Texas! Come for the weather...hunker down for the stories

Snow Cow?

Lucky for me Sheriff Tom found me before I froze to death. The storm hit hard all of a sudden. Snow and ice came down so thick visibility was nearly zero. I missed the curve and slid off the road, into the culvert. My cell phone was out of range so all I could do was wait and hope. The rest of my sales trip was cancelled, no question.

“I had Mike put the chains on my tires two days ago,” Tom said. “Don’t get snow like this too much but I gotta be prepared. Mike’s on his way, tow your car. Want some coffee?”

The Texas panhandle is wide-open country with small towns sometimes a hundred miles apart. Weather reports here aren’t much for accuracy. Gully washers or freak snowstorms are just as likely one day or the next no matter what the weather service says. The news said a storm was on the way, possible three to four inches of snow. The only part they got right was about the storm heading my way, dead wrong about the three or four inches.

 

By the time we got to Jackie’s Cold Day Inn in Panhandle the snow was coming down thicker and heavier. Tom said Amarillo had more than a foot of snow with more coming. Jackie’s regulars were already there, plus a few folks who lived outside the city limits and couldn’t risk driving on icy roads. Also, Jackie’s had a huge wood stove, a storeroom full of beer, whiskey and snacks, a pretty good way to ride out a blizzard.

Les was at the usual corner table near the door. His General Store and most of the other businesses closed up soon after it started snowing. Doc Harris and Mike came in together, stomping their shoes to get the ice off, took off their coats, hung them on hooks behind our table. Mike was smiling, his towing service making him money. We said our hellos and waited for Wendy to bring our drinks.

Tom took a sip of his drink, let it trickle down his throat, and said, “Back in ’94 we had two foot of snow New Year’s Day. The whole town shut down for three days, everybody stranded at home. Some folks got low on food, had a coupla cases of frostbite but not serious.

“Only problem I had was old Ben Praxis. Right from the start he was on his CB callin’ for help. I said, ‘Ben, you got food? He says, yes. You got firewood for your stove? He says, yes. Do you need medicine? He says, no. I say, why are you calling me? He says, the storm knocked my antenna down and I can’t get any reception on the TV; my wife’s on my back about it. You don’t come over help me fix it one of us is gonna get killed.

“That was Monday and Tuesday. Then Wednesday he didn’t call. I tried raising him on the CB but he didn’t pick up. I thought maybe something’s gone wrong so I tell Deputy Dudley go check on ‘em, call for help if you need it. So Dudley rides over in his Jeep, nothing wrong except the antenna’s down. He helps fix it. Old Ben says, ‘Deputy, I can’t thank you enough. One more day missin’ Wheel of Fortune, Janie woulda brained me with a fryin’ pan.’

“Now, Dudley isn’t known for his sense of humor. I don’t recall ever hear him tell a joke in all the years he’s been my Deputy. When he’s done with the antenna, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out two paper tags on a string. He says, ‘Can you put these in the fire for me?’  Ben says, ‘What are they?’ ‘They’re toe tags, your name on one, hers on the other.’”

Jackie tore herself away from the bar supposedly to bring clean ashtrays to our table. She was laughing quietly to herself, shaking her head as she replaced the ashtrays and put the empty glasses and bottles on her tray.

“Oh, that Harley”, she said, looking back towards the bar where Harley Carson was trying to get Wendy’s attention. She kept moving, pretending to hear other customers calling her away.

“He was going on about how do we know the Weather Channel isn’t playing taped re-runs from last year, ‘specially in the summer. TV stations have re-runs all the time, he says. The weather predictions are mostly wrong, too. I mean, the folks there gotta take vacations, right? How about if they all get the flu at the same time or something. And they’re on 24 hours a day. Think about it. Gotta be re-runs.

“So I said, ‘Harley, one way you can prove it to videotape the Weather Channel on the 4^th of July, then play it the 4^th of July next year’. If it’s a re-run you’ll know for sure, right?

“He looks at me like I gave him the best idea ever. He says, ‘Jackie, can I borrow your VCR?’”

Tom pointed at Harley with his chin, “Doc, how old is Harley? 25? 30?”

“He’s 27 according to his medical records. Why?”

One way to learn by doing

“Just wondering. Seems to me there’s three ways people learn. Some learn by reading like Doc Harris and Milo over at the craft shop. Some learn by watching. Rollie can’t read but you only have to show him how to do something one time, he won’t forget, guaranteed. Then you got Harley Carson. He’ll pee on an electric fence every time. I never could figure out how he made it this long. For Harley time is right now and only right now. ‘Bout the only time he thinks about tomorrow is in winter when it snows, like it scares him or something. Nearly shot him one time during a snowstorm.

“It was night, freezing cold. It snowed during the day, turned to sleet after dark, ice everywhere. I just got back from the Lazy Bones Motel. Some folks stuck in the snow outside a town, got ‘em to the motel for the night. Anyway, I went to my office, told the dispatcher I was headin’ to Jackie’s, call me if you need to. Jenna says ok, bring me some coffee when you come back, all I got is yesterday’s.

“So, I’m sitting here with my Jack Daniels double shot thinking about going home to my warm bed when Jenna calls. Trouble at the new take-out place on 6^th street, some kinda fight she says.

“I get to The Call Grill, there’s chairs and tables upside down, scattered all over, the workers bunched up in a corner, scared, and Harley, roaring drunk, next to the pizza oven, a chair leg in one hand.

“The manager says Harley came in drunk as hell, goes to the pizza oven and opens the door.  Just stands there facing the fire with his eyes closed. The manager tells him to get out, Harley says no, it’s cold.

450 degrees F

“So the manager, the cook, and dishwasher get together and try to run him out. Harley’s a big sumbitch. He’s also done a lotta fighting, wins this one easy. That’s when they called me.”

“Excuse me, Sheriff”, I said. “What’s Harley’s problem with snow?”

“Goes back to when Harley was 17 years old. He hurt a guy real bad and the judge looked at his record, said, ‘Harley Carson, you’re turning 18 next week. Now I’m giving you a choice. I can send you to the County lockup for 2 years or I can dismiss the charges if you join the Armed Forces. I took Harley to the Navy recruiting station in Lubbock, signed him up for a four year hitch. And just like that he was gone but not for long.

