Smoke and Mirrors and Other Curious Things

Posted on by
2

“Mornin’ Miz Ridenhour.  Box or sacks?”
“Pwuuuh, pwuuh.  Package boys front. Package boys front.”
“Here, Kenny, take the Garvey, and run back there and put some toilet paper up on 5.  And don’t smear the ink!”
“Hey, howya’doin’ Miz Brock?  Good, good.  Oh yeah, the folks are fine. Yo’nt me to carry those out for ya’?  How’s Ed?  He likin’ California?  Awright, you’re all loaded up.  Say hey to Mr. Brock, and y’all stay outa’ tha’ heat.  Thank you, Miz Brock.  Bye, see you next time.”
“Pwuuuh, pwuuh.  Package boys front, please.  Package boys front.”

This day, like most every day at the IGA Foodliner in Wichita Falls, Texas, was pretty much a repeat of the day before and the day before that and all the days before that.  Experience.  Voice of.  Insaniam perpetuum.

Sacking groceries and stocking shelves in a busy grocery store was my third job.  My first attempt at honest labor was unloading lengths of pipe from a boxcar drawn up next up to a Quonset hut at the far end of the White Stores, Incorporated, home office and warehouse parking lot.  It was dingy and dark and hot inside the old hut.  I was sixteen, skinny, pale and spoiled, surrounded by older men easy with the sweat and the work and the grime, and showing zero deference to the warehouse manager’s kid.  When the others lifted and groaned, I lifted and groaned and tried hard to blend in and escape notice.  When a buzzer loudly sounded the twelve-noon lunch break, I was delighted.  The guys cracked open their lunch buckets and began to regale each other with off-color stories.  I informed Billy Keith, the foreman, that my mother had lunch waiting for me at home, and I would be back in thirty minutes.  Lie. Big, Big Lie.  Billy Keith and the boys never saw me again.

Job number two was another valiant attempt by my father to ease me into the great American work force.  White Stores, Inc. operated a gas station and retail store on the grounds of the home office and warehouse.  The store marketed furniture, appliances, and all kinds of auto supplies, and my new job was to learn to sell, sell, sell.  I was pretty proud of my speed-of-light transition from pipe unloader to white shirt and tie salesman of “just about anything y’all need.”  Of course, I never considered that the path to learning to be a great salesman meant stocking shelves, sweeping floors, emptying the trash, and smiling at the customers.  Bottom up work, young man.  After three days of arranging and rearranging taillight bulbs and floormats, after brushing my somewhat longish hair back into place as it repeatedly flopped down over my eyes when I bent over to sweep floor litter into a dustpan, after stuffing my much-too-short shirttail yet once more back into my loose-fitting pants, and after flashing my best wordless silly grin on any who would look my way, I left with the other workers at closing time and never returned for day four.  This time I was careful not to tell anyone I would see them tomorrow.  My sweet parents never fussed or cajoled, but I’ve always been curious as to how my father managed to explain his son to his co-workers.

The edict delivered to me on day one of job three by Ernest, the IGA Foodliner manager, was, “And I don’t want to see you just standing around.  If things start getting slack around the registers, pick up a broom and start sweeping.  Or ask Benny over in produce if he needs any help.  Always be friendly to the customers.  Always ask them how they’re doing.  Always ask them if they want their groceries in boxes or sacks.  And always tell them you’ll see them again.”  I was pretty keen on the last four charges because they often translated into cash.  I found that sacking groceries actually required a certain degree of planning and skill if I planned to make the customer happy, and a happy customer, plus a little light-hearted banter offered up on the way out the door to their car, went a long way toward a tip when the groceries were loaded and a sincere adieu was delivered.

Grocery store work was grunt work.  It was non-threatening work.  It was work among a menagerie of North Texas’s finest.  Gene the checker was tall, good-looking, and a self-described intellectual.  He was also disposed to scratch “Metaphysics Rule” and “God is dead. Nietzsche” with his big Buck pocketknife in the white paint of the paper towel dispenser in the little employee bathroom.  As a Southern Baptist in good-standing, I felt it only right that I should pull out my old Case pocketknife and counter with, “Nietzsche is dead. God”, just below his impiety.  I waited several days, anticipating some reaction to the parry.  Nothing.  So, I upped the ante.  I watched and waited for Gene to take a bathroom break and head back to the stock room to grab a smoke and attend to his mid-afternoon constitutional.  I followed him, and as soon as I saw that he had gone into the bathroom, closed the door behind him, turned on the exhaust fan, and had a seat, I hurried out to the cleaning supplies aisle, grabbed a bottle of household ammonia, and made tracks for Gene, the now unsuspecting and relaxed intellectual checker.  The exhaust fan was humming right along as I crept up to the bathroom door, unscrewed the cap, and released a good-sized splash of ammonia just outside the bottom of the door.  The fumes were immediately sucked inside, and I giggled to myself like a three-year-old, when I heard the expected “Ahhhgggg!” and the sounds of a jangling belt buckle and pants leaving ankles, headed for waist.  I tossed the ammonia bottle in the trash and hustled back to the front of the store, looking for some groceries to sack.  When the stock room swinging doors burst open and Gene came striding out looking for the villain, customers were busily shopping, and we package boys were hard at work.  He never ferreted me out, and the paper towel dispenser ceased to be a sounding board. Then there was Benny, the stoop-shouldered and doe-eyed produce manager who, under his breath, offered his assessment of every female he saw.  The first time we met, Benny smiled and confided to me that “he did it once a day whether he needed to or not.”  Foolish me.  I had just shaken his hand.  I worked hard to keep as much distance as possible between me and Benny and his vegetables.  And old Jess, the assistant manager, prone to blow hard with a wet “pwuuh” into the intercom microphone just to reassure himself that the “on” switch really did work, before he announced to everyone in the store, “Package boys front. Package boys front.”  Jess was graced with a face akin to that of an English Bulldog, and he would chew and wallow a King Edward Imperial around in his saggy jowls until it no longer resembled a cigar.  Oh, and he liked to brag that he was a distant cousin of Elmer Bernstein, the award-winning American composer of musical scores for films like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Magnificent Seven.  I could never make it fit.

