With all this practice – Josey Ranch, roping club, high school rodeos– you probably think I might have just gone on and been a professional rodeo star. 

You would be mistaken. 

One of our group of friends did actually join the PRCA and take his show on the road, but I was definitely not he.

Even though I finished in the money at shows here and there around East Texas at the high school level, I was not….great. I feel an honest assessment was that I was average. I could catch most of the time. Catching to me seemed to be less than half of the battle. I had a well-trained horse, and I could swing a rope. That can be said about 80% of the people that pay an entry fee. My dismount was horrible. My run to the calf was downright dangerous. I struggled with throwing the calves, and my tying needed much more practice. I knew the fundamentals, but executing them at a professional level hadn’t come to me yet. 

One of my most influential instructors at Josey’s Ranch was Danny Rienhardt. (He and his wife have their own rodeo clinics now.) He was the man. He wasn’t the youngest, flashiest, cockiest guy around, but he knew things. I looked up to him and I credit him for any calf roping success I had at the time. 

When I think about my times at Josey’s, and Danny in particular, I have two default memories. 

The first is when he made me put my rope down, and throw pinecones at the head of a roping dummy. He wouldn’t let me pick up my rope again until I could bounce those pinecones consistently off the top of its head from any position. Possibly the greatest lesson learned right there. If you are having issues catching, put the rope down and get a pile of rocks. It’s the same motion, and if you can hit that thing consistently with a rock, then you can rope it. 

The second was a story he told about humiliation and how you handle pride can change the course of your life. I have no way of knowing if this was a true story, or simply a morality tale designed to make young men invincible, but either way it sticks with you. Even if it is a harder lesson to actually learn than throwing rocks. 

He began telling of a woman that was rising in the PRCA as a champion barrel racer. She wasn’t there yet, but she was known and was definitely an ‘up and comer.’ Rodeo stardom is also about image. She had that in spades. She had the nice glittery shirts, clean white hat and pants, and all the other things that make the girls in rodeo ‘fancy.’  What most didn’t know was that she wore a wig to make up for the flowing hair that she didn’t have, but wanted. 

She was entered up in a particular rodeo and it was the show that changed her life. Running out at full speed towards the first barrel all was well. Then her horse got spooked for reasons unknown around that first barrel and gave a half buck. The barrel fell away. Unfortunate time penalty, but all is not lost. Then she lost a stirrup coming up on the second barrel and fell forward across the neck of her horse. She struggled to regain control and her horse plowed  right through that barrel. Her hat flew off one way, and her wig…flew the other as the horse ran for the third barrel. She was desperately trying to regain her balance, control her horse, and cover her head as she approached the third barrel. She miraculously made the third barrel clean, but her exit was in tears. She ran through the gate and didn’t stop until she was at her trailer weeping uncontrollably. Humiliated, she loaded up her horse, left, and disappeared from the circuit never to be seen again in pro rodeo. 

Danny said that a different attitude, a different perspective, could have changed how that day ended and may have cemented her future in the sport. He suggested that since you know that bad runs ARE going to happen,  and that every run won’t be perfect, you will be better prepared for it. If you are willing to show humility and have confidence in the knowledge that they won’t ALL be bad, you can overcome the ones that are. 

His suggestion:

Since she knew the time was not going to be competitive that day, she should have just gotten her horse under control after the second barrel. He asked us to imagine that instead of finishing the run in a blur of tears, she had reined in, and finished the pattern at a trot. 

He said, “Imagine that instead of running from her humiliation she had stood proudly in her stirrups, KICKED that last barrel over in an act of defiance, and had given a princess wave all the way out of the arena.”

His theory was that they would have given her a standing ovation instead of the muffled applause and hushed tones. They would have rallied behind her and cheered her the entire way, instead of watching her leave without a backward glance. 

Like I say, he was a strong man. It takes a strong man to envision that scenario and believe he could handle it in that manner. I certainly wasn’t that man.

There are certain things that I absolutely know about myself. To make myself feel better about these things, I imagine that it is the exact same for all, or most, people. One of these things is this: 

I can be driving alone, standing in a crowd, queued up in a line, or even just watching TV with my wife, and I will recall an embarrassing incident from 40 years ago with no prompting. I will audibly go: “ugh” or “uhhhmm” and make a weird face. 

It happens to me. 

I just assume it happens to everyone else because if it is only me, well…. in my mind that would make me less of a person than others around me.

Now for my story. 

If you have ever seen me make a random sour face and grunt without explanation, this is probably the story that I just thought of. 

In competition events at the age I was, you could carry a spare rope. The idea is that if you miss, you reach down, grab that loop and catch on a second try. It won’t be a record time, but if no one else had a second loop and they fell short…..well a catch is a catch. 

I’m in the box ready to go. I’m doing what I love and have a nervousness in the pit of my stomach as always. I’m doing all the right things. I have my rope ready, hand on the saddle horn to pull myself up and forward, my horse knows it’s time. 

I give the nod. It was a perfect beginning. The calf gets a head start, and if you are early, you are penalized. I was gold. I was on that calf in two jumps and then I made a horrible throw. No matter, I have a spare and no one else has caught tonight. If I can manage to put it on the end of a rope, I may make the money. I reach down and grab the extra rope and I pull it up, breaking the string it’s tied with. 

Notice I said “pull it up.” If you have ever carried a spare loop, you know that is incorrect. You must pull it “out.” The reason you don’t pull it up is because it will go under your leg and get stuck. It’s a known issue that you practice for, but apparently I hadn’t practiced enough. That loop was pulled most of the way up under my leg and stirrup. I yanked at it twice before I ever realized what was happening. 

I can hear the announcer say, ‘Oh it looks like he missed, but he has an extra rope…’ and he goes into an explanation of how a cowboy is allowed another rope in situations just like this. At this point my horse is on autopilot chasing that poor calf and I’m trying to lift my leg out and untangle myself from this mess. Nothing is working, it is wedged under my thigh at this point. Everything is going in slow motion and I can hear the announcer being helpful and supportive. 

“It’s hung up under your leg, cowboy…”

I don’t know how long it took for me to get that damn loop free. When I finally did, I threw it perfectly, got my catch, ran down and tied that animal. I know that as I walked back to my horse and mounted back up I felt like I was going to vomit. The judges declared it a good tie. The audience gave me a very supportive round of applause. Rodeo people are generally good people, then and now. 

In rodeo the bucking events are measured in seconds. You ride that bull or bronc for eight seconds and you are done. Steer wrestling is usually over quicker than a successful bull ride. Team roping is a less than ten second event. Barrel racing runs are started and finished in less than twenty seconds. 

As I was gathering up my dual ropes I learned something I hadn’t known at the time. The announcer explained it to me and the crowd at the same time.

“Let’s give that cowboy a big hearty round of applause. That is all he will be taking home today. That fouled rope cost him. There is a 60-second limit in calf roping.”

60 seconds… Imagine riding in circles on a horse in front of a huge crowd of peers, participants and onlookers for SIXTY seconds while they all scream…”It’s under your leg!!”

There was no princess wave. There were no tears but there was a huge amount of humiliation. I don’t know if that was my absolute last rodeo night, but I have no memory of ever roping from a horse again. I replay that one event over and over… More than I remember ANY of my successful catches and wins. 