“The Navy didn’t put him out to sea. They sent him to a Navy base in Kodiak Island, Alaska. That’s where they have cold weather training for Navy Seals. Well, you know just from looking, Harley’s built like a walrus, not a Navy Seal. No, they had other plans. They tried to make him a cop in the Shore Patrol but that didn’t last long. They tried everything to make him useful but finally decided the only thing he was good for was guard duty, meaning he had to stand watch or patrol the Navy base.

“Anybody been in the service knows if you cause trouble, you’re gonna get the worst jobs. In Kodiak, the worst job for a guard is patrolling from midnight to 5:00 AM. no matter the weather, clear night, rain, snow.

Below Zero all night long

“I could be wrong but Kodiak probly means something in native Alaskan, something like ‘this weather really sucks’. I looked it up. A hot day in Kodiak happens in July, 55 degrees at high noon. Most of the year the temperatures near freezing or below.

“Harley’s Harley, so you can figure out for yourself, he got in trouble with his CO and wound up pulling patrol duty night after night. Most anybody would get the message but not Harley. The only thing he learned was being cold was something he’d never do again.

“Look at him now. He’s about as close to Jackie’s stove as he can without catching fire. Jackie knows about him and the Navy so she lets him be.”

“So what happened that you almost shot him at The Call Grill”, I asked.

He gave me a serious look, leaned in close and half-whispered, “Just so you know, I’ve never pulled my gun long as I been Sheriff except the one time I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.”

Doc Harris, Les, and Mike chuckled; Jackie patted me on the shoulder. They’d heard this one before. I tried not to look embarrassed.

Warming up to his story Sheriff Tom said, “Well, it mighta come to shooting but I’ve known Harley since he was born. I seen him at his worst. I still can’t figure how he ain’t killed somebody yet. Just lucky, I think. A man like him it’s like God or Nature never took the training wheels off his brain. To make him think you gotta take it slow, wait for the pieces of the puzzle to make a picture in his mind.

“I set a chair upright about 10 feet away from ‘im and straddled it, relaxed. Harley’s got fire in his eyes. He thinks he can take me, not a thought about what happens after if he does.

“I say, ‘Harley, pretty cold out, huh?’

“He nods. I say, ‘just like in Kodiak?”’

“He nods again. I say, ‘Harley, you’re not in Kodiak now. You’re home. You got a warm bed waiting for you there. If I take you down, you’ll be warm in my drunk tank. Pick one or the other, you won’t be cold tonight, honest truth.

“I wait while he thinks it over, then he says, ‘Sheriff, you ain’t taking me nowhere’, and he’s tapping the chair leg on his thigh. He’s starting to breathe hard, winding up for what’s next.

“I stay quiet for a minute, then I say, ‘Harley, you been to Sunday school when you were a kid, right?’

“He hesitates, thinking back I guess, then he nods yes.

“Remember the story about David and Goliath? Little kid with a slingshot, takes down a giant, wins the day. Everybody’s happy except Goliath’s friends. Remember that?

“He smiles, remembering. Then the smile goes away, he takes a step towards me, swinging the chair leg slowly, time to go.

Sometimes you get lucky

“I stand up, put my hand on my holster, unsnap the buckle. I say, “Harley, that bible story is real nice but I’ll tell you what, in real life a trained giant with a sword kills the kid every time. That chair leg don’t stand a chance against my .45.

“He gives up, spends the night in my jail. The next day Judge Stevens gives him three days for D and D, makes him pay for the damage.”

Sheriff Tom drained the last of his bourbon, leaned back in his chair, looked my way and said, “Son, you buy the next round, I’ll tell you all about the man I shot in Reno.”

Les, tipped his drink dry and said, “Yeah, it’s a hell of a story. Johnny Cash wrote a song about it. It was all over the radio a while back.”

You better not cry, you better not shoot...

Every year Jackie’s Cold Day Inn has a special night a week before Christmas. Jackie called it “Good Lord, I can’t wait for Christmas to be here and gone.” She welcomes the townspeople to her bar to take a break from “getting ready for Christmas.” There aren't any big stores in Panhandle so they have to shop in Amarillo or Lubbock, the big malls, wall to wall people, nasty as hell, full parking lots, high prices, and non-stop Christmas carols as soon as you hit the city limits.

Too many people, not enough space

For the people of Panhandle shopping in the big stores is especially stressful. They're used to browsing slowly through Les’s General Store, Milo’s Hobbies & Crafts, or Laurie’s Gift Shop, taking their time to choose the perfect gifts. Getting pushed and shoved in overcrowded aisles at J.C. Penney and Sears in Amarillo so you didn’t have time to do anything except read the damn price tags made for high stress; and please stop with Frosty and Rudolph, for god’s sake. Everybody KNOWS Santa Claus is coming to town. Enough, already.

So on “Good Lord, I can’t wait” night the regulars and other townsfolk go to Jackie’s to unwind. Christmas songs are banned. If you say Merry Christmas you have to put a dollar in bowl on the bar, the collection going to the old folks home.

No one remembers exactly how “Good Lord, I can’t wait,” went from a night of complaining about Christmas to a night of old stories retold, new ones put up for examination and improvement for next year. The changeover was gradual. There were some who kinda liked to bitch about the holiday season out of habit. Old Pastor Michaels, a few drinks in, would bemoan about how Christmas had become a commercial event rather than a commemoration of the birth of his Savior. One year he even held rallies in front of some stores who mixed manger scenes with modern characters like Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus. It was a sacrilege, he said, and called down the wrath of God on the shopkeepers. Eventually he conceded that the War on Christmas wasn’t a real thing so he gave up the histrionics, settling instead for sacramental Irish coffee at Jackie’s.

I’d been to four or five “Good Lord, I can’t wait” gatherings in the past. I always tried to arrange my sales route so that I could be in Panhandle that night. This time my boss believed me when, pinching my thumb and index fingers together, told him that I was this close to selling Jess Elliot on a new tractor. The truth was that in all the years I’d been visiting Elliot I’d never sold him anything at all. He kept a tight fist around his money and used his tools until there was absolutely no utility left in them. His ranch hands used to joke that the tires on his pickup were so thin you could see the air inside. I’d pitch Elliot again if he showed up at the bar.