I got queasy in my gut when I considered how far I hadn’t come.  High school was history.  Friends were scattered at colleges and universities across the country, working to fulfill their lifelong dreams of leading or teaching or doctoring or lawyering.  And the best I could ever come up with on my freshman registration was “undeclared” as my declared major.  Earlier in my life, I entertained dreams of displacing Frank Lloyd Wright, but I settled for nightmares that convinced me I could never ascend to his level of vision and talent.  Hi there, would you like a box or sacks?

During my three years as a package boy at the IGA Foodliner, I had developed friendly relationships with several regular customers as I sacked and carried groceries out to their car.  Almost all of them regularly slipped me tips.  Some even cared enough to pass on sound advice.  One re-routed my life.

Ted Shaw was the weatherman for KAUZ-TV, Channel 6, the local CBS television station in Wichita Falls.  I spotted him the first time he walked in the grocery store door.  Mr. Shaw was familiar to me because Channel 6 was the only station my mother and father turned to for their news, weather, and sports, so through the magic of television, he was a frequent guest in our living room.  I timed my appearance at the checkout register with great precision, grocery sack in one hand and box in the other, to arrive at the same time as Mr. Shaw and his grocery cart.  I boxed up his groceries, and as we headed out the door to his car, I rambled on about how my mother really liked the new news guy on his TV station and she thought those thick black glasses on that sports guy looked kinda’ silly and she always watched his weather at six o’clock and thought he was pretty handsome too but wished it wasn’t so doggone hot every day and she just might stop watching The Guiding Light if the story was going to be the same every day.  As Mr. Shaw was closing his car door, instead of my well-rehearsed valediction, “See you again”, I offered, “MrShawifthere’severanyjobopeningsoutatattheTVstation pleaseletmeknowI’dreallyliketoworkatChannel6thanksMrShaw.”  Ham-handed palaver at its finest, similarly served up the many times I boxed or sacked groceries for Mr. Shaw.

Then one day the Sun surely stood still and the earth must have shifted on its axis.

“Ken, why don’t you come on out to the station in the morning.  We might have something available.”

Perhaps it was pity.  Maybe my pleadings had finally drained him.  It could have been that he had been down a similar path earlier in his own life.  Eighteen sonorous words.  Two receptive ears.  One grateful package boy.

The next morning, I walked through the front door of KAUZ-TV, Channel 6, wearing blue jeans and sporting a high school letter jacket, ready for my job interview.  Not the best of attire for a potential hire, but I knew no better.  Fortunately, my blunder was overlooked, and I was hired to work on the “floor crew.”  Ted Shaw had swung wide the gate and I was about to enter the magical world of broadcast television.

The first thing I learned to do as a member of the floor crew was to grab a long, 1½” thick black cable, attached to a large camera on one end and to a wall on the other, hold it up off the floor and walk behind a camera operator when he moved the big camera from the news and sports set over to the weather set.  Nothing glamorous, but I was happy to get my hands dirty and drink in how so many things had to work together for thirty minutes, just to deliver news, weather, and sports to the people watching Channel 6 at home.  I also learned to pick up a big dust mop and sweep the television studio floor when it needed it.  Ground floor work once again, but I loved it.

I learned a new language: boom up, boom down, tilt up, tilt down, pan left, pan right, dolly in, dolly back, zoom in, zoom out, tight shot, wide shot, scoop light, key light, Fresnel, video tape machine, film chain, switcher, dissolve, cut, fade-to-black, chroma-key, audio board, “pot it up a little”, “give ‘em 30”, “5-4-3-2-1,off”, and some terms that the Southern Baptist in good-standing came to realize weren’t unique to television but universal to mankind.

In the spring of 1964, we were preparing to record a commercial for a local used car dealer.  The studio lights were bright and hot, the cameras were in place, and the owner was shouting at one of his vassals to move a car from the parking lot onto a large turntable built into the studio floor, when Jon Burkhart, the director, said, “Shut it down, Shaw says we’ve got word of a tornado out near the Wichita River!  He wants us to get a camera outside, right now!”  As I grabbed a camera cable and followed Jim Horky and John Sitler, the camera operators rolling the GE studio cameras out the back door, I remember the car dealer, in a burst of instant anger, hurling a well-sugared and well-creamed cup of coffee into a studio wall. Way to go, big Don.  Nice, nice. Nice brown stain on the wall, and it’s great the way that cup shattered and the pieces fell all over my nice, clean floor.  Thoughts, not words.  His tantrum halted nothing and is probably little more than a footnote in my mind only.  Television programming was interrupted, Ted Shaw went on the air to warn the viewing audience, and KAUZ-TV became one of the first television stations in the country to broadcast a tornado live. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycxQnTNWheI

I made the transition from the floor crew to a camera operator for news, weather, and sports shows, and commercials for local businesses like the oh so unpredictable used car dealer.  Other opportunities followed – I ran sound and set up the lighting on the local shows; I was a switcher, inserting local commercial breaks into network programs like The Guiding Light and Search for Tomorrow; I directed news, weather, and sports programs; and produced and directed many local commercials.  One summer, when the station art director went on vacation, I filled in and had the opportunity to design a full-page, inside the front cover regional ad for TV Guide magazine.  In 1964, I sat in a Wichita County courtroom and drew sketches during the trial of Ham Vance, a local sheriff who was tried and later convicted of perjury and forgery.  The sketches were used on Channel 6 newscasts, and the following year I sold two of them to a true crime magazine.  Several years later, I directed a local noon show, “Donna’s Notebook”, where a short-haired and humble Willie Nelson sang one of his songs.  Very early live Willie.  There wasn’t anything about television that I didn’t love.