It hits completely different.

In my current position we have a “thing”. It was once called the “Back to School Meeting.” Now it is more fancy and we call it the Convocation. I have worked here long enough that I have seen that meeting grow from a small science lecture hall, to the auditorium, and finally now to the ballroom with full AV setup and can accommodate breakfast and lunch for a few hundred people. (Yes, we are spoiled, I know) The meeting has always been the place to announce new hires and welcome them to the family. 

I’m walking into this meeting all confident and relaxed because I have been here for 14 years at this point. Ready to get the year started! 

I am walking past one of our directors. She is talking to someone that I didn’t recognize and they are laughing. 

“Ray, have you met our new employee? This is Kristye,” she states while still giggling at whatever they had been discussing.

Me being my most polite self, “No, I haven’t, I’m Ray, I work in IT. If there is anything you need, don’t hesitate to call.” I start to continue on, but am immediately halted.

“Ray, you may not remember this, but you and Kristye have met before and she was just telling me a story about you.”

Panic rips away my enjoyment, fear grips me. I instantly run through every embarrassing story I can remember about myself. My ears turn bright red. I can FEEL them throbbing as I stare at this new employee smiling back at me as I’m trying to decide if I will have to quit soon. 

I slow down, take a deep breath…..count to ten inside my head. 

I start processing contextual clues. They are still smiling, so it must not be someone who downright hates me. They were giggling and speaking in hushed tones, so it may be embarrassing. They didn’t rush over to HR to ask for a meeting so I may get to keep my job. I take one more deep breath and take an absolute unguided guess at who this person is.

“Oh man…okay…The story that you just told Laura about me, does it start at a rodeo, and end at the police station?”

They both burst out laughing. Leaning into one another trying to catch their breath. My heart is still racing a bit. It’s been years since I’ve been reminded of this and I’m trying to remember exactly what I’m in for. I replay the story in my head while they try to compose themselves and wipe away the tears of laughter.  

I continue addressing the new hire, “I have to tell you. Just so you know. When I tell this story… and I HAVE, I always make myself out to be the hero. Let me tell Laura my side real quick so that you can compare your story to mine.”

Before we delve into the details of this story I should explain a few things. In the late ‘80s cruising Grand was one of THE things to do on Friday nights. Every parking lot had waged war with kids parking and gathering. Police would run you off as soon as you started to look comfortable. 

Our cruising road was a strip of highway running east and west and was close to a mile in length. On the west end of the strip everyone did a U-turn, or stopped at the gas station right there. It had public restrooms outside the store and a convenience store for snacks and drinks. On the east side it was much different than today. It has always been an intersection of the two major East/West and North/South highways, but back during this time the roads were separated by an unpaved square island in the middle. When you got to this intersection heading East, you went through a light, took a left, then another immediate left around the island and headed back West again. 

On the route west you had a very good convenience store (The Shop a Lot) and a huge parking lot to gather and make plans if you were quick. Just past that parking area was the Sonic. Everyone would turn into the Sonic and make that a part of the loop. People would park their cars in the slots and visit while eating and yell at all the people driving past. It was a booming time for the Sonic of Marshall and I don’t think THEY ever complained about the kids. Exiting the Sonic you would continue west until you made that U-turn. 

You would do that over…and over….and over….Sometimes you would stop here, sometimes you would stop there. You may get pulled over or run out of a parking lot if you stayed in one place too long. There were no YouTube videos explaining what rights we actually had, and how to assert them. We really didn’t know about the Fourth Amendment back then. 

This particular Friday night I rolled up to the rodeo arena (one of the other popular Friday night activities) ready to hang out and see what’s happening. At the time I was sporting a 2-door Toyota Celica hatchback. I didn’t even get parked before I was accosted by a group of underage girls. They knew me. I was the older guy who they saw sometimes here and there. They addressed me by name and flagged me down. They were all talking at once, and in a panic. Most importantly, they all wanted to get into my car. 

At first I was adamant. 

“NO, just….no.”

Then the leader started pleading saying that they had been stranded at the rodeo and had no way to get back to town. I was skeptical.

“You have no ride? Then exactly how did you end up out here?”

It was a dubious story at best. They had accepted a ride from someone uptown, came to the rodeo, and then that ride had left them there. All they wanted from me was a ride back into town, and a few laps around the cruising circuit to find that truck. At that time they would all promptly leave my vehicle and the same loser that left them at the rodeo, would make sure they got home safe. 

I had reservations. I had issues…but they pleaded. They promised that they would not be a bother and I could get back to my night in no time. So being the hero, and all-around nice guy, that I obviously am…I opened the door of my tiny car for 4-5 teen girls. They poured in. The giggling made me think that they weren’t as concerned about being stranded at the rodeo as I had been led to believe.

The entire ride back to town they are laughing, talking about girl things, going through all the things in my car. All the while I’m trying to get a physical description of the vehicle I’m on the lookout for, and a name for this guy that has put me in this situation. I’m still not convinced that they actually had that information to give me. 

We make a lap around the circuit, maybe two, and the truck in question is nowhere to be seen. I pull into the west side convenience store and tell them to watch the traffic. If that vehicle is anywhere uptown it will pass this spot. 

“You guys watch all these cars and flag him down when he goes past….I’m stepping into the restroom real quick.”

I swear…when I left these girls they were simply piling out of my car and waving at cars. I walked into that hot, musty cinderblock bathroom with its single lightbulb and dangling on/off chain. Almost immediately something changed. 

The loud music that was normally playing as cars went past or cut through the station parking lot ceased. The yelling had very much been curtailed, but there was some coming from the street in a mocking tone. 

Like a hunter in the woods, I could ‘feel’ a change in mood around me, but I was still trying to decipher what it could mean when I saw the red and blue lights reflecting against the wall.

There was no back exit. I had parked directly in front of the only door to this bathroom. I actually considered staying there. Just lock the door and pretend that nothing was going on outside. I was wondering if they would just go away because that is exactly what the police do. They pull up, turn on some lights, then change their mind and go on their merry way. 

Then I remember I’m a grown ass man. I’m 21. I was doing nothing wrong. I was just helping some kids out and then continuing on with my night. I step out of the door trying to act as nonchalant as possible.

“Sir, is this your vehicle?”

Confidently, “Yes, sir, is there a problem?”

“Do you know these young ladies?”

“Well, I gave them a ride here, but to say I ‘know’ them is a bit much.”

“Have you been providing these underage girls with alcohol?”

Waaaaaaaaiiiiitttt just a gosh darn minute… Eaaaaasy there, Dick Tracy… 

“WHAAAAAT?!?”

I get dizzy. I remember that my plans for later that night had nothing to do with a gaggle of teen girls. My hatchback, which was now open for reasons beyond my comprehension, had a red cooler (also wide open now) filled with various adult beverages on ice. 

I take a closer look at my vehicle and see that there are now opened beverages in my vehicle with straws poking out. My heart starts racing as I look at all this new evidence against me, but the one thought that pops into my mind for unknown reasons is: “Where the heck did they get straws while I was in the bathroom?”

