naked nude nudies...Boyd, TX. writing project
There they were. Just laying there, at the back of the playground, near the chain link fence, where the weeds poked through from the rural road beyond. Our fourth grade eyes widened and popped out as we picked them up. Topless playing cards. Like finding an oasis in a desert, we crowded around them and handed them to each other, looking them over and hoarding them and saying naughty words we weren't supposed to say, like "boobies" and such.
How it got out that we had them, I don't remember for sure. However, things being as they were, I can only guess that our pride and bravado at finding such an item on the playground had lead to a certain notoriety among the other students. The other fourth grade boys, wished it had been them, as we'd by now split the pack into three equal parts, with plans on hoarding many, and selling a few. The fourth grade girls, however, so above us in both morality and maturity, must have finked on us...as usual.
It came to pass that during the afternoon of the same day of the finding of the topless playing cards, that three boys were called to the principles office from the fourth grade classroom at Boyd Texas Elementary School in the late 1970s. There we stood, our coveted booty hidden in pockets, in the principles office. Mrs. Ware was a formidable woman, and struck fear in us all, every time she looked at us. Back then, in rural Texas, it wasn't unknown to hear the tell-tale sound of a smack of a paddle on a backside emanating from this very office, followed by the wail of a student. The nature and design of this paddle were legendary, and the story changed weekly. One week it was covered in nails. The next week, it was filled with holes so that the air would past through it faster and thus strike it's victim with more force. The truth was always somewhat sketchy, as it's victims were usually facing away from it, and could only tell us what it felt like, which allowed our minds to invent such torture devices as had never been seen since the dark days of the Roman Empire. It became the cat of nine of our world, waiting to strike us lest we do something, well, like we'd just done. We knew this fate was to be ours, lest we come up with a cunning plan of action.
To our advantage, Mrs. Ware left we three fourth grade boys in her office while she attended to some business or other in the outer office area. Left there, in the inner chamber of torture, we had precious few moments to think of a line of defense. Should we do a quick search and try to find and dispose of the cat of nine that was to be the device of our torture? No...that would take to long. Should we fink on each other? There was a chance this was to happen, until something even better came to us in a moment of clarity. I don't know which one of us it was that came up with the plan, but it was simple and clean. Get rid of the cards. That was the plan. But how? In the torture chamber, there was a leatherette avocado couch along the wall behind us. We knew we had to offload our booty to save our own booty, so we gave each other a knowing look and quickly deposited the debauchery behind the avocado couch where they slid silently and unseen, to the shag carpet below.
We were questioned, we produced no evidence, and were let off on a warning only. We had escaped the paddle. More importantly, we'd escaped having to explain to parents what exactly it was we'd found on the playground that day. We were venerated for our bravery and remained in positions of notoriety until some other group of friends did something to equal our own exploit. I still wonder, some days, what ever became of those cards. The avocado couch and shag carpet has long been changed in that office...I suspect a janitor is still the proud owner of our playground find to this very day.Labels: boyd, tx
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
band fag...boyd, tx. writing project...
I'll tell you why it happened, I'll tell you why I quit, but I have to explain the history, first. You see, it's not as if I wasn't athletic at all, in early Elementary school, I was a lightening fast runner. I just didn't seem to have an aptitude for it, I suppose. I wasn't a weakling, I just didn't get it, I seemed.
In junior high, I was on both the Basketball team, and the Football team in my hometown of Boyd, Tx, where sports, namely football, was followed and venerated like a religion, sometimes to the expense of academics. Around seventh or eighth grade, I was as tall as I am now, but I was sixty pounds lighter. I was lithe, I was fit, I was bigger than most of my classmates towering over them at a heady 5 foot 8.5 inches. I haven't grown a single vertical inch since seventh and eighth grade, though my width and girth has filled in a bit.
Being of this size, I was a little too big and bulky for Basketball, so I was sidelined for most of the time...ok, 99% of the time to be honest. If we were winning by at least fifty points, and it was the last two minutes of the game, I, and a friend of mine who'd been sitting with me on the bench the whole time coming up with different Dungeons and Dragons scenarios, would be called into action. We'd rush on to the court, not even knowing which goal was ours because we hadn't been paying attention to the game, and promptly make mistake after mistake, helping the opposing team to regain some honor. That was our duty, and I was happy to carry it out.
Football, however, was a different story altogether. I was bigger than most of my classmates, remember. This meant that I was likely bigger than most of the opposing team as well. In junior high football, I played every play, of every game, from kickoff to final play. I never saw the game from the sideline even once, that I can remember. I was a lineman. I wasn't the center because that took too much skill. I wasn't a skilled player, remember, but I was big, and I could get in the way easily. I was the coach's blocker. Coach Cartwright. Old Stoneface, they called him. He never smiled and called us all by our last names. He especially liked calling me by my last name because, you see, my older brother had been a star player on Stoneface's High School team many years before. Stoneface had high hopes for me, and through junior high, I think he believed his hopes would come to fruition.