During the eight years I spent working for KAUZ-TV, Channel 6, I found that no matter how much I learned about the mysteries of television, I could never learn it all.  I journeyed on to Houston, Texas, and worked another thirty-five years in broadcast television.  Even the worst of days were joyous days, because in those combined forty-three years, I never experienced two days that were alike.  I’m closing in on nine years of absence now, and anytime I settle back and take in the local news, weather, and sports, I can’t help but think that the relaxed calmness I see is probably not a true reflection of what is really happening behind the scenes.  Man-made things have a habit of breaking or wearing out, good people still fail to meet their deadlines, unforeseen things can be counted on to crop up at the last minute, and catastrophic events occur and immediately rearrange the thinking and schedules of everything and everyone.  But, “the show must go on”, and I know that the tight-knit band of lovers of smoke and mirrors and other curious things are hard at it, working to make sure that it does.

My War Out on River Road

Posted on by
Reply

“Aren’t they cute?”

“I love it!  It’ll be like having our own Disney movie every day!”

But, as “Colonel Kurtz” so aptly whispered in Apocalypse Now, “The horror. The horror.”

No, not alligators, not coyotes, not lions or warthogs or perky skunks.  No, no, no, that would have been much too easy.

Ants. Texas Leaf Cutting Ants.  Atta texana in entomological circles.  Turns out they weren’t cute, and our life with them was nothing like a Disney movie.  It was our own war and horror movie combo.

In 1999, my wife Meredith and I moved from our happy home of 21 years in a quiet neighborhood west of Houston to a beautiful country home 18 miles down the road.  It was love at first sight.  Big limestone pillars guarding the entrance to a long, curving driveway; a 25-year-old sprawling ranch-style house with a huge limestone fireplace; a swimming pool, our first; a barn with an apartment; century-old pecan trees scattered over almost ten acres of fertile Brazos river bottom soil.  And, the devil’s spawn, Texas leaf-cutters.

The first time we saw them, we were indeed charmed.  A long line of leaf-toting ants marched with military-like precision across our back patio, out into the St. Augustine grass, and into a carefully camouflaged hole in the ground.  Ah, the food chain at work. Nature at its finest.  All is right with the world.

Not so fast, newcomer.  Food chain, check, and nature, maybe.  As for all being right with the world, wrong.

Several weeks after we had made the move and were rightfully bragging that we were country folk, I poured myself a cup of coffee and walked out back to greet a July Saturday.  Cardinals and Mockingbirds were hard at it, vying for the morning’s blue ribbon.  In the pasture across Iron’s Creek, new-born calves were frisky and noisy.  And silently, from the north end of the house, along the sidewalk, across the patio and into the yard, stretched a caravan of ants merrily at work, hauling fragments of what had formerly been shiny green leaves.

The unasked, and thus unanswered question I never considered when first I raved over the little beasties, “Where are you getting all those leaves?”, now dawned on me.

I followed the ant procession up the sidewalk to an old tree-sized ligustrum, where their trail came to an end.  The bottom half of the ligustrum was lush and green and dotted with fragrant white blossoms.  The top half was bare.  Half-inch sized worker ants moved down the tree, off the stripped branches, and onto the remaining greenery, where they joined other workers hard at work cutting my leaves into tiny pieces.  The fragments fell to the ground, and ants, ants, and more ants grabbed them and scampered off to join the long march.

How ya like that answer, city boy?  You didn’t really think you were gonna move to the country and just take it easy, did you?

I had learned early on that mowing required five or six hours on my tractor.  Old trees dropped old limbs, and bucking, then burning them, would sometimes span a couple of days.  I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would be at war with A. texana for years.

Any time I ventured to plant rose bushes, the pillaging leaf-cutters weren’t far behind.  They ravaged my Hibiscus and Bottlebrush plants.  On cool evenings or while the household slept, they were hard after a large fig tree and a couple of mature Mandarin Orange trees.  Distance never seemed to be a barrier.  The ants tunneled around underground with great ease.  Two Crepe Myrtle trees far from the house and numerous Red Bud trees scattered around the property were regularly under attack.  The worker ants were hauling their bounty of leaf fragments from my trees and bushes to a chamber deep underground, where smaller ants would cut them into finer pieces and then pass them on to other even smaller ants to chew into a pulp.  A fungus would then grow on the pulp and voila, assembled millions, breakfast, lunch, and dinner is served.  I was hosting an army of relentless, barbarous fungus epicureans!

Homo sapiens versus Atta texana.  My side surely had the upper hand.  Moon landings.  Heart transplants.  The accrued knowledge of mankind lurking behind multiple search engines, just waiting for me to enter, “the unabridged list of any and everything the beleaguered can do to eliminate, exterminate, eradicate, annihilate, terminate, kill, wipe out, abolish, and do away with Texas Leaf Cutting Ants.”

In a vain attempt to live up to my wise man ancestry, I flexed and reached for…a water hose.  A suitable proxy of mankind ready for battle, I would show them.  But, I did not show them anything.  Water proved to be a pitiful weapon.  A jet spray from my hose-end nozzle washed some, but not all, of the marauders from their flora of choice and only briefly put a halt to their great trek back to the hole in the ground.  I tried shoving the end of the hose down a couple of inches into their entrance and opening the tap full bore for several hours to just drown the whole lot.  Wait, wait, was that ant laughter I heard?  Was I simply an annoyance?  My inner Mr. Hyde awakened and urged me to boil water, lots of it, and pour it slowly, gleefully, satisfyingly down the hole.  The torrent of scalding water slowed the work of the leaf cutters but, sadly, never for more than a couple of days.  Advantage A. texana.

Well, God bless search engines.  They devoured my plaintive pleas and pointed me to Volcano, an ant bait made up of orange peel pulp and a pesticide.  It had been very effective in controlling Texas Leaf Cutting Ants in East Texas pine forests.  I ordered.  I received.  I spread.  They carried.  They disappeared.  Advantage H. sapiens.  That is, advantage until almost three years later, when my supplier of Volcano informed me that the EPA had banned it, and even if he had some, he was no longer authorized to sell it.  I’m guessing the leaf cutters either eavesdropped on that phone call, or they got on my computer and researched and read the government directive on Volcano, because, mystery of mysteries, in no time at all they were back at work.