To their credit, and my relief, the girls 100% backed me up. As soon as the cops started asking if I had given them drinks, they started defending me all at once. They explained that they had found the drinks and helped themselves. My knees were still shaking as I produced my driver’s license. I verified the fact that I had legally purchased all of the drinks, and that I had intended to enjoy them with other legally aged adults later on in the evening.

At the time if you were under 18 and cited with a minor in possession, they would take you to the police station and wait for your parents. If you were 18-21 and cited, they gave you a ticket and let you go on your way after pouring out or confiscating all the alcohol. If you are 21 and have a car full of under 18-yr-olds that have stolen and consumed your legally purchased alcohol, you are given a choice.

“We are taking these girls to the station and calling all of their parents to come pick them up. Would you like to ride in the back of one of our patrol cars? Or will you willingly follow us to the station so their parents can meet you?”

That was a tough one. The thought of facing angry parents had me wondering if maybe I wanted to be in protective custody. With a deep sigh I let him keep my driver’s license as collateral until I came to the station. 

They had all the girls gather in what seemed like the police breakroom. It was far enough inside the station that you couldn’t just walk out, and close enough to the exit that it didn’t require a pat-down and search. They were spread out and seated at round tables. I just had a seat as far back from the door as I could. There was already a young girl at that table that was visibly upset. 

I remember one mom came in and tried to get all of the girls released under her supervision. I was really rooting for her because she didn’t seem like she wanted to kill me or even talk to me. The police had other ideas. 

The last girl picked up was the one sitting at my table. She was sitting there hiding her face. I could tell that she was very upset at the thought of her parents coming to pick her up at the police station. I felt horrible for her. I told her that it would be okay. I tried my best to console her.

That would be when her mother came in. 

That was one upset mother. 

I’m here to tell ya. She was not happy to see me.

Looking back at this moment as a TRULY grown ass man I can say that I was lucky. If my wife had walked in and seen a 21-yr-old guy consoling my underage daughter for her time in the big house, I’m afraid she would have just attacked him. 

As it was, she pointed at me and demanded that I stay away from her daughter. I was a bit afraid, so I’m not 100% sure what I said, but I think it was: 

“Yes, ma’am! I fully intend to!”

And I did just that, until that day in the auditorium. 

Since then, because God has a very good sense of humor, not only did Kristye start working with me, but so did her mother. They are both incredibly good people. Actually, now that I know them more, all of her family is amazing. Her daughter has become good friends with my daughter in-law, and her grandkids are best friends with my grandbabies.

Her mother actually tried to apologize for the time we spoke back in ‘89. I assured her that there was no apology needed from her, and as a parent, I was grateful that she showed me restraint. 

I debated over posting this story. I’m no lawyer and I don’t know anything about statute of limitations or current case law. I don’t want anyone coming to throw me in prison now that I’m almost ready to retire and raise livestock for a living. 

If you are currently in law enforcement, or think you may want to turn an old man in for reminiscing about his past, please just stop reading now or try some of my other stories.

But not the one about that party.

That may not be a good one for you either. 

I was reminded of this story because I wrote about Josey Ranch recently. I was looking up some of my old calf roping pictures and thinking about all those fun times. After all the summers at Josey’s ranch I started roping in high school rodeos. 

The year was 1983-84….ish. I was still driving that Yellow Ford that I loved so much. I was hanging out with a group of guys that have not been featured in any of my stories thus far. If I’m going down, I’m taking the guys with me. It was me, Tommy Wilson, Bud McCracken, John Carlisle, Paul Ray Storie, and Brett McClaren. 

Every Friday night we would load up our trucks and trailers and head out to a rodeo somewhere in East Texas.We really wanted to be able to practice whenever we wanted. What we were doing was paying an entry fee for one run a week. We talked to a man that had a ranch, a rodeo arena, and cattle. He gave us a verbal agreement that if we bought some calves and would take care of them, he would let them stay on his land, and we could use his arena. Basically it was a ‘you take care of things right, and you can use it as much as you wish’ situation. 

The next issue became, ‘how do we buy calves?’ 

None of us were really making any money at the time, but we knew what worked for other school organizations and clubs in the area. We would have a raffle. 

I won’t name the person that was most influential in running this raffle, but one person seemed to know everything that needed to be known. Looking back now, I think he may have been a genius. I had known him from first grade on, and I never knew he could run a business like this until it was required of him. 

The first meeting was to form a club, and give that club a name. We settled on the Silver Bullet Roping Club. Then we discussed what we could give away. We decided that giving away a half side of beef processed at the local packing plant was a perfect prize for what we needed the money for. Just imagine your local Youth Calf Roping Organization giving away a half side of beef to raise money to buy calves to rope. It seemed like the most natural thing ever.

The fact that we weren’t actually backed by any school organizations or clubs, and had zero adult supervision never really caused us pause. We immediately jumped into action.

The same person that negotiated the practice arena went all business in an instant. He researched/negotiated how much a half side of beef would cost at the packer. He went to the livestock auction and found out how much it would cost to buy a half dozen roping sized calves. He called a meeting and demanded enough money from us to get the tickets printed. We set a date for the drawing, prices for the tickets and gave him all of our cash. 

One day he just showed up with packets of tickets already split evenly into envelopes and told us to get to work. And get to work we did.

There was no question of ‘if you could sell that many tickets.’ They just had to be sold. It was required of you. If you weren’t out hustling raffle tickets then you could expect to be called on the carpet over it. All the research had been done. We sell out, and we obtain all our goals. If we don’t, we fall short and someone will have to make up the difference. 

We sold those tickets. We sold them to our family. We sold them to our friends. We sold them to people on the street, businesses…no one was safe. The amount of people willing to hand over wads of cash to a teen with a brown envelope filled with raffle tickets is pretty incredible.

In the end we piled that cash on the kitchen table, counted it all up and we had made our goals. We contacted the packing house and got our half side of beef ordered and told them when the drawing would be. The rest of the money would all go towards the calves and feed. 

The date of the drawing we gathered around a kitchen counter and made sure every single ticket sold was in a cardboard box. I still remember the excitement of the drawing…and then the anticlimactic name that was announced. 

We all looked at one another and the person doing the drawing said, ‘does anyone know this person?’ None of us did. 

Instantly he dropped that ticket and drove his arm back into the box up to his elbow. 

‘Anyone know this one?’ Shaking of heads.

‘How about this one?’ No. We sold to a LOT of strangers….

Back to the box….

‘Dick Haynes?’

‘YES!, that is one of mine!’ I shouted 

We got really excited that we actually knew the person that won. Never mind the fact that we were on our fourth draw before it happened.

I had a hard time convincing Dick that he actually had won, and that he was really and truly going to get a half side of beef for his investment.

He collected his beef.

We collected our calves.

We roped those things relentlessly. Sooooo many late nights out at that arena roping, tying, releasing. We roped them until they were bigger than we could throw. Then we started using them for chute dog practice. Later we even rode them. They didn’t really buck at all, but they would run like mad until they threw us on the ground. 

I’m not sure what happened to those calves. I don’t know if the property owner sold them later for a profit. Maybe the raffle director sold them. All I know is that we had such a great time out at that arena, and I have SUCH a distrust of raffle drawings now.

In a small town…or better yet, in a small group of small towns…there are people you hear about. You haven’t met them, but you know them by their reputation and you feel like you know them. Todd and I ‘heard’ about one another long before we ever MET one another. 