True to his promise, Sheriff Tom saved me a chair at his corner table near the front door. Les, Doc Harris, and Doris, Doc’s receptionist, were already there. Mike and Gary from the Conoco station were at the next table laughing it up with their girlfriends, Debbie and Tanya, paralegals at the courthouse who preferred honest, straight talking guys to the lizard lawyers they fought off every day. A story went around for a while that one day when Debbie, all primped up in a sharp business suit, and Mike in his greasy coveralls were talking on the courthouse steps when an out of town lawyer came up, puffed up his chest and said, “Miss, is this man bothering you?” And Debbie says, “Not yet, but I’m hoping.” Then, just for grins, Mike put his finger on one nostril, turned his head sideways and blew out the other nostril.

I spotted Jim & Angel at the far end of the bar with two older women. It was unusual for them to be at Jackies. It wasn't their kind of place, not rowdy enough, no jukebox, no live band to get their blood up. Tom explained that Jim & Angel had taken their moms shopping in Lubbock for the day and brought them here for hot cocoa and cookies. I noticed Jim & Angel were drinking out of mugs, too. “You better take a picture. You won’t see that again,” said Doc Harris. “Those two might make it past middle age but I’m not making book on it.”

Tom said, “Oh, they ain’t so bad. They skate awful close to the line but they been that way since they were kids. Angel was 12 or 13 first time I pulled her in.”

Doc Harris stirred his drink with his finger. “I remember that. Not sure what lesson she learned but it wasn’t the one Tom intended.”

Tom continued, “Milo, Les, and Laurie at the gift shop told me they’d been hit by a shoplifter. Curious thing was the only thing stolen was angels, any kind, figurines, pictures, stuffed toys, and such. Then when that was picked clean, other animals started disappearing including flying pigs, cows, anything with wings. Shoplifting’s no surprise to any retailer, expects to lose some, cost uh doing business. But this was peculiar. Wasn’t any break in the case until I went to see my granddaughter at the school’s Christmas Pageant.”

Gesturing with his arm, looking over the crowd in the bar, he said, “A town this small, anything involving our kids is a big deal, sports, band, school plays, and decorating for Christmas. Well, we always have a Christmas program at school. It’s the same show every year. Sometimes the costumes are better, sometimes worse, but the story stays the same like it is in the Bible. So there I was sitting in the gym admiring the future of this city, listening to the chorus singing the same songs we all grew up with. The curtains pull back and there’s the kids in costume, Mary, Joseph, Jessie’s donkey, Tim’s calf, Baby Jesus doll in the crib, and one angel hovering over the scene, hanging off a rope, showing the shepherds and the Three Wise Men where the manger was. Everybody drew a breath at that angel. Seemed to me and probly everybody else right then and there that all angels were redheads in flowing white robes, light as air… and silver wings.

She looks like an angel

“Next morning I call Angel’s mom. I say take a peek in Angel’s bedroom and tell me what you see. She says, ‘K’ wait aminit.’ Comes back on the phone, she says, ‘Sheriff you better come on down here. I’ll make sure she doesn’t leave.’

“I don’t have to tell you what I found but I will anyway. Every surface in her room covered with angels and anything with wings – all the ones she stole, price tags still on. She had a little Christmas tree on her nightstand, angels hanging off every branch. Les and the others said just bring the stuff back and apologize and that was that, she’s just a kid.”

Doc Harris rubbed his eyes and said, “She and her sister, Gina, were always on the wild side. Never did anything really bad, like they just didn’t wanna be like everybody else. Go their own way in their own time. Later on, Angel met Jim, they been Jim & Angel, going their own way ever since.”

The bar was pretty full by nine o’clock. Ever so often there were loud cheers and choruses of “Put in a dollar, put in a dollar, dollar, dollar” whenever somebody violated the no “Merry Christmas” rule. The tip bowl was almost full. It took me a minute to understand that the goal was to fill it up and do some good for the old folks’ home.

Every time you say Merry Christmas an angel coughs up blood

The Sheriff motioned Jackie for another round of drinks and said he remembered a Christmas prank from years ago. “Never solved it. I had my suspicions but I couldn’t prove it. The DA called it pretty thin circumstantial evidence. Not enough.

“We were getting calls that somebody was shooting paint balls at the Christmas displays in folks’ front yards. At first it was random shots at houses then it got particular. Santa’s reindeer became targets. The first to get it was Rudolph. Clean kills, shot through the heart. Nothing got damaged, the paint balls were water color but attacking the Rudolph just weren’t right, making the little ones cry and all. I concluded that the shooter had to be a pretty good with firearms to make shots that accurate which meant that 95% of the men and women in the county  were suspects.

Just point and shoot

“The people of Panhandle take Christmas decorations seriously, a lotta peer pressure to fix your place up better n’ anybody else on the block. Competition gets silly sometimes but what the hell. I didn’t pay much mind to the paintball shootings. Holiday pranks are usually harmless.

“But this one got worse. The next attacks took out all the reindeer. Sometimes people stayed up all night hoping to catch the shooters. Nobody ever saw ‘em. All they knew was next morning on somebody’s lawn, Rudolph and his buddies were down, each one shot through the heart.”

Les rested his forearms on the table, leaned in a little, nodded towards the next table and said in a low voice, “Anybody meets Mike over there sees his coveralls, dirty fingernails and underestimates him right off. Even back in high school his teachers looked him over and steered him to the manual trades, sent him on to learn auto mechanics. Now, he’s a damn good mechanic. There’s not many engine problems he can’t fix but he’s a lot more than a motorhead.”

“Les is right,” the Sheriff added. “Understand that when the paint ball killings were going on I was busy with the white boys raising hell at Billy’s Last Stand and the Mexicans doing the same at Chato’s. Me and my deputy were busy every night. So one morning I bring my cruiser to Mike. I tell him change the oil, top off the other stuff. He sees the red paint on my shoes and says he’s been thinking about the paint ballers. I say, yeah, not paying much attention.

“He says, ‘Sheriff, I been thinking about those guys. They have a pattern and know what it is. I’m pretty sure I know where they’re gonna hit next.’

“So, maybe a little snarky, I tell ‘im, ‘Sure, Mike, gimme the time and place when you’re sure.’