And back with a vengeance.  A privet that had been growing at the front of the house for years was stripped overnight.  A Rose of Sharon planted during those peacetime years suffered the same fate.  And now, freshly opened entrances to their underground lair were present in every flower bed.  Antdom had come up with a new tactic.  No more cute, above-ground conga lines that stretched out for thirty or more feet.  Their new maneuver had the leaf cutters simply popping out of the ground under their chosen target, scurrying up into the leafage to do their dirty work, and then raining down the harvest to the workers waiting below.  Just a few left, left, lefts, and right, right, rights and the ants were down the new hole with their plunder.  Simple.  Effective.  Advantage A. texana.

It’s a tough chew for a man to go to bed at night, having been thwarted at the hands, all six of them, of ants.  Ah, but what fertile ground weary slumber offers for dreams of schemes and dark things.

With a coil of garden hose resting on my lap, I drove my old riding lawnmower out of the garage and headed for the injured Rose of Sharon. I parked the mower, turned off the ignition, dismounted, and with wicked intent, fastened one end of the hose to the muffler and headed for the leaf cutter hole with the other end in hand.  I jammed the hose down into their hole and headed back to the lawnmower.  I started the engine and throttled it up, and while it ran and carbon mono was making its way through the tunnels of the leaf cutter domain, I made my way around the house and pushed a stick or a rock into every leaf cutter hole I could find to block any escape.  No mercy.  Did I mention dark things?   I figured half-an-hour was ample time for the CO to do its job, so I shut off the engine and restored the old lawnmower to its intended purpose.  What a great day.  As I remember it, there may have even been a bruise on my back from patting myself so frequently there.

Cup of coffee in hand, I walked out the next morning to examine the plugged holes and revel in the wrath I had visited upon A. texana.  What I discovered was a freshly opened hole next to each hole I had plugged and leaf cutter ants playfully milling around.  It was clear to me now that my foes not only knew how to tap a phone or read governmentese, they could also hold their breath for thirty minutes.  I needed bigger, better.

I started my old F150 and pulled around to the front flowerbed to begin my next aggression.  The plan was familiar.  The hose was back in the new hole near the Rose of Sharon, all the other new holes were once again plugged, my sweet Ford was running smoothly, and I was headed inside the house to kill some time and catch up on the news of the day.  Two hours later I walked outside to find the hose mostly collapsed and my truck no longer running.  It would have been so simple, perhaps even so sane, to wave the white flag at that point and admit defeat, but H. sapiens has never gone down easily.

Some months after rebounding from my fumigation humiliation, Meredith and I were enjoying a long weekend at a state historical site in south central Texas.  We made a side trip one afternoon to a plant nursery that had been around for years in a nearby town.  We chanced to run into, and struck up a conversation with, a sweet, little old white-haired lady who was the owner.  During the course of our chat the subject got around to pests and, in particular, the Texas Leaf-Cutting Ant.  She crooked her finger and motioned for us to follow her into a back room, where she pulled a white plastic container off a shelf and held it up for our inspection.

“Orthene”, she whispered.

“Put a cupful of Grape Nuts in a gallon plastic storage bag, throw in a tablespoon of this, shake it up, sprinkle it with a little water, zip it up, throw it under your sink, and forget about it for two weeks.  When you pull it out, you’ll see mold growing on the Grape Nuts.  Just sprinkle it around their holes, and the workers will take it down.  It won’t be long before it contaminates their food supply.”

She grinned and giggled, “And the queen will die.  And the colony will die.  But don’t tell anybody I told you.”

Of course, I tried it as soon as we got back home.  With minimal success.  Orthene dust drifting around inside our house was not a good idea, so the process had to be done outside on a still day.  Even then, some of the dust made its way into the air and onto my hands.  I eventually discerned my good health should supersede this method of diminishing A. texana.  Advantage to the ant.

So, I turned to exotica.  In particular, the Red Dragon 100,000 BTU Weed Dragon propane torch.  Sweet, sweet, sweet.  I figured if I couldn’t eliminate, exterminate, eradicate, annihilate, terminate, kill, wipe out, abolish, or do away with my sworn enemies, I would just sadistically rain fire down on them from above.  There was great pleasure in turning on the propane, sparking it, and then squeezing the power grip to bring a foot-long blue flame roaring to life.  I vaporized all leaf cutter ants I saw moving around above ground.  I blew fire and intense heat down every ant hole I could find.  I interrupted the rhythm of their daily life, and I got boundless pleasure from it, even though my efforts were only temporary.  You interrupt my life.  I interrupt your life.  Me man.  You ant.  Advantage me.

Whenever I found evidence of leaf cutter activity somewhere out on the property away from the house, I employed another disruptive tactic.  I got my little blue tractor out of the barn and drove it up over their holes, locked the brakes, put it in gear, revved up the engine and just shook the ground for several minutes.  Up came the leaf cutters, large, small, and tiny, running for their little lives.  I could only fantasize about what was going on deep in the ground beneath my tractor and me, but the scenarios were so satisfying.  Oh, so satisfying.  Score yet one more for H. sapiens.

The last few years of our life in the country had me playing a variation on a theme.  The old nursery lady’s whispered advice from years before was sound.  I just tweaked it.  On still days, I would work my way around our house, alternately spraying a bush or ornamental with water, then dusting it with her secret powder.  The leaves dried with a coating that was unpalatable to the leaf cutters, and they stayed away.  Take that.

In the end, I think maybe our war was a stalemate.  There were many battles out in the country along River Road. As a member in good standing of the human race, I never countenanced defeat.  Nor did the ants.

Take a few minutes sometime and enter Texas Leaf Cutting Ant into your favorite search engine.  The results will run the gamut, from hatred and disdain to fascination and praise.

A begrudging nod to you, Atta texana.

Escaping Gravity

Posted on by
Reply

Eugene Cernan, the last astronaut to walk on the surface of the Moon, died in January, 2017. He was a fervent supporter of the U.S. space program. So am I. It changed my life. The story goes something like this.

“Cockroft?”

“Speaking.”

“Don’t have much time, Cockroft. Wanna come to Houston and be a spaceman?”

“Wait, wait, wait, is this Worrell, my old Channel 6 amigo?”

“I need you down here pronto.”