I think my first experience with the ‘Todd Experience’ was in junior high. I was walking down the hallway like always. Wearing Wranglers and scuffed Justin Ropers (with inside cuffs of jeans tucked into said boots), sporting a ¾ sleeve tee and a cowboy hat with the front brim bent down over my eyes. I was on my way to tennis practice so I had a gym bag and a tennis racquet in my hand. 

Some kid I didn’t know stopped me and seemed excited to see me.

‘Hey Todd! What are you doing here? And why are you carrying that tennis racquet?’

Me being me….I didn’t even think, ‘Who is this kid? Who is Todd? And why does he care where I”m going anyway?’ 

I just answered, ‘Because I’m on my way to tennis,’ and kept right on walking. 

He just stood there alone in the hallway with a weird, questioning look on his face. 

The ‘Todd Experience’ happened a few more times that first week, but I started asking questions. ‘Why are you calling me Todd? Who the heck is Todd? My name is Ray…why do you think I’m Todd?’

Apparently there was a kid that a LOT of people from my school knew of named Todd Holt. I apparently looked a LOT like him. In fact, I looked enough like him that people that had seen him before, and were comfortable enough to speak to him in public, had a hard time distinguishing us apart. In all honesty, I don’t think these were people that were ACTUALLY his friends, but they knew of him and wanted to be. 

I had never heard of him because he was a neighboring town person, and I had never been in a fight. Or at least not one that was notable enough to brag about, or become legendary. 

But Todd had…

After the first month of classes, this eased off. It just became a known thing that Todd was still in his school. There was this other kid in Marshall, but Todd hadn’t transferred. 

From that time forward, I knew of Todd… and he knew of me. He simply knew that a guy in Marshall had his face. I was just hoping that he didn’t want it back!

When I got to the 9th grade I got my hardship license and started driving to school. I had a BEAUTIFUL yellow ‘72 Ford with gold rims and a 302 engine and huge side mirrors. It had a locking tool box in the bed, and what was affectionately called a ‘beer window’ in the back glass. My stepdad bought it for me for $700 and told me that it was my one vehicle that was on him. As with a lot of things in the past, I wish I had taken better care of it. 

Nothing Todd related really happened in the 9th grade, but I still heard crazy stories about him at school, and on the weekends. 

I started hanging out with this guy named Chris Wood. I had actually met Chris back when I was 8 years old, but we had only seen one another in passing during the years since. The first time I met him, he ran over my dog. (The dog didn’t die, but it is a story in and of itself that you can read about here.) The Day I Met the Man that Changed My Life

We failed Algebra together for the first time that year. I still blame the teacher, but that story probably should stay locked in the back recesses of my smoldering mind. I’m sure if we ever meet, and the subject comes up, I will definitely tell you. I tell everyone that will listen. I’m not bitter.

10th grade…..

I start slowing down suddenly when writing about my High School years. Yet, here we are….. 

Chris and I were hanging out at school and weekends. Then one weekend my parents were out of town and Chris knew about a party in Elysian Fields. There are several things I should mention right here. I was aware that Todd went to school in Elysian Fields, and I was NOT aware that Chris knew Todd at all. It had never come up in any conversation we had ever had. 

I jump in my yellow ‘72 Ford Pickup and follow him, in his Red and White ‘72 Ford pickup, out to my first ever pasture party. We pulled in and I was introduced to what I forever remember as the typical small town party. There was a small ’ish bonfire with vehicles parked in a circle around it. I remember some other small trash barrel fires going in the outskirts. There was a keg….there were red solo cups… There was music, and we were in the middle of nowhere. 

Chris was holding his cup out and walking across what looked like a telephone pole laid out on the ground in front of the fire. I saw and heard a 4×4 truck pulling in. They gassed it, and spun their rear end around pointing it at the fire. Punching the throttle one more time I saw Chris leap into the air just as the truck caught him in the legs. He fell over the hood, and rolled over onto the ground on the driver’s side. My mouth hung wide. Someone had just killed Chris. He was the only way I could find my way back home. I didn’t really know these people, I was just drinking their beer.

He got back up just as I stepped out of the truck. 

My mouth was still open. 

I was walking around the truck, with an even cooler looking hat than mine, my shirt was half untucked and mostly unbuttoned. My belt had a huge belt buckle and was hanging down loosely about a foot down past my waist. Chris jumped back up, appeared to be fairly okay, and hugged the other me while still clutching an empty, crushed solo cup. 

“Heeeeeyyyy brother….you ran over me.”

Introductions were made. Party resumed. Everyone found comfortable places on the tailgates and laughs were shared by all. Todd and I were sitting opposite one another and through the flames it was like looking at myself through some strange heat-warped mirror. I hesitate to say we had mullets, but our hair was definitely longer in the back than front. We both had moustaches that had emerged early in life. We were both skinny…lanky. We both tried our best not to act interested that the doppelganger we had heard about for 3 years was RIGHT THERE! 

My side of the mirror had no girlfriend. His girlfriend was not acting disinterested in our similarities. 

‘OH…MY….GAAAWWWDDD….you guys look EXAAAACTLY alike!’

His eyebrows went up, just a tad. Barely noticeable. 

I noticed. 

She hopped off the tailgate and got between us. Pointing at one…then the other…exclaiming to everyone. Urging them to affirm what she knew.

She came over and put an arm around my shoulders and looked back at Todd. Pointing at him with a finger wrapped around one of those cups as she spoke to me. Asking if we had ever met. How long had I known that Todd and I looked alike? She wanted the story. 

Suddenly I was becoming very aware WHY Todd had the reputation and was infamous around town. I recalled every story about how he would fight anyone, anytime, anywhere. I remembered that his huge belt buckle was often used for more than keeping his tight Wranglers on his hips. 

His eyebrows went up again, just a tad higher, and I noticed…again.

I jumped off my seat and away from the person who seemed so intent on causing me unintentional harm.

“Heeeeeeyyy now….Heeeeyyyy…. I think…that maybe….You may…be…about to get me killed! And I reaaaaly don’t want that.’

Todd spit out a mouthful of beer. Jumped out at me. As I backed away, he put one arm around me and with the other he motioned out to everyone around, or to the universe…or maybe just  stating a fact for anyone to hear.

“RayRay….you have nothing to worry about from me.” 

I crossed paths with Todd here and there throughout the years as you do in towns. I continued to hear the stories. Some were exaggerated, some unfortunately were not. We didn’t instantly become best buds and hang out all the time, but I considered him, and his friends…..friends. I still do.

If you read about Chris in my earlier post and are thinking that this doesn’t seem ‘Life Changing.’ Well, I would argue that it actually is, but it still isn’t THAT life changing story. 

I’ll get there one day.

Be patient.

Okay….brief history lesson. 

My parents divorced when I was young, both of them remarried before I was 5. I moved with my mom and stepdad to the middle of the woods between Marshall and Karnack. I didn’t understand it completely then, but our fence line neighbors were celebrities; Martha and R.E. Josey. Martha is a world champion barrel racer and R.E. was a world champion calf roper. They started a rodeo school back in 1967 and it is still going today. Josey Ranch

During the summer there are always tons of kids there. Boys and girls would travel from all over to come learn. They would stay in dorms, swim, go on haunted snipe hunts to see the old abandoned church at the back of the property and even have a massive shaving cream/water balloon fight to end the week. Oh…they also spent a lot of time running drills and learning the secrets of becoming a champion rodeo star and learning real life lessons.