“Two nights later I’m on patrol out by the train station, the dispatcher tells me there’s a problem at the Moore place, paint ballers but this time there’s gunfire. I turn on my siren, tell the dispatcher get my deputy, tell him meet me at Moore’s house ASAP.

“Dave’s Santa display is lifesize. Santa’s sleigh and reindeer go all the way across the front yard. From a distance they look like the real thing. Easy target I’m thinking. But gunfire? I’m hoping nobody’s injured or killed.

"The deputy and me get to Moore’s at the same time, sirens going, lights flashing. There’s people peeking out their windows, too scared to come out. I see the reindeer still standing, no paint splatters, look over on the porch and there’s Mr. Moore giving Santa a beer, laughing. Mrs. Moore laughing too, doubled over, holding her sides.

“Me and the deputy run up and say what’s going on. It’s Mike in a Santa suit.

“He says, ‘I told you, Sheriff. I figured out the pattern. Mr. Moore believed me and we set it up so I would sit in the sleigh and wait for the paint ballers, surprise ‘em when they showed up. I musta sat two hours in the sleigh, so still my legs were cramping. Plus I had to pee real bad. Anyways, I held on and they come creeping up in my line of sight. There’s two shooters, one bigger than the other. And I wait till they get close. They take aim at Rudolph but I pull up my shotgun, yell ‘ho, ho, ho, suckers’ and shoot over their heads.

“’Tell you what, my triple-aught 12 gauge makes some powerful noise when you shoot both barrels at once, specially here in the city. Those two kids, yeah, they were kids I could tell, probly and boy and a girl, couldn’t bail fast enough, they stumbled, tumbled, and really took off when I racked my shotgun and shot two more blanks at ‘em.’”

Guess who's on the naughty list

“Well, after that, the paint ball shootings stopped but I never found out who the shooters were.”

I saw Jim & Angel empty their mugs, get up and walk arm in arm towards the door, their moms in the lead. As they passed by our table Les called out, “Jim, calling it a night already?”

Jim stopped, tipped his hat, “Nah, we’re taking our moms on a tour of the Christmas displays. They’re bigger ‘n ever this year. I heard Dave Moore’s got new reindeer. Gonna have a look.”

An alternate history of the First Thanksgiving Day

The Star on the Mountain in El Paso, Texas

The first Thanksgiving Day took place in El Paso, Texas, the city where I was born.  What  happened was that in the 1500’s, long before there was TV, radio was the only way to hear the news and most people never heard about the first Thanksgiving in El Paso because radio reception wasn’t as good as it is now. Nobody could figure out how to connect to the Internet and there weren’t enough geeks to go around fixing everybody’s routers. As a result, the real story didn’t get much circulation.

On the first Thanksgiving Day the main course was barbecue ribs, not turkey because there weren’t any turkeys in El Paso. Back in the day there was a party of Spaniards traveling from Mexico to New Mexico in search of ingredients for making salsa. They had looked all over Mexico for hot peppers but didn’t find any. Besides that, they had no idea what peppers looked like. All they had was tomatoes, onions, and some garlic. Their leader, whose name had an equal number of vowels and consonants, heard that somewhere to the north there was a tribe of Apache Indians who had a hoard of peppers called Jalapeños. Not only did the Spaniards lack peppers, they were out of meat because they’d eaten all their cattle.

At the same time there was a team of Cowboys driving a small herd of cattle from Lubbock to El Paso to trade with the Apaches who lived in New Mexico. The Cowboys exchanged beef for peppers. At that time the exchange rate was two pony loads of peppers for one steer. It’s probably different now.

Through a series of telegrams they agreed to meet on the third Thursday of November at a mountain that had a huge illuminated star on the southeast face. The far off Spaniards saw the Star, took it as an omen and decided to investigate. They had to travel at night because they couldn’t see the Star in the daytime.

And it happened that the three parties, the Spaniards, Cowboys and the Apaches wound up at the same place by banks of the Rio Grande. At first they stayed in their own camps but around mid-day the Cowboys roasted some of their beef and the Apaches roasted their peppers. Pretty soon the air was filled with the aromas of beef and peppers. The Spaniards looked at their tomatoes, onions, and some garlic.

The Spaniards, the Cowboys, and the Apaches were raised to be kind to others by their Four Bears. I know what you’re thinking. The Goldilocks story you heard since you were babies only had three bears. They always leave out the fourth one: Grandpa Bear. Anyway, to make a long story short, the leaders met and agreed to have dinner together.

The Spaniards brought baskets of tomatoes and onions and some garlic. The Indians came with their ponies loaded with peppers and cornmeal while the Cowboys had beef. They sat around, each party eating what they had and telling campfire stories.

Nobody knows exactly when it happened but a Spaniard and an Apache mixed the tomatoes, onions, and garlic with some of the Apache’s peppers. Salsa was born! And it was good. They offered some to the Cowboys who slathered it on their beef ribs. It tasted soooo good they immediately offered some to their new friends. They ate and ate until they couldn’t take another bite and fell asleep before the end of the first half of the Dallas Cowboys/Washington Redskins football game.

The next morning they skipped breakfast because they were still full so they just had coffee. But before they parted company they agreed to meet again next year at the same time for another dinner. They reminded each other to follow the Star.

Everything I told you is true. You can look it up on the Internet. I heard a rumor that there is a YouTube video of that dinner but it’s only in black and white with no sound.

Be a good girl and give me the knife, Catalina.

This is a re-post of a story I wrote three or four years ago. It’s mostly fictional story about a family Thanksgiving dinner. The characters depicted are not actual people though some readers may recognize themselves or have relatives like them.


Someone suggested that I should include this story in some future book of my short stories but a court order forbids me from profiting from this work.
It’s a four-minute read. 

(Holiday fiction for the survivors)

I spend a lot of time on the internet reading political news blogs. Blogs that are published in the fall tend to focus on holiday themes – Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah, football, and shopping. Among the topics there are many bloggers who write nostalgically about going home for the holidays, meeting up with friends and family for get togethers full of cheer and bonhomie. There are also many, many other bloggers who are filled with dread at the thought of another bout of sibling rivalry replete with clashing social and political views. At the office we all hear about everyone’s dysfunctional families in which the teller of the tale is the only reasonable, sane person. Looking back at my own history I concur with that finding. I was the only sane and reasonable person at my family’s holiday parties. My brothers and sisters were all nuts.