“Uhmm.”

Translation 1: In that brief phone conversation, my former television colleague Larry Worrell was asking me in his brusque, minimalist way if, in ten days, I wanted to leave the safe confines of my work as a television director in Wichita Falls, Texas and journey 400 miles south for a two-week contract job at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Nassau Bay, Texas, about 25 miles southeast of Houston.

On the last day of January 1971, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, three NASA astronauts were scheduled to climb into a teardrop-shaped space capsule sitting on top of a rocket taller than the Statue of Liberty. Two hours and 40 minutes later, five powerful rocket engines would ignite, and the Saturn V rocket would be on its way, lifting three souls from the surface of the Earth on their journey to our lovely Moon.

The Apollo 14 Lunar Landing Mission beckoned, and my long-lost amigo had offered me a chance to be a minor part of the adventure.

Translation 2: “Hell, yes!”

But. But. For almost 27 years the strong, clinging vines of comfort and security had bound me firmly to my family and my friends and my hometown of a 100,000-plus residents. I was safe, sort of. Whenever I looked in a mirror (why, hello insecurity, how are you today?), I saw a blue-eyed, blonde-haired, genuine North Texas rube. And now, this red-dirt rube was about to break free and head for the Texas Gulf Coast, to enter the mysterious and sophisticated world of space exploration.

A week-and-a-half later, the security guard at the front entrance of the Manned Spacecraft Center cautioned me that the “Visitor” tag now dangling from the rear-view mirror of my big Pontiac was good for one day only. Fine by me. The rube was in.

The Public Affairs Office was, in 1970, located in Building 1, just across a large patio from the Visitors Center and Auditorium Building. Two successful Apollo moon landings had brought a steady flow of visitors from this and other countries to the big space base near the Gulf of Mexico.

In mid-April, 1970, the Apollo 13 spacecraft was approaching the Moon when an oxygen tank exploded, ending any chance for a successful mission and endangering the lives of the three astronauts aboard. NASA engineers and technicians proved their prowess in real-time problem-solving when they returned the astronauts alive to a successful landing in the Pacific Ocean. Now, news organizations from all over the world were either in or headed to Nassau Bay, Texas, in January 1971, to see what would happen with Apollo 14.

The patio was alive with the foot traffic of NASA employees and reporters and photographers and producers and crying babies and curious children and mommies and daddies and grandmas and grandpas, and me.

I pushed open one of the Building 1 glass doors and walked into a new world. Directly ahead of me, in a small room, a press conference was in progress. I made eye contact with Worrell, who was directing a microphone toward one of the members of the press corps seated in the room. A surly nod of acknowledgement headed my way.

The press conference ended and the gathered crowd quickly emptied the room to go make phone calls and file stories. Worrell waved for me to join him.

“Cockroft, this ain’t Channel 6. This ain’t Wichita Falls. This is the center of the universe. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“It’s gonna be real different. There’s gonna be some purty people, some ugly people, some smart people, some dumb people, and some weird and real weird people. Make ‘em happy. Everybody around here’s purty good at what they do.”

“So, what exactly do you have me signed up for?”

“Well, we’re gonna work when we’re workin’ and when we’re not we’re gonna have fun. You’re not gonna get much sleep, but you’re gonna love it.”

“Larry, you do realize you’re it. You’re the only person I know here. Weidman and Shaw and Burkhart are all working in TV up the road in Houston, but that’s Houston, not here. I kinda feel like a BB rolling down a 4-lane highway. And what was it again that I’m gonna be doing?”

“Cockroft, you’re gonna make the networks happy. When those guys are on the way to the Moon and turn on the camera for a news conference, or when Shephard and Mitchell are on the surface, kickin’ up some moon dust, you’re gonna push a button, call the network guys in the trailers behind the Visitors Center, and let them know that some space TV is comin’ their way. Welcome to the center of the universe.”

Larry walked me through the building and introduced me to some of those “people” he had mentioned. I shook hands with Milt, Terry, Bob, Jack, Judy, Doyle, Art, Morris, Ed, Joyce, Mike, Bob, three Johns and many, many others.

“Make ‘em happy, Cockroft.”

I did. I made a lot of friends in the Public Affairs Office in Building 1 during the flight of Apollo 14. I didn’t make many, if any, friends in Building 8, where I actually worked during the mission. Others sitting at the long console where I sat and listened and made my calls to domestic and foreign television networks were engineers. I was not. They had short hair. I had long hair. They dressed casually. I always wore a tie. They didn’t smoke. I was a chimney. They read technical manuals during mission lulls. I read “Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing.” I was the odd child in the room. I loved it.

The Apollo 14 Mission to the Moon was a success scientifically, and Commander Alan Shepard went off script and whacked two golf balls with a six-iron before the crew left the surface of the Moon. NBC, CBS, ABC, and international networks broadcast those in-flight news conferences and lunar surface activities to a worldwide television audience. I made the networks happy.

And Worrell was right. I did work hard when I was working. He and I did have fun when we weren’t working. I did not get a lot of sleep.

I ate raw oysters for the first time in my life. I inhaled the lovely, salty, fishy smell of the Gulf of Mexico. I saw hell on fire. At least that was Worrell’s impression of the sprawling Texas City refineries when viewed at night from Interstate 45. I fell in love with the big, freewheeling city of Houston. I also fell in love with Meredith, a beautiful New Orleanian who would later become my wife.

Three souls had returned safely to Earth. The splashdown parties were over. My brief brush with the mysterious and sophisticated world of space exploration was at an end. That old “Visitor” pass, good for one day only, had many days ago been replaced with a “Temporary” pass, good for the duration of the mission. Now NASA wanted it back. No government souvenirs, thank you.

I gave mi viejo amigo Larry a hug, climbed into the big Pontiac, and headed for Wichita Falls. My plans for the future were laid. My boss at Channel 6 would hear from me that I had an unforgettable adventure while I was away. In fact, so unforgettable that in two weeks I’d be gone. I would tell my mother and father I loved them and appreciated all they had done for me for so many years, but I felt it was time for a change. I would bid adieu to close and not so close friends and invite them to come see me in Houston. None of it easy but all of it necessary.