I don’t remember dates, or years, but I was around 8..ish….It was definitely before 5th grade and after kindergarten.

It was summer and there was a group of young boys playing football at Josey’s just on the other side of our fence. Me being a quiet and shy kid I was both interested in the game, and afraid to join. As I was leaning over the fence watching, the slightly older group noticed me and targeted me.

Okay, things have changed. The way kids and people relate to one another has changed. Back in the 70’s it was not guaranteed that you were going to be invited into a football game as a young outsider. The way the group related to you was tied deeply to the way the very first person related to you. It could go either way.

“Who is that little kid hanging on the fence? Anyone know him?”

That is not the prompt that gets you invited to join a group of friends. They don’t follow that up with, ‘Hey! Wanna come play ball?’ I’m a grown man and I am not deeply affected by anything that was said after that point, but as a shy child I climbed down off the fence and walked away. 

But…being a slightly blessed young child (my wife says spoiled), I didn’t wander off and cry with my feelings hurt. I went and got my dirt bike out of the barn to show off.

When I say dirt bike, I have to explain that it was a Honda Mini 50 with puffy tires. I ‘won’ it in some contest in kindergarten that I don’t remember. Which means that my mom probably put a lot of effort into making sure that ‘I’ sold a lot of something. She probably bullied my uncles into buying all the product. I remember having to wait a full year before my feet would even touch the ground before I was allowed to ride it. My very first outing when I was finally tall enough to ride it, I drove full throttle through a freshly strung barbed wire fence. I still carry that scar today. (It’s tiny and I can’t show it to you to prove it)

So there I am zooming back and forth. Doing donuts, popping wheelies, jumping fireant hills and slinging dust. I don’t recall what happened to the football game, but now there was a kid on the other side of the fence watching me instead of playing. He hopped the fence and came right over to me. Much unlike me staring at a game hoping for an invite.

Immediately he asks, ‘Can I ride?’

I was ill prepared for this. I had no precedent or protocol. 

I hesitantly said yes, but told him that I had to ride on the back. He hops on, and we go zooming along. 

At the time we had several dogs and the one that factors into this story was BeBe our doberman pinscher. She wasn’t as protective as to try and kill this kid, but she was protective enough to run along beside us, bark and be very interested. Often crossing our path. 

I specifically remember yelling at him…’hey, watch out for my dog!’

And his response, ‘She’ll get out of the way.’ 

That was right before he ran her over. 

She went down, we went down, and BeBe whined and limped away. I don’t recall sending him away. I don’t recall being ugly to him or anything I said. I just know that we took BeBe to the vet and she had a broken leg. 

About now you may be asking…how did that change my life? Well it DIDN’T….and that isn’t what I promised. I said…this was the day I MET the guy that changed my life.

That story is for another day.

I don’t like moving. 

I don’t like trading jobs. 

If my Chevy S10 four-wheel-drive truck from the ‘80s still ran, I would still be out in the mud. 

The one thing that has forced me to do a lot of changing has been in my entertainment and internet. 

Television:

When we moved into our current home in 1991 we had an external over the air antenna and we could pick up local KTBS ABC station, KTAL NBC station, KSLA CBS station and on a good day we could get UHF channels KMSS FOX, and KLTS PBS.

Count them again….3 ‘regular’ stations and 2 UHF channels that showed a lot of static. 

At some point we wanted more so we invested in a huge satellite dish that moved when you changed channels. You would click your remote, wait while the dish out in the backyard moved and pointed in the correct direction and BOOM…you would have HBO. If you paid for it.

My most vivid memory of that era of TV was that sometimes it would randomly just be ‘off.’ You would change channels and some would work, some wouldn’t at all, and some would work but be not quite right. One day a channel wouldn’t come in, then it gradually got worse.

The only way to eventually make it work again was to call a satellite tech. He would show up in the evening later than most people would let strangers into your house. He would stretch out in your favorite chair, spread out like he was going to take a nap, click on your remote , and adjust things while mumbling to himself. In about 30 minutes he would restart everything and it would just work again. He would collect his check and leave in his unmarked white van.

Later I got his remote maintenance ‘code’ and when it started happening, if I was very lucky, I could make some small adjustments to the satellite that would put off the inevitable call to the professional. 

Telephone: 

I should mention at this time our communications choices. We had a land line. We did have cell phones as soon as we could (bag phone), but none worked where we lived. There were no towers anywhere near us at the time. We paid outrageous prices for limited coverage and were thankful to have it. 

Internet Access:

Around this time we had a computer with a modem and I got on the internet the only way that we could at the time. Dialup internet at 2400baud. At first I was only connecting to BBSs all over the country and reading about the internet. 

My first true internet service provider was Network Internet Solutions. World Wide Web was still finding its way and most sites were very basic. There was no streaming…as a matter of fact you could barely download an image file because it took so long . There were, however, a lot of BBS systems offering a lot of text files, and they were all long distance. I resisted the urge to ever get an AOL account.

Later on I changed to Sydcom internet and had my first actual email address! I updated to a 14.4Kbps modem and the World Wide Web made things a bit easier to find and use. My connections were still downloading at a whopping 2K per second. I did have a good friend start a BBS locally at the time, so at least I could connect locally and hound the SYSOP to find and make files available.

TV:

We eventually dumped that huge satellite and opted for DirecTV. No more cable guy, just a box with cables running to the roof. We didn’t have a lot of ‘premium’ channels, but we used every bit of the ‘free trials’ that we could. 

Internet:

My first high speed internet connection…and I use that term loosely considering what we have available today, was WildBlue. 

We only had 15GB of highspeed data a month on a rolling 30 day window. After you reached this limit, your speed was throttled back to the point that even browsing the web was tough. I hated it. I had to keep a spreadsheet to check my data every day to find out how much we had left.

Telephone and Internet:

I had upgraded my cell phone service to Cricket and we finally had service at my house! Since we did, I bundled my cell phone with some hotspot internet and finally dumped WildBlue. With Cricket we got the same 15GB, but the limit wasn’t a rolling window, it was a pay service period. The penalty for going over was also not a dramatic slow down in speed. It was a dead stop. Out of data in the middle of a show, screen goes blank and computer has no internet. 

It wasn’t perfect, but it was cheaper than before. 

TV AND Internet:

My DirecTV account had billing creep. They would just add a bit…then some more…I stayed with them for almost 15 years. 

I decided to call them once a month and ask if there were anything that could be done. After 3 months of seeing ads for new account deals that were less than half what I was paying, and not being able to get a break on my account, I changed service. 

I had checked into DishNetwork Satellite internet and TV service already and was ready to pull the trigger. I dropped that Cricket Hotspot and DirecTV at the same time and got the DishNetwork Internet and TV bundle. Two different dishes on the house.

TV AND Internet:

In 2021 I put a deposit on a Starlink account. One full year later the system was available in my area so in March ‘22 I made another huge switch.

I dumped both DishNetwork  accounts and we decided that we would just use streaming for TV. The Starlink was unlimited and fast and I thought I would never change. I ran that for 5 years without an issue.