How we remember it

How it probably was

Twenty years ago, there we were again at Mom & Dad’s house for the annual November family get together. We had arrived early as was our custom do some clean up, set up the adults table, the kids table, cool the wine and sneak in some early snacking – tamales, stuffed jalapenos, while avoiding the awful wine coolers my sister usually provided. She had a thing for wine coolers though they had passed out of fashion years before.

My Mom and Dad had gone into their bedroom with wineglasses and 2 bottles of good red. They would emerge in an hour or two, go to the den where the kids were watching MTV. This group had already learned to stay out of the way when the ‘adults’ start shooting.

Everything was ready. I was on my third Jack and Coke by the time Ed and Catalina showed up. My mind went back to the good weed I used to have a few years ago; the mellow stuff that let me take the bad with the good with equanimity. But there was no grass now so Jack would be my friend that night.

Intoxicants make me passive and accepting while they make Lorenzo more lecherous, Ed more voluble, and Catalina snarkier. Consuelo zones out on something but I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s Xanax. Dolores doesn’t change at all no how much what she drinks. She’s just pushy and nosy all the time. Her husband, Danny, is a man who can smile at everything from a cooing newborn to Freddy Krueger’s worst crimes with equal amusement. Mark and Kitty are the party poopers. Kitty takes these parties seriously and tries to be peace maker among the rest of us who are actively looking for a fight. Mark isn’t fun until he’s near passing out from too much alcohol

Catalina was the first to arrive bringing her famous Three Chocolate Enchilada Melt that everyone acclaimed but secretly tossed in the nearest trash receptacle every year. This time she brought twice as much. I had set out several trash cans in strategic locations around the house.

As always, Catalina was decked out in finery she got at Gilbert’s, a ladies fashion store where even the sales clerks believed they were better than anyone on the planet. Husband Ed’s hulk was ruggedly dressed in an outdoorsy sweater and slacks befitting the manly heavy construction guy he was. I kept his wine glass full in order to draw him out and start talking about his conservative politics. It’s easy to tie him in knots when he’s sober. A slightly drunk Ed can be turned into a human pretzel as easily as a balloon artist can make balloons into monkeys or poodles.

Lorenzo and Consuelo came next. She looked snockered already. I can’t really blame her. She’s married to a self-described world’s smartest man who has the desperate look of a man who hasn’t been laid in years. I have the strong suspicion that she cut him off years ago. To watch him socialize is a study in how sexual losers think they’re being clever by using transparent double entendres. Consuelo is dressed in the latest from J.C. Penney’s. Nice outfit but nothing like Catalina’s expensive ensemble from Gilbert's. Me? I don’t care what people wear or what it costs. It seems to matter to Catalina and the rest of the bunch.

Next, Dolores charges in with Danny not far behind. What a pair. Dolores is the organizer of sing alongs and party games. She is also a master pop psychologist who can tell you what’s wrong with you, your wife, and your kids after just a few seconds of observation. She doesn’t see that everyone there has been married far longer than she; that her own kids are sociopaths, and whose husband is so passive that a gunshot near his head would barely make him look up. Dolores as the arbiter of what’s right and wrong is matched only by Catalina’s repressed desire to murder everyone in the house. Catalina knows she can’t do that so she settles for trying to cut everyone down to size with her snide remarks.

It’s 8:30 now. In the last two hours I’ve been surreptitiously gathering up plates of uneaten Three Chocolate Enchiladas and dumping them in the trash.

Don't worry. There's plenty more

Lorenzo’s been chatting up my wife, looking down her dress every chance he gets. She’s looking good as usual. She walks away from him and Consuelo catches him leering and gives him a cross look that fades quickly as though she’s already forgotten why she was cross.

Ed and Danny are laughing about something over in the corner. Ed repeats whatever he said and Danny laughs again. To Danny a joke told twice is just as funny the second time it’s told. Danny hasn’t moved from the corner where he had been chatting with Ed. He’s staring and laughing at the space where Ed had been standing moments before.

I look around and now Catalina is talking to my wife and Consuelo. In top form as usual, she asks if my wife is wearing the same dress she wore last year. In fact, it is the same red silk, floor length dress with a slit from ankle to hip. I love that dress and wouldn’t mind if she wore it more often. Lorenzo’s been leering at her but I’m ignoring him for now. Now it’s Consuelo’s turn at being Catalina’s fashion target. “What a nice outfit”, she sniffs, “didn’t Sears have them on sale two years ago?” Consuelo demurs but Catalina’s not done. “I’m sure I saw racks and racks of that same dress, 60% off”. Consuelo is beyond caring. She must have dropped another Xanax.

Isn't that the same outfit you wore last year?

My wife edges away and goes over to where Danny is sitting on a stool sipping wine and watching out for Dolores. He’s not supposed to drink too much. Too much is whatever Dolores says is too much. It varies with her mood. He’s an agreeable guy with no opinions whatever. He’s got a tic that makes him appear as though he’s winking. The crazy thing is that the tic seems to be timed to the conversation he’s hearing so that when there’s a pause his eye twitches and makes the speaker believe that comprehension and approval are taking place inside Danny’s head. However, he does know football and is quite at home opining on which teams are winners and which are losers. Even though I’m an indifferent sports fan, I like to listen to him when he talks football. 

Yes, it is. Thank you for asking.

My wife takes the stool next to him and he compliments her on her dress. “You wore that dress last year”, he says. “It looks good on you.” My wife smiles at him gratefully. Sweet Danny. I could almost kiss him. A few feet away Consuelo is looking blankly at Catalina and Lorenzo is sneaking glances at my wife. I ignore him.

I looked in on Mom, Dad, and the kids in the den. Mom and a toddler were curled up together watching MTV along with the older kids. Dad was teaching some of the boys how to roll tight cigarettes that won’t shed or fall apart. The floor was littered with damp cigarette papers. My mind flashed back to the time he taught me and how years later I had amazed my stoner friends with that skill.

An hour or so later Catalina has been deeply into the cheap box wine which she publicly loathes but nonetheless craves and consumes with alacrity. I’ve long suspected that she’s a secret drinker. For me, her lust for cheap box wine is the clincher. She’s been doing pirouettes in front of me and Dolores. Her outfit seems to shed price tags as she twirls around it’s so expensive.

