My Ol’ Daddy Didn’t Live A Good Clean Life

No apologies for that, as I can almost guarantee you what he would have said if someone offered their opinion on the matter. He smoked his whole life from about age 9. He drank heavily except for about a decade and half, which was from when I was born until I became a teenager. But before that time he was hell on wheels and after that time he became legendary around Smithwick and beyond. Cecil Lewis lived his life throwing caution to the wind. He didn’t spend a lot of his time contemplating his next move. He just got a … Continue reading My Ol’ Daddy Didn’t Live A Good Clean Life

It Can Get Hot In May

Looks like we have a fairly nice week coming up. Well after today it shouldn’t be just oppressively hot. Of course today’s 96° won’t be bad after those 100°+ stuff the past few of days. I remember back in the early 80s, I bid a wastewater project in Laredo, right down along the Rio Grande River. My old bookkeeper Woody went down with me to look at it. He dumped me out up on the upper end and drove about five miles down the river to a predetermined location where I’d be coming up out of the bottoms. I headed … Continue reading It Can Get Hot In May

A Lincoln Town Car Sedan With Dual Tires On All Four Wheels

My friend and colleague Gerry I got to the restaurant at the same time one morning. This took place south of Dallas at the town of Waxahachie. As we were walking in I saw a strange sight. A new Lincoln Continental was parked front and center. It looked like any other car of that make, except it was equipped with dual tires all the way around. Each tire was only approximately half the width of a normal car tire. It was the strangest thing I’d seen in a while. We stood there discussing it for a bit, trying to figure … Continue reading A Lincoln Town Car Sedan With Dual Tires On All Four Wheels

Rolling Back The Odometer

I told in an earlier story about working during my senior year of high school at an Auto Dealership. I was in the Distributive Education Program, allowing me to spend the afternoon actually working on a job where I made money, instead of sitting in a classroom wasting my time. At least that’s the way it felt. For my job I moved cars around from place to place, cleaned up cars, took out the trash and vacuumed the floors in the offices. I did pretty much anything that was needed to be done. I even drove cars around town to … Continue reading Rolling Back The Odometer

Call Me Clueless

Let me tell you something that I even find hard to believe and I was at the center of it. A few years back my wife and a couple of my sons were talking about The Eagles. I simply had no idea who or what they were talking about. It was like “you’ve got to be kidding, you don’t know who The Eagles are ?”. I could honestly say that I had never heard of The Eagles. After them explaining to me that they were one of the most popular bands of the 70s and again in the 90s I … Continue reading Call Me Clueless

I Was Always The Tag Along Little Brother

Kenny and his friends always had something going on, which would have them loaded up going some place or the other. This incident I’m fixin to tell you about was most likely after football practice. A full carload were jammed in, with me being in the back seat, on the passengers side next to the door. I was probably a Freshman in high school with most of them being a couple of years older. I always ended up being picked on constantly, which could have been caused by my own habit of picking on all of them. We had been … Continue reading I Was Always The Tag Along Little Brother

The “55” Chevrolet 3/4 Ton Pickup With Sideboards

Cecil picked up this slightly used Texas Highway Department Pickup at a sale somewhere. That was along about 1961, so the old truck had a lot of good left it it. It was Highway Department Yellow, with the state emblem sanded off of each front door, making it not very attractive. To class it up a bit he had a fellow paint it for him. Cec never did have much of an eye for colors so he went and picked out a color I’d never seen a vehicle painted before or since. I guess it would be something between a … Continue reading The “55” Chevrolet 3/4 Ton Pickup With Sideboards

Our Dancing Pumps

My brother and I, growing up in a big rock pile in the late 50s and 60s, out on Spicewood Springs Rd, were very hard on shoes and cowboy boots. We could go through a pair of black hightop Keds in a few weeks. We always got black ones, because the white ones sure wouldn’t stand the test of time. I’d be off in a mud hole the first day. We had cowboy boots, mostly of the pointy toe variety. Round toe boots didn’t make a real entry until later in the 60s, it seems. But the leather soles on … Continue reading Our Dancing Pumps

Never A Broken Bone

This wasn’t a telephone solicitor but it was someone that kept calling me. Hey folks, can we make this about me for just one minute. I’ve told about everything that has ever happened in my life. Almost. Every near miss. Miraculously I’ve never had a broken bone. In my story about going for the Army draft physical I told about crushing my foot. There we no bone fractures. The bones had what Dr. Allen called radial cracks, I think. There were bones that had longitudinal cracks but nothing fractured, if that makes sense. He bandaged my foot but no cast. … Continue reading Never A Broken Bone

I Was A Kid With Few Talents

In fact I think I could only do approximately two unusual things. One of those I tried out while sitting in the barber chair this morning. Now mind you it wasn’t the first time I’d tried a barber out on this but in memory it’s the first time I ever got a real reaction. As this young gal started to clip the ear hair, I started my ear wiggling routine. Of course I could see her look in the mirror, so as she’d get close with the clipper, I’d let my big ole ears start moving back and forth. She … Continue reading I Was A Kid With Few Talents