They upped the price $20 after the first year, then another $10 recently. At the same time, I saw a brand new fiber box at the end of my driveway.

I made a call and found out that I could get a fiber optic connection of up to 1gbs, unlimited, and a land line phone number for less than I could even get internet with Starlink. 

I’m so spoiled and scared of change that I am paying $10 a month to keep Starlink ‘on the hook,’ in case my new deal doesn’t work out. I’m still undecided at the moment because my Fiber company has been down more in the first 2 months than Starlink was the entire 5 years I had them….but it’s so much cheaper right now. 

My plan is to monitor them for a while, then drop my land line and replace it with the fiber phone number, but that is a change I’m not ready to make just yet. I love the speed of fiber. My wife misses the reliability of Starlink. Thirty-four years of living out in the woods has taught me that when you finally get a good connection, you don’t let go of it easily.

Finally, a post that isn’t just an old man reminiscing about ‘the good old days.’ 

The story begins on a Friday night. We didn’t have the Grands that night, which was unusual, but we went to bed around 10pm. Being an old man, I have an alarm that goes off every night at 10 telling me to take my pill. I did. No strangeness. We went to bed.

My wife woke me up around 6:00 in the morning. In a whisper I hear, ‘Ray, we don’t have water.’ 

I’m up…I’m awake…I’m putting on pants and rubbing my eyes. I really WANT to be awake and alert, but in reality I’m still half asleep. (This would be foreshadowing of excuses that I need to tell myself.)

The first thing I do is walk around the house listening for water. Actually, the first thing was to try the bathroom sink, as if she was just magically wrong. After that I looked around for puddles. Then I head to the water meter. It is completely filled with muddy water because we got almost 5 inches of rain the day/night before. (Horrible flooding in town, but at my house it was just a day of watching the ditches overflow.) I can’t see the meter, but I don’t ‘hear’ anything that sounds like rushing water, so I’m not as worried. 

I go to my mom;s house next door and grab her water hose. I turn on the faucet and pull the trigger on her garden sprayer. It acts like it might want to spray, then nothing. 

Blessed relief. 

I walk back into the bedroom shedding my work clothes and climb back into bed. ‘Mom’s out too, must be a general outage. I’m sure they are working on it.’ The adrenaline rushes away and almost instantly I’m back to sleep. 

I wake up naturally after an hour and half of good, deep sleep. The water is still out. 

I pull out my phone and scroll scroll scroll on some Facebook. There is nothing there. No one is complaining. No one is griping. There isn’t a single post about our ‘lousy water service.’ 

Panic creeps back in.

I walk around the house and there is still no water rushing and no water coming out of any faucet. I go back to moms house and I notice something that I didn’t catch before. Her garden sprayer has its own valve. I may have actually whimpered audibly at that time. I knew, before I even tested it, that I had screwed up. Her water was fine.

Crap…crap…crap….crap….oh no…oh no…oh no…what did I do?!?!?! Water!!…turn off the water…bail out the meter….I need a wrench. I may pass out…how long has this been running.

After I bail out 10 quarts of water from the meter I can see that thing spinning like a 45 album. I’ve never seen that particular dial move, much less spin like that. I turn the water down to ‘almost off,’ and head back up to the house. My thoughts tell me that if I turn it all the way off, I won’t be able to see where all the water is going. 

There are no giant sprays of water. There are no huge puddles. The water is not flowing anywhere I can see. It must be under the house.

I grab my coveralls and a flashlight. 10 feet after crawling in under the house I can see it. It is way back there, but it appears that a fitting has simply slipped out. The PVC cement has come loose with age and popped out. 

Yaaaaayyy…..

My beautiful wife asks me what she can do. She offers to call for help. Asks if she can do something, anything. I can’t think of a single thing. It’s all on me. I answer truthfully, ‘Just tell me it’s going to be okay.’ 

I go and turn the water off completely. Grab my knife, some sandpaper, some cement, and a pair of pliers and dive back under the house. 

The corner of the house that has the entrance to the underside, is also the absolute most roomy area under there. It is the only area that you can crawl through. 

 I have to go all the way to the backside, and then halfway down the length of the house. The last 20 feet there is not enough room to even lift up. I’m Army-crawling through thick wet red clay, dragging my materials with me.

The actual fix was pretty anti-climactic. Wipe it off, scrape the old cement out, sand it a bit, glue it, shove them together, twist as best I can…and then rest in the muddy puddle as sweat pours off me. It feels like it’s already 90 degrees and I’m in full length winter coveralls. 

I get out of there, turn on the water and if you have ever fixed a water leak you know this part. I watch as the dial spins like mad while it fills all the gaps, then it sputters a bit…then is the telling part. Did you do a good job? Or do you have to redo everything? 

The wheel stopped!

My coveralls are coated in thick mud and clay. I’m soaked from sweat. It’s time for coffee and a shower. 

With barely enough time to eat some breakfast and catch my breath, I realize that I still need to change the oil in the car before it gets too hot and too humid. 

As I’m lying under the car, watching the oil drain away I start complaining about the sorry luck I have. How long was that water running? Why didn’t I catch it earlier? Why do I not have an access closer to that side of the house? How much is THIS going to cost?

Normally I would wallow in that self-pity state and get mad about the unfairness of life, but today I tried something different. I started playing what if. 

What if this had happened last week when we were 4 hours away on holiday?

What if the leak had been underground and I had to dig up the yard to find it?

What if I hadn’t had all of the materials and tools I needed to turn off the water and fix the leak?

What if…What if I was unable to walk, much less crawl on the ground? 

What if…What if we didn’t have family to call if I couldn’t fix it?

What if it had been IN the house ruining the walls and floors?

What if I had gotten stuck, or snake bit, or spider bit while under the house.

What if….

Suddenly I wasn’t so unlucky after all. 

Suddenly I had a better understanding of what James was talking about in James 1:2-4.  I’ve said it for years whenever someone else was going through something: “Count it all joy!” It’s a little different when you’re the one Army-crawling in sticky, wet, red clay under your own house.

“My Brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete,  lacking nothing.“

I’m truly blessed….and lack nothing

Yaaaaaaaaayyy! a water leak!

When I was in 4th or 5th grade my parents shoved me into the world of calf showing. I became a part of the Harrison County 4-H in Marshall. I was introduced to strange kids that I didn’t go to school with, or know. I was given a heifer to raise, and then I learned all that I could about taking care of, raising and showing cows. We traveled all over the surrounding states with a group of kids that would become my forever friends.

One of the regular spots on the cattle show schedule was the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. At the time it was held at the Astrodome and I have enough stories about that show alone to keep you shaking your head. The point of THIS Astrodome story is that the cattle stalls were in close proximity to the broiler cages. As a cattle person I was raised around cow smells, they had no effect on me. Those chickens however, gagged me every day. I hated having to go in every morning to take care of my animals because of the smell of those nasty chickens. I hated chickens…I was pretty vocal about how much I hated those smelly beasts when I was gagging and trying to enjoy one of those amazing tiny donuts they sold near our area.

Fast forward a few years.

I came home from school one day and there were 2 large cardboard boxes on the pool table where I normally spent a lot of time playing 8 ball. There were 2 heat lamps strung up over the boxes and the constant chirping and tweeting and the slight ammonia smell stunned me into silence.