Suddenly she gets up on the table pulls her dress up and shouts, “See!! Even my panties are Gilbert's!”, which must come as a surprise to Gilbert to find himself without panties this evening. Ed hurries over to get her down but she dances away from him, now showing her panties from the rear. Everyone except Lorenzo looks away from the sight of her cottage cheese buttocks. She slips and nearly falls but Lorenzo catches her and cops a quick feel which earns him another cross look from Consuelo and a slap in the face from Catalina. Dolores puts her arm over Catalina's shoulder and guides her to the bathroom, probably for some instant psychoanalysis and therapy.

My wife is sitting in an easy chair over in the corner holding a cup of wine in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. She’s been drinking a lot but it hasn’t helped. This is the fifteenth Thanksgiving dinner she’s had with my family and wine no longer has power to anesthetize her. The force of this dysfunctional family is just too great. I go over to comfort her but thinking that I’m there to take away her wine she curls up into a ball, shielding her precious wine from me.

Of course, Lorenzo wouldn’t miss this up-skirt shot but I catch him looking and he does a fast about face which brings him face to face with the ever righteous Dolores. She saw his lecher's leer too, so being the judge of all things right and wrong she knees him in the crotch. Consuelo gives Dolores a cross look. Lorenzo doubles over and Danny ambles over to repeat Ed’s joke in his ear. But it’s not over. Catalina’s told Ed about Lorenzo copping a feel. Ed is not happy. He helps Lorenzo to his feet but seems to have forgotten why he was angry. He is slowly remembering when Catalina storms out of the bathroom. She’s looked into one of my trash bins and discovered several helpings of her Three Chocolate Enchiladas. She is furious and demands to know who tossed her dish. No one looks at her and she realizes the truth: Nobody likes her Three Chocolate Enchiladas. She bursts into tears goes into the bathroom then emerges moments later holding the trash can under her arm and scooping dollops of her enchiladas into her mouth with her free hand.

Everyone stared, speechless. Dolores and Consuelo suffused with sisterly concern rushed over and took her back into the bathroom to calm her down. I watched Lorenzo crabwalk away into the kitchen while I fixed my sixth Jack and Coke. My wife was still in the easy chair but seemed to be choking. I hurried over to help her. The front of her dress was soaked with wine; her glass was on the floor next to the wine bottle. She was choking from laughter and couldn’t catch her breath. When she was finally able to speak she said, “This is even better than last year!”

By this time Ed was fully liquored up and seemed to remember in short flashes why he was mad at Lorenzo. I went over to calm him down with another glass of wine. He put his arm around my shoulders and started talking about what I great guy I am and how much he loves me. I start to pull away and Ed spots Lorenzo coming back from the kitchen. By now, Ed’s is so intoxicated that the synapses in his brain are only firing at half speed but still firing. He walks up to Lorenzo, who is still hurting from Dolores’s assault and starts to say something but can’t remember what it was. While he struggles to remember he balls his calloused construction man’s fists making Lorenzo think he's is warming up to deliver a lethal blow. Besides being a lech, Lorenzo is also a physical coward. I remember how he screamed like a little girl one time when my wife put a lizard on his arm. He was staring down her dress when she leaned down to pick up the lizard and she decided to teach him a lesson. Tonight as he looked up at Ed he must have seen himself as a dead man or at the least as a disabled or disfigured one. He crouched with his hands and arms covering his head, his life and someone else’s life flashed in his mind. The expected blows never came.

Just then Mark, Kitty and their kids arrived. The children immediately fled to the den. They were late because Mark had had to go to the emergency room to bind up his dislocated shoulder. He had been on the losing end of a scuffle with a homeless guy who was cadging loose change by wiping down windshields with a dirty rag. One would think it odd that Mark who is an ardent environmental conservationist would have zero compassion for actual human beings. To Mark it’s not a contradiction to fight courageously against the felling of old growth forest and simultaneously approving of vigilante justice for the dirty, long haired, pot smoking hippies he believes still exist by the hundreds of thousands.

Ed and Mark sit together to rehash his recent battle for the "American Way" while Kitty joins the other women while still keeping an eye on Mark. She counts drinks, you see, and she’s expert in knowing when to make him stop drinking. When Mark drinks he goes from melancholy, to depressed, to belligerent though not violent. By the time he reaches depression she cuts him off. It’s too bad because I love to bait him with my liberal opinions when he’s at the last stages of stupor. Tonight he’s too sober to be fun. Ed on the other hand is taking me on but I know that given enough time, two or three minutes, I can turn him into a vote for my side. I’m the balloon master twisting this balloon dinosaur into a baby whale.

Two minutes ago this was a dinosaur

Dr. Dolores will see you now

Mission accomplished I take a tour around the party collecting empty glasses and plates. I see Dr. Dolores giving Catalina a mental physic. I’m pretty sure she’s taking correspondence courses on instant psychological insights from Dr. Phil and Oprah. She’s so glib with the jargon that one could easily mistake her gibberish for actual wisdom. Catalina is all cleaned up and sniffing softly into her Kleenex, nodding in agreement at whatever Dr. Dolores is force feeding into her ears.

Lorenzo and Consuelo are sitting on the couch in an earnest discussion about getting the brakes fixed on their station wagon. Denial is their strong suit. The Xanax is working as intended on her and his emasculation at Dr. Dolores’s knee has temporarily flushed his libido.

I see Kitty sitting on the arm of the chair that Mark is occupying. She’s stroking his brow, speaking softly; probably about the wisdom of not drinking any more, what with the pain killers they gave him at the hospital. He resists but there’s no fight in him tonight. Ed is sitting next to them but he’s somewhere else in the universe. His glazed look suggests that he’s just realizing that he agreed with my opinions and is wondering how the hell that happened.

It’s late. The kids in the den have mostly fallen asleep. Mom and Dad each have a toddler sleeping on their laps. They shush me when I open the door.

My wife is standing by the front door giving me a hipshot pose in her red silk, floor length dress, the one with the slit that goes from ankle to hip. One hand on her hip, the other extended over and behind her head, dangling the car keys, she flashes me some leg. It’s time to go home. Indeed it is.

