stripper pole?"

His question certainly flustered my wife but not nearly as much as when our 10 year old piped up and said, "It's a pole naked women hold onto when they dance on for money."

My wife immediately shot me a glance. She didn't say a word but the question was there in her eyes. Did you tell him about stripper poles.

In self defense I turned to Tarek. "Where did you learn about stripper poles?"

"In a magazine," he answered.

My wife's brows arched higher.

"What magazine? I inquired.

"One of those fishing ones," Tarek answered. "In the back they have an ad for a stripper pole alarm clock."

So what did I do? I googled it and found this.

At least it doesn't spray glitter too.

Meat Me Over There

Here we are on Day 2 of my post every day for the month of August quest. However, I never said all the daily posts would appear here so today you'll find me at my other blog ... Lettuce Is The Devil.

Red Dirt Rovings

For My Town Monday I thought I'd travel 240 miles east of Amarillo and show y'all a few sights from my recent trip to Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma City is the capital and the largest city in Oklahoma. With a population of 580,000 it ranks 31st among United States cities. It's entire metro area is home to 1.2 million Okies, but don't hold that against the place for there are a lot of things to do in the area. Being from Texas I had to get at least one dig in regards to our stately neighbors. Texas and Oklahoma has a good healthy rivalry that spreads to many areas but is most prominent in collegiate athletics and mumbled cursings about how the others drive.

On April 19th 1995 the Alfred P Murrah federal building was bombed and 168 people lost their lives.

Today the site is the home of a memorial and looks like this ...

It is a very somber place and standing, looking at the 168 empty chairs is a stark reminder of how fragile life can be.

Oklahoma City is home to a water park named White Water Bay and an amusement park of medium size named Frontier City. Neither rank as tops in their field but both provide good family fun at fairly reasonable prices. Especially if you are a tightwad like me, and gather coupons.

The city is also home to The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum and the National Softball Hall of Fame, but I have not been to either in years so I can't weigh in on any current exhibits or features.

My family did visit the Science Museum of Oklahoma and we had a blast. The boys learned to ride a segway, flew a stunt plane in a simulator and discover whet it feels like to stand outside in a  tornado. We spent over 4 hours exploring the place and could have spent twice that much had time permitted.

Along with the NBA Thunder, the team is home to several minor league teams such as the Oklahoma Barons of the American Hockey League. The Barons are the top affiliate for the Edmonton Oilers, but of course this isn't hockey season so my family had to settle for a trip to Bricktown Ballpark to watch the AAA Oklahoma Redhawks, the Houston Astro's top minor league team play.

The crowd was sparse and the Redhawks lost but my boys had a blast and both of them snagged foul balls to take home as souvenirs.

And of course the University of Oklahoma is just south of the city in Norman to provide a variety of minor league sports. (Sorry my long standing dislike of the Sooners prompted yet another dig)

Oklahoma City has done a great job transforming their old warehouse district into an entertainment district known as Bricktown complete with restaurants, shops, a riverwalk, nightclubs, and manhole covers.

Manhole covers you say?

Yep. And only in Oklahoma would a sewer be considered sanitary.

Dang it, there I go again. Guess you can take the Texan to Oklahoma but you can't take Texan out of him even while he's there.

Czech Please

Blogging is like exercising. The longer you go without doing it the harder it is to get back in the groove.

But I've decided to challenge myself and post a new blog every single day in August. Can I do it? Hell if I know, but I'm gonna try and this spot is sort of my cleansing, info dump of all the things I've meant to blog in recent weeks but simply have not made the time to do so.

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I recently took a trip to Oklahoma City and while I plan to share a few of those sights and experiences let me say that was I not a dedicated and faithful husband and father I could very well be writing this update from the Czech Republic.

You see the World Cup of softball was going on in Oklahoma wile we were there and many of the countries were staying at our hotel. The Czech girls, one in particular were strikingly beautiful and that accent, well had she asked I just might have defected.

The Japanese girls were staying on my floor and it's no wonder the USA women beat them in the final because those Japanese players stayed up half the night making all kinds of damn noise.

My 20th class reunion is this weekend. Last night I partook in the pre-party mixer and had a blast. Several of my former classmates commented that they regularly read this blog as well as anything else I have out and available, but the highlight was when my old buddy Marcos Martinez (see I told you I'd give you kudos) walked up and handed me a beer. Not any beer I might add but an ice cold Shiner Bock. Marcos, who I hadn't seen or spoken to in 20 years said, "Here man, I bought this Shiner for you because I know its your favorite from always reading your blog and Facebook posts."

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I recently finished reading blog pal Charles Gramlich's western story collection Killing Trail on my nook. Like Charles I cut my reading teeth on Louis L'Amour and along with the great original short stories Charles included a fine essay about Mr. L'Amour and his influence. If you have an e-reader and love a good western I highly recommend you purchase Killing Trail.


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You know how clerks at the store use that felt marker to check you money. A yellow mark is supposed to mean it's legit and a black mark means it's fake? Well, I got to wondering where those marks go? I mean I never get a fifty that has dozens of yellow marks on it, so I did a google search and while I never discovered the answer to my original question I did find out those pens are nearly worthless.

The pens check for starch in the paper and given that money is made mostly of cotton it has none so a bogus bill made from starchy paper will turn the ink of the pen black. But most counterfeiters these days take small denomination bills and bleach them and then print a larger denomination so the pen will show it as a legit bill even though it is not. Also any paper even a plain sheet of computer paper will show as legit according to the pen if you first spray it with hairspray. And real money will show as fake if you use spray starch in it so I guess the moral of this story is keep your cash away from your ironing.

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I am sick of summer. It's been miserable hot and dry here this year. Right at 2 inches of rain since January 1st. The lakes are drying up making fishing bad, the electric and water bills are soaring, now that Game of Thrones and Treme are over there isn't a damn thing worth watching on TV.

So Fall needs to hurry the hell up. I'm excited about football. My beloved Huskers are in a new conference ready to show Phats and the Big 10 boys what real competition is all about, The Saints very well could be better than their Super Bowl season, and since I wrote something close to a jillion High School profiles for Top O' Texas football magazine I even pumped for some real Friday Night Lights action. And Boardwalk Empire.

Thank God for HBO, good, reads, Shiner Bock beer, and of course football.