“Surprise!”

Bart (my step-dad) had decided that he wanted me to raise chickens. Not only that, he had decided that he would purchase enough for the neighbor kid to raise chickens also. Just in case you don’t know, when you participate in a broiler project you purchase 25 chicks. 25 for me, 25 for Albert for a grand total of 50 chirping, stinking fluffballs.

To be clear, Albert had never actually been to our house and we weren’t close friends. I knew him, and I will spoil the story and tell you that I didn’t see him once for the entire life cycle of those chickens.

I found out that day that they had to live on my pool table, safely away from the dogs for at least 3 weeks, but up to 6. It was my job to change out their bedding, feed and water the 50 babies, and prepare a place for them to move.

Believe you me, I got busy getting them out of the house and off my pool table. We had a dog pen that was the perfect size, but it had no covered area, and the sides were built to keep dogs in, not chickens. I sectioned off a roughly 12′ X 4′ area and used solid tin for the roof and sides. I built a small gate section that had chicken wire for entry and spread out bedding and put waterers and feeders inside.

As soon as they were barely feathered enough to be moved I was moving those boxes and heat lamps outside. Soon they were fully feathered, didn’t need a heat lamp and were allowed outside into the full pen.

I now took care of half grown chickens. I changed out bedding, disposed of dead birds (young chickens die for just about anything), put down the ones that were not going to make it and basically counted down the days until the show/sale to be held at Farm City Week.

Like all chores as a kid, it felt like pure torture. ‘Didn’t ask for ’em. Didn’t want ’em. Where is that Albert kid anyway?!’ It seemed like it went on forever, but as I realize now, it was probably 6 weeks.

The county extension agent came out one day and started picking up and flopping all of the chickens over and poking them. I had no idea what he was doing, but in the end he chose 10 chickens that were show quality, and we separated them.

The day of the show I was tasked with choosing the ‘best’ 6 birds, washing them, filling up 2 cages with 3 birds each and driving them to the arena. Chickens take a bit longer to dry than I had anticipated, so they were looking like they had just been drowned when I showed up. To be honest, my idea of washing them was to hold them under water and fluff up their feathers, so that might account for their looks.

They eventually dried. Albert showed up, we took turns holding our cages out for the judges. His placed and made the sale, mine did not and got a free ride back home. I asked if maybe I would get some of that sale money, since I hadn’t seen nor spoken to Albert in the last 10 weeks, but that was not to be the case.

His birds sold, I took mine back home and now we had maybe 40 chickens at the house that I was still responsible for. I had no idea what to do with them, so I just kept taking care of them. When the roosters became evident I researched how to pluck and clean chickens.

I would come home each day and practice a new technique. There were different suggestions on how to dispatch them, pluck them, clean them, portion them. I tried everything.

The only way to get a clean chicken that looks like you bought it from the supermarket requires that you pluck and clean without dismembering. That requires hot water and we had no water heater at the barn. I heated up a pot full of ‘warm’ water and drove it to the barn. When I got back to the barn there was considerably less water and it was nowhere near hot enough (150ishF) but I gave it a try; Dunking that bird and soaking it. The feathers did not loosen, they did not come out easily, they stuck all over me, the bird and everything else in the barn… it was a big mess and deemed not necessary by me. I kept researching.

I found out that you could skin a chicken just like any other animal and you ended up with a whole chicken that was simply skinless. It was much easier, so that became my new default. I got really good at cleaning those roosters, but I was glad when they were all gone.

Down to 20ish birds and all hens I took a break from slaughter duties and let them live on for a while. I quickly learned that broilers will just eat themselves to death if left to their own devices. I started limiting their food/scrap intake after some just couldn’t get up anymore.

Then came egg duty. Suddenly we had fresh eggs each day and I realized something else about chickens. I learned that chickens produce roughly 2 eggs for every 3 hens you have, and no rooster is necessary. When you have 15 birds that works out to about 10 eggs a day (an egg roughly every 23 hours until it is too late to lay and then they skip that day).

Without the proper protein in their diet they have egg defects. I have seen them all. There are the good defects…double yolks, the interesting defects….tiny fairy eggs with no yolks, and then the disgusting shell-less eggs that are just gross. I learned real quick that their diet made the biggest difference. I made sure we had quality feed and tried to manage the fine balance between them eating themselves to death and producing nasty gummy eggs.

Just about the time I had that all figured out, the snakes came. It was horrible. Each day brought a new hiding place for giant snakes looking for eggs. I was jumpy and nervous all the time. The snakes actually put an end to that adventure. Bart told me that as soon as the chickens were gone *wink wink*, the eggs would go away, and then the snakes would disappear. To be honest, the snakes were probably there to eat the mice that were coming in every night to clean up the grains, but that didn’t matter. It meant the same thing.

BACK TO SLAUGHTER DUTY!

I went through those final 15 birds pretty quick and I think everyone breathed a little bit easier when the feed/mice/snakes just disappeared.

Fast forward 23 years. Restless, unable to sleep, hungry for eggs, and having none in the fridge, I started thinking fondly back on those chickens. It’s crazy how your mind takes something that you hated so much at the time, and turns it into a valid project that seems worthy of another shot.

I would do it differently this time, better. It was 2004 and I had a plan.

I researched different breeds. Found utility dual purpose birds that would lay eggs, quiet, docile, big enough to eat, and would raise babies if given a chance. My original plan was to keep 5 or 6 breeds and a rooster for each. Keep them separated and maintain a clean gene pool. I also bought some of those broilers just so I could practice putting chickens in the freezer.

The first thing I found out was that keeping 7 different pens of different breeds was a pain. I turned them all out together (except the broilers). The broilers were a 6 week project that turned into 9 and it definitely gave me a chance to remember the hassles of home butchery. My son became a vegetarian soon after the 9 week mark, but he claims it had nothing to do with butcher dad.

The next thing I found out was that there are more predators than just the snakes I learned about as a kid. Snakes were there, but so were Raccoons, hawks, owls, opossums, and the worst was the neighborhood dogs. I was heartbroken the day I came home and found that a neighbor’s dog had killed 18 of my birds all at once.

I have rebuilt and moved my birds many times over the years. I have had to restart with just a few birds more times than I care to think about. Right now I have 3 grown hens, 9 babies, and a guinea. We have hatched birds in incubators, used hens to get new babies, sold them on Craigslist, bought them at Tractor Supply, raised neighbor birds, donated birds to neighbors….

The moral of this story is to always keep eggs in your fridge…never run out, don’t even run low. If you do, it may lead to thoughts of how easy it would be to “make your OWN EGGS!” and you will never be the same.

Okay…This started because Memorial Day just came and went and that always makes me remember the parties we had growing up. The Memorial Day party was called ‘Splash Day’ and it had always been the party to end all parties at the Bar-T ranch where I lived.

Growing up we celebrated everything in big ways. Family Reunions, Christmas, Memorial Day, Fourth of July…if there was an opportunity to invite all your friends/family and business associates to the house they were invited. Drinks would flow, tons of food would be prepared and eaten, and ‘a good time was had by all.’