I looked in my rearview mirror and saw a blue-eyed, blonde-haired, North Texas guy smiling back at me.

Strange. Suddenly I felt lighter. Suddenly I felt free.

Four-Tired Friends

Posted on by
1

Ah, the twilight years. Life way out there on the end of the limb. Boy, have things changed. Life just isn’t as simple as it used to be. Back in my day, I remember whe…

Hey!

What just flew by me in the “don’t dare venture over here unless you’re hitting 80” lane? A brand new AcuLexBuiNisolet? No, no no. It must have been a ForKiMazHonLinToy. Argh! I used to be the champ. I was proud. No four-wheeled mode of transport dared pass me by without fear of immediate identification. I hate to admit defeat, but, for me, the day of the distinctive automobile is gone. The “look” has surrendered to sameness. These days, to recognize what kind of car that is in front of me, I have to slip in behind it like a NASCAR driver and search for the ever-elusive nameplate. Granted, the modern-day automobile is safe and fuel-efficient, and will likely be dependable for a hundred-thousand miles or more, but please, show me something that sets one car apart from another. Tail fin me. Porthole me. At the very least, chrome bumper me.

Let me tell you about some of the cars I have known.

My parents were Pontiac people, so my first car was fated to be a Pontiac. It was their seven-year-old 1955 Star Chief Sedan. My mother named it Firegold. My mother named every family car they ever owned. This one had a two-tone paint job, White Mist over Firegold, hence the nickname. Firegold was long and wide and comfortable and plenty fast enough to land me a ticket for doing seventy on a sixty miles per hour stretch of Texas highway. I never owned Firegold, but it was special because it was the first.

My dad had affection for cars. He always drove his own work car, which he jokingly called his “junk” car, and he had many of them. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, my dad kept a minimum of five one-hundred dollars bills stashed in his wallet at all times. If he spotted a used car he wanted, he was prepared to offer the seller cash on the spot. More often than not, he drove away with the car. My father was a master at paying as little as possible, doing his own repair work, and then selling for profit. These are a few of the memorable “junk” cars he brought home in the 1960’s: a black 1939 Ford Coupe with rumble seat – ooh, I loved to be seen in it; a brown 1954 Hillman Minx – it was dowdy and very British, and I liked to refer to its bonnet, boot, and windscreen; a green and white 1959 Nash Metropolitan – I could reach down and touch the pavement from the driver’s seat; and a Studebaker Champion coupe from the 50’s – I heard “Hey, are you coming or going?” a lot. They were all unique. They had a “look.”

The first car I actually owned was a used turquoise and white 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air two-door sedan. I replaced the taillight lenses with two from a 1956 Buick. Very classy. I put chrome rear view mirrors on top of the front fenders. Not so classy. It never occurred to me that I should position those mirrors on the fenders so the hood would not hit them when opened. Every time I, or any unsuspecting gas station attendant, raised the hood, my customizing buffoonery was on display. The hood scraped loudly against both mirrors and pushed each one to the side at least two inches. That pretty much soured my relationship with the Chevy. My kind father never spoke a critical word and kindly sold the car for me. I moved on to a 1959 Pontiac Star Chief, a big car with a spacious interior. The Star Chief was a true four-door hardtop – it had no roof support pillar between the front and rear doors. With all the windows down, it was the next best thing to driving a convertible. Great…and not so great. While driving back to the house one night, enjoying the openness of my next best thing to a convertible, I, a fledgling smoker, casually flicked a still-burning cigarette butt out into the hot summer darkness. I would have no dirty ashtray in my Pontiac. In the wee hours, long after I had parked the car for the night and slipped into bed, my father awakened me with the bad news that the interior of my big, blue Pontiac had burned up during the night. The airborne butt did not land on the pavement as intended but somehow pulled off an Immelmann maneuver to re-enter and land on the backseat of my true four-door hardtop, where it stealthily smoldered and did its damage under the cover of night. Mercifully, our insurance company took pity on my unfortunate circumstance, so with the pay-off from the unintentionally torched Star Chief, I searched the car lots on Jacksboro Highway.

Birge Motor Company specialized in nice, used imported autos. One afternoon, while checking out the cars on their lot, I was drawn to a little British beauty. It was a 1962 Sunbeam Rapier Mark IIIA two-door hardtop, waiting there just for me. Come here, big boy. Open my door. Slide right in. Nice! Leather-covered bucket seats, very subtle rear fender fins, four-speed synchromesh transmission, and two one-barrel Zenith carburetors riding atop a tight four-cylinder engine. I loved the Rapier’s design and feel, and the interior was snug and plush. Sadly, sadly, it turned out that all those things were merely illusory. Once again, I failed to properly think things through. Several months after I had signed on the dotted line and sped off down the Jacksboro Highway humming “Hail, Britannia”, one of those neat carburetors quit working. It needed a new butterfly valve, but Birge had no butterfly valve.  In fact, they had no Sunbeam Rapier parts of any kind. There was no butterfly valve for my Sunbeam anywhere in the United States of America. The closest one was a costly six-month journey from London, England to the great state of Texas.

I gave up the Rapier for a new 1966 Pontiac LeMans two-door hardtop. It was equipped with a V-8 engine and a floor-mounted, three-speed transmission, but for me, the greatest thing about that car was its Delco radio, equipped with reverb. I loved to roll down the windows, crank up the volume, and broadcast rock and roll music to any overly sensitive country and western music ears within range. Two years later, pure, unabated envy drove me to trade my LeMans for a yellow 1968 MGB convertible. John, my unforgivably handsome fraternity brother, rolled up one day in a bright red Triumph TR5, and, judging from the pretty Gamma Phi sitting beside him, it looked to me like a British two-seater was the fast track to attracting girls. I kept my MGB for three months. It took me that long to figure out that the attraction was John, not his TR5.