One Day in Panhandle

By the time I got to Jackie’s Cold Day Inn the Sheriff’s birthday party was almost over. I squeezed into the empty chair between Les and Doc Harris. They scooted over so we wouldn’t be jammed together. Sheriff Tom signaled Wendy to bring another round. We said our hellos and waited for Wendy to bring our drinks.

Jackie’s is my favorite bar in the Texas panhandle because it’s messy, quiet, dark, and friendly. But today, all the lights were on, the place full with people milling around laughing and talking like at a church social but with beer, mixed drinks, and finger food on trays lined up on the bar.

Tom was sitting back on his chair, arms crossed over his belly, self-satisfied as hell.

“You know this day started off pretty crappy. I heard ‘How ya doing, Sheriff’ four times before eight o’clock this morning. I said ‘Same old, same old’ each time but I really wanted to say ‘Same Shit - Different Day.’

“Started off with bad coffee. Swear to God my Rice Crispies said ‘Snap, Crackle, Screw you, Tom’. But after I went on patrol on the north side, my stomach settled and I felt better.

“You’d think there wasn’t much to see after you’ve driven the same roads over and over for years but I never tire of looking at the land. By the time my shift was over I was feeling pretty good. Then I walk in here, half the town is singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me. How could I feel anything but real good after that?”

Our drinks arrived. We saluted the Sheriff with our whisky tumblers.

I saw a lot of unfamiliar faces. Tom said look at a couple sitting at a table at the far end of the bar.

“That’s Jan and her husband. This morning I was at the crossroads near the interstate. Just a half mile ahead was the spot where Jan’s car rolled over, pinning her inside, couple three years ago. It was four hours before anybody found the wreck. She wasn’t hurt too bad, just a broken wrist and some bruising. Jackie said Jan compared the rollover to the first time she and her boyfriend tried to have sex in his truck.

“They were 17, knew what they wanted to do but didn’t know how. They couldn’t figure out what went where, wound up in a tangle of limbs and clothes, rolled out of the truck. He landed flat on his back, bumped his head on a rock, she landed on top of him and broke her fall with an elbow in his rib cage. They gave up and finally did the deed in a borrowed van by the river after his head and ribs healed. Kinda hard to believe that story but then I’ve had never been in a rollover.”

A van is roomier

The guy Jackie hired for the occasion began strumming his guitar, turning the tuning knobs this way and that ‘til one of the strings snapped. Some people clapped and shouted for more. The guy looked pissed as he searched for a replacement string in the guitar case. He didn’t have a spare so he gave up, put his guitar away.

The musician reminded Tom about the time he picked up a hitchhiker near Newman’s ranch.

“He was a kid, early 20’s, looked like he hadn’t slept in a real bed in a long time. The guitar case he carried had thousands of miles of wear on it. His shoulders slumped when he saw the cruiser like he was expecting another hassle from the man. But all I did was ask where he was headed. Austin, he said. Took him as far as Amarillo and gave him bus fare to Austin. Nice kid, on his way to country music stardom, maybe. Not likely, but you never know. I made a mental note to keep an ear out for the kid’s band, JoJo and the Barf Doggies. Shoulda got his autograph.

Switching gears, he said, “Remember Ed McCarthy?” Les and Doc Harris nodded. “I drove past his ranch today.”

Les looked at me and said, “Ed was before your time.

“You probly seen his place on FM1151, that big ole barn that collapsed years ago and the red brick ranch house isn’t much more than a shell anymore. The kids had grew up and left the ranch years ago; leased the land to a neighbor.”

Tom said, “I visited with Ed every chance I had. Wasn’t a man in the county who didn’t respect him. He was an ex-Marine from WW2, fought in the Pacific, came back, raised three sons and never talked about the war except once anybody remembers. When he died everybody was surprised that he’d been awarded a Purple Heart and two Silver Stars for gallantry in combat. Even his sons didn’t know about the medals.

“Come to think of it, the only thing he ever told me about himself and the war was about his voyage on a troop transport on the way to Iwo Jima. Five thousand men, he said, in a giant ship. One ship in a convoy of thirty or forty more; destroyers, cruisers circling in miles wide arcs all around, Navy planes scanning the ocean for enemies on the sea or in the air; an aircraft carrier off in the distance.

5,000 Marines, one ship

“Ten days into the trip the convoy was hit by a typhoon. The troops were ordered to lash themselves to their bunks. Below deck the tanks and jeeps, munitions crates broke the chains holding them in place and you could hear and feel the heavy thuds against the hull when the ship pitched and rolled. You would not believe that a ship as big as that with all those thousands of tons of steel would become airborne. But it did leave the water when the 60 foot waves crested. The hull slammed down in the troughs with mighty shakes and shudders. Yes, sir, that’s how high the waves were. Each time he thought that one more blow like that would split the ship in two. He saw men cry in terror. But ship held together and two days later the seas were calm again. Old Ed laughed at the memory, but not much.”

Destroyer hitting the trough of a 60ft wave. Most of the ship is underwater.

Les said, “Ed McCarthy, Semper Fi.” The three men stared somberly into their drinks for a moment.

Doc Harris nudged Tom with his elbow and nodded towards a table where two couples were sitting. Three of four people were having an animated conversation. The fourth one, sat there smiling and laughing along but not saying anything.

Doc told me, “The two on the right, that’s Chuck and Melissa Timmons.

Doc chuckled to himself and sang softly, “Mama’s don’t let your babies grow up to be Chuckie.

“Chuck’s the kind to make a fool of himself and be unaware of what he’d done. I’ve said it before, when his wife goes to meet her Maker, she’ll waltz right in, no entrance exam for her. St. Pete'll say, 'Come on in, darlin’, you’ve earned it.'”

Les picked up from there, saying, “To Chuck, every day is a brand new experience, meaning he didn’t seem to learn anything from what happened yesterday. Left on his own, french fries, onion rings, and hot sauce rolled up in a corn tortilla for breakfast, lunch and dinner is fine eatin.”

Tom said he remembered the time poor Melissa stood next to Chuck when he told the minister about a ballet he saw on TV.

“Chuck says, ‘the music was pretty good but it was the first time I seen women dance that didn’t take their clothes off.’ Melissa was smiling but her eyes were somewhere far, far away. Doc Harris swears if Chuck fell on his face he’d just lay there and graze.”