There were days of preparations before hand. Yard work to be done, all the activities planned, pool cleaned, campsites cleared if needed, menus and plans for food. Several years we had T-Shirts made to memorialize the occasion. We actually had a screen press setup and made all of the designs ourselves. I wish I had one of those shirts. The one that stands out in my memory was a rear view of a caricature cowboy diving off the diving board with his hat from the back, his bare bum was showing with the Bar-T brand on his butt. It was an original design and screen print image of my brother-in-law – at the time. This is NOT the original image…but a fairly good facsimile. Just add the words ‘Splash Day whatever year.’

Sometimes there was Volleyball, Horseshoes, Washers, Basketball, MiniBike trail rides or maybe Horse trail rides. There was always Fishing, Swimming, playing 8-ball or Ping Pong, speakers blaring old school country music from speakers mounted in every room and outdoor area. Most of the time there were multiple people with music instruments that would play during the day, or late into the night. There was karaoke before karaoke was really the huge thing it is now. Oh how the drinks would flow.

The night before the big party, there was normally a pre-game party. My family and their best friend’s family (The Martins) would get together. They had what amounted to a podcast, before podcasts existed. They put a pair of microphones on the table and my stepdad and his best friend would just discuss the planned events into a cassette tape. They originally had these recordings on 8Track.

It was the 70’s and 80’s, they would smoke, drink, eat, play music and just record everything they did. They called it ‘The Bart and Joe Show.’ They would discuss who was invited, who was coming that was a surprise, who couldn’t make it. They would talk about the party from last year and always allude to some event that may or may not have happened, or some guests that had done something that everyone would remember. They would intersperse the talk with recorded music from albums or Joe Martin would pick the guitar and sing and they would always want the kids to come over and be a part.

My favorite memory of the food.

We had a large pile of dirt near the house. I would play in that dirt pile all the time. Building tunnels and playing cars and riding my bike up and over it. A pile of dirt was a way to spend many a day…. AAAAAANYWAY….the day before the big Splash Day party they dug out a large rectangle hole into that dirt pile. They had a large piece of expanded metal probably 4 foot by 3 foot cut and edged with angle iron. They filled the hole with bag after bag of charcoal and then covered it with that metal grate.

The next day I watched them cover it with what seemed to be an entire bottle of lighter fluid and they lit that thing up. They had 2 coolers pulled out there while they worked. One had more chicken quarters in than I had ever seen. They had both Breast/wing cuts and Leg/thigh cuts. The other was filled with iced down Miller Lite. They started cooking and drinking early. Standing out at that fire pit drinking and working the grill and greeting the guests as they started driving in. They would lean over their window, give them directions as to where to park and make sure everyone was welcomed. Then after most of the guests had arrived, it was magically time to eat and retire to the pool for the rest of the day. The wives had put together all the other ‘stuff’ that needed to be out, and once we put on a stack of records large enough to last for hours….there was nothing left to do but swim, socialize and keep the kids from drowning one another.

That was the good

Thinking back, I can’t really remember ‘bad’ parties, but some instances stand out. Sometimes there is an unruly guest that has definitely had too much to drink. My sister’s boyfriend had been at a party all day and by the end of the night he was having some issues. It was probably a New Year’s party because it was late, and he had a huge package of Black Cat firecrackers. All in good fun he lit that package WAAAYYY too close to the open door. Hundreds of firecrackers went off and threw sparks, powder, smoke and paper all into the game room. I thought that pack would never run out. The more they went on, the madder my mom got. The madder she got, the more Bart had to handle it. In the end they convinced him it was time for bed, brought in some fans to clear the smoke, and everyone basically went back to what they were doing.

One of the last Splash Day parties while I was living at home happened to be during my graduation year. I don’t recall inviting friends to the Splash Day celebration, but there were some there. These guys were good friends, but they were the people that I generally got into trouble with in school, not the ones that my parents knew. Suddenly I got a call from people I went to grade school with. They wanted me to go with them to Shreveport clubbing. BAM…I packed up. Told my buddies that I had other plans and just left. I was gone all night and came straggling in the next day. That is when I found out that my other friends had stayed until waaaaaay late that night and had been playing drinking games with Bart. Things got a bit rowdy and loud and mom was none too pleased and never really liked them much after that.

That was the ‘Bad’

The Ugly was ALL on me…For a long time I thought just being the ‘fun’ guy was enough. I’m continuing to learn that it isn’t enough by far.

One night while I was working the 3-11 shift and one of my buddies that had been working out of town pulls into my work. He’s back for a while and he had met up with these girls. He tells them that maybe they should have a little get together at a friends house later on. He runs it by me like this, “Hey! I got these girls that want to party, are your parents still out of town?’

I want to say that I argued back because I knew that I had to be back at work at 7am to work another 8 hours, but I probably didn’t. I just remember thinking that we would get together, have some fun, get me some sleep and then work the next day. He finds the girls, tells them where to be and told them we were headed there now.

When we pulled in I got the place ready. Turned on all the inviting lights, cranked up some music and we waited. 20 min….30 min…then I see headlights. Not a set of headlights. It is a steady stream of cars pulling into my parents driveway. They just kept coming. It was horrible. There must have been 100 people milling around smoking and drinking in my parents house. (side note, both parents had quit smoking by that time) They found Bart’s liquor cabinet, found the beer fridge…..There were people getting sick, passing out and laying around in different rooms all over the 4 bedroom house. Parents actually came to the party looking for kids. Word was out that this massive party was going on and police would be summoned at any time. We start chasing anyone away that can/will leave. Around 3 or 4 I crawl into bed and crash. There are people passed out all over the house. Cigarette holes burned in the comforters on the guest beds. Beer cans filled with butts. Trash thrown all over the yard and pasture. My friend had turned the beer fridge around so that the door was facing the wall to keep people from stealing all the beer.

I wake up a few hours later and find him. I told him I had to go back to work, but I needed him to get these people out, enlist the help of anyone that can/will help to clean up and not to leave me hanging, then I head out to work. I call several times and check in. The people are gone he is busy cleaning, all is well.

Then….he….called me. “I’m headed to Longview to church, but I’ll be back in time to finish this little bit up.”

Then…he called again… “Hey, the preacher wants to take me out to lunch. As soon as we get done I’ll come back to your place and finish cleaning up.”

Then Mom called. They got back earlier than I had expected. Nothing had been cleaned, nothing had been thrown away. Trash strewn all about the yard, liquor and beer gone, fridge still turned around, all the beds needed decontamination and the place REEKED of smoke.

My friend bailed, never showed up and didn’t come show his face around my parents house for years after. After that day anytime my mom met a friend of mine, her first question was “Were you at the party?” It was a crappy thing to do to them, I want to blame friends, but it was definitely my fault. I’m not sure that was the absolute worst thing I did while I was still living at home, but it for sure ranks up there very high.

Every Memorial Day I think of Splash Day and all the different parties and times we had at the Bar-T Ranch. The chicken pit, the Bart and Joe Show, stacks of records on the player, and enough family and friends to fill all the empty spaces. Usually my overactive mind eventually leads me back to that massive train wreck of a party. If I grunt out loud during a long silence, it is normally because I have just remembered some cringy part of my past.

Not all memories are great, but they all add up to form the person we end up becoming…hopefully I’m still ‘becoming’ even today.