I abandoned the cramped confines of the MGB for good old decadent American luxury, in the form of a top-of-the-line 1968 Pontiac Bonneville Brougham two-door hardtop with black Cordova roof. Four years later, I drove it down to the Texas Gulf Coast, where I spent two weeks working at the Manned Spacecraft Center during the Apollo 14 moon mission. Through a mutual friend, I met my future lovely wife on that two-week adventure. Of course, she owned no Chrysler, Ford, or GM product. Hello, bonnet, boot, and windscreen. Hello, British two-seater. Future lovely wife drove a British Racing Green 1972 Triumph Spitfire MkIV. A side note. My large, General Motors Corporation Pontiac had wonderful air-conditioning to overcome the heat and humidity of Houston. British Leyland brooked no such luxury. Spitfires were for the stouthearted.  Quit your whining. Just drop the top and let the wind do its job.

Now, a Volkswagen Squareback, Plymouth Volare, Pontiac Phoenix, Lincoln Continental, three Volvo 240DL’s, and two Toyota Sienna’s later, I still have visions of being out of step with the automotive times. But, those fantasies will have to wait. The “maintenance required” light on my AuJeDodMitsler just came on, and it’s signaling that it’s time for an oil change.

The Rocks

Posted on by
1

What is it about rocks that lures me like a fraternity boy to a toga party? I tilt my head down, and immediately my eyes start searching for smooth ones and rough ones. Big ones and little ones. Black ones with brown stripes and white ones with green spots and those rare pale red ones. Flat ones and round ones and the real pretty ones. And the mighty ugly ones.

My love affair with rocks goes back to when I transitioned from Cub Scout to Boy Scout and went on my first camping trip.

Early on a Saturday morning, Ben Davis, the prematurely bald scoutmaster of Troop 30, loaded seven sleepy boys into his 1956 Buick Roadmaster, inserted the ignition key with a maestro’s flourish, brought the shiny green beast to life, and set out north on 277 from Texas to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma.

As we drove onto the refuge, we saw buffaloes shuffling along through the prairie grass, thirty feet away from the right side doors of Ben’s car. “Stay in the car, boys. Buffaloes are unpredictable.” None of us argued that point. We drove on to our campsite, pitched our tents, and piled up wilderness mattresses of dried leaves to hold our sleeping bags. Then we downed a quick meal of canned fruit cocktail and Beanee Weenee, topped off with long gulps of water from brand new official BSA canteens. Ben circled his right hand high above his head, summoning us to assemble for a hike. “Let’s go gentlemen, times a wastin’.” Gravel crunched underfoot as Bob, Bobby, Mike, Louis, John, Milt, and I followed Ben across the parking area to a small game trail that quickly led to a meadow strewn with small lichen-covered rocks. Directly ahead, an up thrust of enormous barren boulders and giant slabs of pink granite waited for our knees and elbows and hiking boots. Ah, beautiful old pink granite and the treasures it deposited for my young hands to discover – crystal quartz, rose quartz, and milky quartz. I would find one rock that was entirely delightful and then uncover another that bested it. I loved the hunt. Stone beckoned me with beauty and silence. The hook was set.

During my alley rat phase, I came across something very interesting on one of my wanderings along the stinky passageway behind my parents’ house. I was accustomed to finding discarded Fortune magazines in one particular garbage can behind a house across the alley, four doors down, and I had quite innocently stumbled across a few things in other garbage cans up and down our alleyway that a thirteen-year-old boy was not supposed to talk about in polite company. On this grand day, I spied the top of a large white rock about ten inches in diameter poking out of the dirt in the alley right behind our house. Maybe the weight of a garbage truck full of neighborhood refuse, lumbering over that particular spot week-after-week, had finally summoned this particular stone to the surface. Treasure! I pulled it out of the ground and carried it into the backyard to hose it off. When all the dirt was gone, I saw an impression resembling what I now know to be a Chambered Nautilus. At that moment, I knew I was the owner of a pretty good-sized fossil of some kind. I asked my mom if I could give it to the geology department at Midwestern University, about a four mile drive from our house. She was good with that, and soon the fossil, my mom and I were on our way. I was sure the university would give me a hero’s welcome. After all, had anyone so generously given such a rare gift to the university’s geology department? Maybe the local newspaper would hear about this selfless act. Maybe my picture would be on the front page – Local Boy Donates Rare Fossil. My mother and I walked into one of the geology classrooms, where an elderly professor was busy working at his desk. I announced myself and my mom and presented my find. The professor examined one side of the fossil, then the other, and declared it to be an Ammonite. The old man thanked my mother and me, then turned, opened a large drawer, and deposited my precious rock alongside at least fifteen other Ammonites of like size. Oh well, so much for rarity and notoriety, but the memory of finding and ever so briefly possessing that once living creature from eons ago is still fresh. Did that ancient Ammonite fossil hold who, what, when, where, and why secrets from time past? I believe it did.

Aunt Velma worked as an executive secretary for the old Sinclair Oil and Refining Company, in Midland, Texas. When some of Sinclair’s geologists returned from their field explorations, they must have brought my aunt mementos of their travels, IMG_7187-001 (Small)because when Velma died I inherited two cardboard boxes full of goodies. I found petrified wood with rough bark and visible growth rings, geodes of varying sizes, silicate rocks, many quartz rocks, and a slim brown rock holding the pristine fossil of two fern fronds. Long ago, who or what set foot on primal soil and walked among those ancient ferns and trees? Oh, the tales the rocks in those boxes could tell.

And now the story shifts to Washington State. My lovely wife and I made our first visit to the great Pacific Northwest shortly after my son and his family moved to Poulsbo. We made a day trip to Point No Point, where I was astonished at the sheer number of sizable beach rocks, each glacially ground and polished to beauty pageant perfection. While my family visited, waded, and noshed, I wandered up and down the beach gathering pocketfuls of smooth beauties. I think I hauled thirteen pounds of rocks back to Texas on that trip. One particular five-pounder attracted the suspicion of a TSA agent, who thought I was trying to sneak something radioactive through security. It was really nothing sinister, just a big brown and blue-green beauty that appeared to be mostly petrified wood.IMG_7186-001 (Small) My all-time favorite from that trip is an oblong black stone. It looks as if an artisan took an engraving tool and etched an unknown language into the whole surface. I have examined that strange black rock many times with an 8-power photo loupe, searching for the message or messages that surely must be there. Nothing yet, but the quest will continue. The black lovely rests on my desk within easy reach.