Seeing the frown on my face, Tom added, “But listen, the way we’re talking about him, we’re just having a little fun. He’s a good guy. Everybody likes him just fine. He’s a good provider, takes care of his own.”

“Who’s the other couple”, I asked?

“That’s Corrina and Stan,” Doc said.

“When they were in high school, Corrina had it all. Best looking girl, smart, Queen of the Prom, top kick of the cheerleader squad, the whole nine yards. Stan was the Invisible Man. Guys who’d been with him since elementary school couldn’t describe him to you. Even his picture in the yearbook was blurry. Two years after graduation they announced their engagement and everybody said, Who’s the guy?”

Stan's yearbook picture

I studied Stan and maybe it was a trick of my mind but he seemed transparent sitting next to his vivacious wife and their two friends. I wondered how had everyone had underestimated him.

Jackie brought a tray of fresh drinks to the table. She saw us staring at Corrina and Stan. “I know what you’re thinking but them two’s no mystery to me,” she said. “Maybe Stan isn’t exactly what the average woman might brag about, but he’s what Corrina needs. Just lookit the way she looks at him. I betcha she never looked that way at any of the showboats who courted her. You men think too much about looks. If only good looking people married, most of us... and none uh you four would be here at all.”

She was right. Again. We felt like 3^rd graders caught fibbing.

Les recovered first and changed the subject. He leaned back in his chair to show me his belt; finely hand-tooled carvings of Western scenes all around. “Stan makes ‘em in the tack shop he owns, the one next to the bank. He was bull rider with the rodeo for a while, quit that and got into leather work fixing gear for his cowboy friends on the circuit. Gets jobs from all over. Look under the buckle anywhere in the state, more n’ likely you’ll see his trademark.”

Tom saw Gary at the table next to Stan and Corrina and asked if he was still coming on to Wendy knowing she’s gay. Jackie said no, Wendy put those thoughts out of his squirrely brain weeks ago.

“Wish you coulda seen it! Wendy put her hand under his chin, nose to nose with 'im, looked him in the eye and real sweet like she said, ‘Gary, suppose it works in reverse and I make you gay?’ His buddy, Mike, about busted a gut and Gary gulped his beer and snuck out, didn’t come back for days.”

We sat for a while sipping our drinks, taking in the bar scene. Wendy and the extra waitresses Jackie hired for the party scurried around barely keeping up with the drink orders. Jackie was behind the bar waving a half-size baseball bat at the Fire Chief. It wasn’t likely that he was enforcing any fire ordinances. She was smiling and he was laughing.

Tom said, “You think he’s laughing about the emergency siren?” Les belly laughed and Doc snorted in his drink.

I didn’t have a clue.

“That siren’s gotta bit of history behind it,” Les said. “It was set up during WW2 as an air raid siren to warn residents in case Japanese aircraft were seen approaching. It looks like hysteria now, the Texas Panhandle being more ‘n a thousand miles from the Pacific coast, but back then the possibility seemed real as hell. Siren’s so loud you can hear it five miles away.

Not this big but plenty loud

“After the war it was left in place to warn folks about tornadoes and such. It’s tested twice a year. Everybody knew to expect the jarring whine on New Year’s Eve and the 4^th of July. So when a rookie fireman fired it up by mistake on a Friday afternoon in October two years ago, a few of the townsfolk panicked, thinking tornado, earthquake or something else, like a building on fire. Most of them just peeked out their doors and looked around.”

Doc Harris cut in, “The rig was on the roof at the fire station right above the Fire Chief’s window. When the siren started blasting the Fire Chief was scared half out of his file clerk. It was several minutes before he recovered his senses, dismounted, and shut the thing off. The girl was terrified. Nobody knows how that story got out.”

Tom said very seriously, “Me, Les, and Doc are still investigating that.”

By ten o’clock the bar was beginning to thin out, folks leaving by ones and two’s. The Fire Chief came to our table, said happy birthday to Tom, hello to the rest of us. He looked over his shoulder at Jackie and waved goodbye. Jackie waved back with her bat. No one had ever seen her use it but no telling when that day would come.

Tom got her attention and twirled his index finger in the air for another round, please. Jackie gave him a thumbs up and put the bat away.

While we waited, Tom said, “I ever tell you Jackie was palm reader? I didn’t know it ‘til 10, 12 years ago. Some randy cowboy from Lubbock was passing through, stopped in for a drink. Hat back on his head, leaning real casual, back against the bar, let everybody know his name was BUCK from LUBBOCK, like it was something everybody should know.

“He had a couple of beers and was chatting up the waitress. She played along just enough like she’s supposed to, get the customers to keep drinking, you know. Service with a smile, jerk. He’s watching her serving beer, doing her job, all the time talking to her loud enough to irritate everybody including me.

“I was about to go over and give him a little talk about disturbing the other patrons’ peace and quiet when Lilly, the waitress, went to put a tray of empties on the bar next to where Bucky was standing. He turned around facing the bar still chatting her up. He put his hand on her neck, leaning in to talk to her, low and quiet. What he didn’t know was that Lilly was Jackie’s niece and that Jackie had that half-size Louisville Slugger under the bar.

“Lilly was squirming, he was so busy pawing her neck and sweet talking, he didn’t see Jackie come over, the Slugger in her hand. She grabbed the thumb on his free hand and give it hard twist so his palm was up. Then she said, ‘Bucky Boy, I bet you didn’t know I can read palms and tell fortunes.’ 

“Man’s bent over the bar in a lotta pain already but she twisted his thumb a little more, traced the lines in his palm with the business end of the bat and said, ’Cordin’ to my powers reading life lines you have a long life ahead of you if you mind your manners and keep your hands off my girl.’

Jackie's equalizer makes her 6'2", 190 lbs.

“When she let go, Buck drew himself up like he was gonna get mean. That cowboy was at least a foot taller and 50 pounds heavier, but Jackie stood her ground tapping the bat on the edge of the bar. If I remember right she said, ‘Listen up, Bucky from Lubbock. I been married three times, outlived the first one, ran off the second one, shot the third one between the eyes. You got something you wanna say to me?’

“He ain’t been back.”

“Is that true?” I asked.

“Which part? Bucky or the three husbands? I’m sure about Bucky. I saw it with my own two eyes but somebody else’s gonna have to ask her about the other.”