I think rocks know stories. They keep mysteries. They were here at the beginning and saw it all. But now they are silent.

Luke the physician, an apostle of Jesus Christ, writes in his Gospel of a time when Jesus and his disciples were approaching the city of Jerusalem. The disciples ran ahead of Jesus and were excitedly telling a gathering crowd about all the miracles they had seen him do. Several Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day, were in the crowd. They had no desire to hear anything the disciples were saying, and they demanded that Jesus tell his disciples to shut up. The Messiah’s answer to them was, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

Reliable knowledge from the most reliable source. Maybe not this day, maybe not this year, but a day will come when the rocks will have their say.

Buttermilk to Latte

Posted on by
1

Here we are, going on three years as residents of a peaceful neighborhood to the west of Houston.  Churches on street corners.  Supermarkets galore.  Highly rated schools.  Good neighbors.  Shade trees.  Thick St. Augustine grass.  Nine Starbucks within five miles.  Shelter from the storm.  But…

In the last thirty months, I haven’t heard a decent Barred Owl shouting match.  I haven’t been surprised by a Water Moccasin enjoying the pool or a Copperhead lounging on the front doorstep.  No decent herd of feral hogs running wild on the other side of Irons Creek.  No sneaky army of Texas Leafcutter Ants laying waste to my struggling Wax Leaf Ligustrums.  No distinct rumble of Harleys whizzing by at midnight on the farm-to-market road out front.

Truth is, I miss the country.  I miss the owls and snakes and hogs and ants and indistinct old men in leather vests riding to be distinct young men in leather vests.  I miss the one hundred-year-old, sixty-foot-tall pecan trees that dropped tasty native nuts every other November.  I miss the creek that ran the length of the backside of our just about ten acres and the abundance of yellow water lilies that thrived in the shallow, brackish water.  I miss the night sky.  The Big Dipper.  The Seven Sisters.  The North Star.  I miss the rambling rancher with oversize bedrooms and mighty stone fireplace.  I miss my wife’s elegantly designed kitchen.  I miss the sanctum of my barn.  I miss my blue Ford tractor.  I miss Chester, the world’s greatest Golden Retriever.  I miss Tigger, the ornery three-legged cat rescued from a garden outside my workplace.  I miss Pico de Gato, the Tabby cat that Chester sniffed out of hiding one Autumn evening.  They are resting peacefully in the rich Brazos riiverbottom soil beneath the pecan tree out back.  People.  I miss the friends we made.  Across the road.  In town, at the little Baptist church where we worshiped for fifteen years.  Great memories.  Lasting memories.  But…

I’m a city boy now.  I don’t have to walk half a football field to leave the garbage can by the road or pick up my mail.  My garbage can is retrieved these days, and bills and trash mail are mere steps away.  Ah, the irritating sounds of a yapping Chihuahua 3 doors down, “Stairway To Heaven” from the folks just across the back fence, a beer belch from the neighbor next door, and outside my bedroom window, Nearly Naked Man, his Speedo daringly hanging just high enough, edging my grass just because he likes to edge grass.  Walmart and Kroger are on the other side of the freeway, 5 minutes from the driveway.  It takes three minutes to pull into the church parking lot.  Sweet.  Maybe city life’s not so bad after all.

I need one Pike Place and one decaf Caffè Mocha, extra hot.  Do you have any Splenda?

Yogi and I

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_7174 (Small)The world of baseball and Yogi-ism lovers just lost a great one.  Yogi Berra died today.  He was 90 years old.

This photograph was taken in the late 1980’s, when Yogi visited KPRC-TV in Houston, after he joined the Houston Astros as their bench coach.  When his on-air interview was finished and he was headed for the door, I approached Yogi, told him that my mother was a lifelong fan of the Yankees, and asked if he would mind posing for a picture with me so I could send her a copy.  He was happy to make my mom happy.

I think the picture ended up on one of my mother’s living room end tables.  She loved her Yankees, even when they were out of uniform, dressed in a sport coat and tie, and standing next to her grinning kid.  In 1961, she loved the boys in pinstripes even when she, a teetotaler, had one of their inebriated fans spill a beer down the back of her blouse during a Yankees-White Sox game in Yankee Stadium.  I’ve still got the 1961 New York Yankees World Series pennant that my mom bought in 1962, during our visit to one of the ballparks where the Yanks were battling it out once again for the AL East title.  And there’s Yogi, smile on his face, right between Cletis Boyer and Mickey Mantle.

When my mom passed away, I retrieved my gift to her, so I could brag about the day I met Yogi Berra.  Oh, and flash this picture with him smiling and me with my hand on his shoulder.

Wow, Yogi and I.

the icebreaker

Posted on by
1

This blog has nothing to do with tobacco.  It is simply my ramblings on things past and things present.

First, the title.  The phrase, or perhaps more properly, praise, “gooder’n snuff,” was visited upon me throughout my North Texas upbringing, from childhood to college days.  I heard it when someone thought I was looking good, when they thought I was uncharacteristically humorous, or when they judged my opinion to be superior to all others.  I loved to hear it.  I loved to say it.

In 1971, I left my hometown, Wichita Falls, for the big city of Houston and left “gooder’n snuff” behind for the North Texans to use.  After all, newly acquired sophistication only allowed for so much.  It certainly didn’t allow for any identifiable colloquialism that would light me up like a cheap motel sign.

Fast forward 45 years.  I’m now 43+ years into a marriage to the finest woman I’ve ever known.  I’m the proud father of 2 grown, well-educated children with families of their own.  I’m Papa to 6 grandchildren.  I’m 7½ years into retirement from broadcast television news, a profession I enjoyed for 34 years.  But lately I’ve been having dreams about my past work life.  Now I’m the oddball outsider trying to get back in.  Bummer.  Something must be missing from my life.

I’m ready to find things that are Gooder’n Snuff again.

Here we go.