It was not to be, however.
When two-a-days began a few weeks before my freshman year in High School, I was presented with a dilemma. Band, or Football. I'd been playing in the junior high band for the past two years, and it was fun...well, it was something to do, at least. Two-a-day's in the August heat in Texas were brutal. I did not enjoy it, and I came to the realization that I didn't like football all that much, nor did I like the people I played football with. They were aggressive, they were bullies, they made fun of people, and didn't like band fags.
One day, after practice, I made a simple decision as I change out of my pads and listened to the bullies make fun of people and things they didn't understand. I decided that this wasn't for me. I picked up my pads, emptied my locker, and took the stuff to the coaches office. Stoneface's office. I tried to escape without him hearing me, but he looked up, steely eyed, and said 'what are you doing?'
"I'm going home." I said, and I turned around and walked out as he yelled my last name and said "you come back here right now!!!" I didn't. I kept walking. I never turned back. That's the kind of person I am, I suppose. I walk away from things that I don't like. I avoid confrontation, I avoid it like the plague. I remember the disappointment from my brother, and others in my family. But their disappointment dissipated rapidly. Coach Cartwright never spoke to me again, however.Labels: boyd, tx
Thursday, December 06, 2007
the legends of deep creek...boyd, tx writing project...V
Just north of Boyd on Farm to Market road 730, about half way to Decatur, if you veer off to the right, just past that second bridge, you'll be almost there. The hinterlands of youthful imaginations. The Blair Witch area of Wise County. Legends abounded. Lies, sex, drugs, alcohol, mystery, fear, adventure. It was all to be had here, if the right people showed up.
My little girl
Drive anywhere
Do what you want
I dont care
Tonight
Im in the hands of fate
I hand myself
Over on a plate
When the tarmac stopped and the gravel began, you knew you'd entered Deep Creek. But, now, where to go? Shall it be the cometary? The Screaming Bridge? Submarine Hill? All have their merits. There could be rednecks at the cemetery drinking and trying to get to second base with their cowgirls...we'll park outside and do a walking reconnaissance of the area first. But remember, they're armed, and we're only armed if Cory shows up. Keep to the shadows and the underbrush. Ascertain their number, and report back in a half an hour.
Oh little girl
There are times when I feel
I rather not be
The one behind the wheel
Come
Pull my strings
Watch me move
I do anything
If the cemetery is a bust, we can head over to the Screaming Bridge and tell the story again. The story of how she drove over the embankment, into the creek below. Deep Creek itself. The legend of how, if you stop your car on the rickety old wooden bridge that's barely rated for automobile traffic, turn off your engine and roll down your windows, you'll hear her scream in the distance even today.
Sweet little girl
I prefer
You behind the wheel
And me the passenger
Drive
Im yours to keep
Do what you want
Im going cheap
If we get tired of that, we can just go park at the top of Submarine Hill, view the scenery, and hang out under the stars on one of the highest points around. Submarine Hill. Famous for the "viewing" of the "submarine races" in the area. Euphemisms all. Submarine Hill. Famous also as the last resting place of the legendary Mamba Tree. The Mamba Tree. A simple tree turned landmark by an odd event involving drunken preppy kids and Mamba candies. The Mamba Tree was ruthlessly cut down by another group, unceremoniously dragged to the top of Submarine Hill, and tossed into a heap. I know, because I was there. I drove. We stood on top of the truck, trying to get even higher so that we might touch the night sky grand and cold above us, held our arms wide and screamed out triumph for nobody to hear.
Tonight
Youre behind the wheel, tonight
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Deep Creek holds many legends. It holds magical moments and keeps our secrets and propagates our lies. Where was your Deep Creek?Labels: boyd, tx
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
a matter of reckoning...boyd, tx writing project...IV
In the reckoning of time and events, there stands in Boyd, TX. a singular event by which all others are reckoned in comparison. In any other culture, this would be "year zero" of the calendar. However, since Boyd is situated within a larger governmental structure, and cannot stand on it's own time table, it must reckon things within this larger structure, while still maintaining it's own independence. To wit, a pattern of language has evolved in Boyd, since 1983, that seeks to maintain "year zero" in the minds of it's inhabitants. For example, if you were to ask someone at Jim's Doughnut (were it still in existence, that is) shop at 5am on a Saturday morning in the mid 1990's "Say there Earl, what year was it they got rid of the dirt parking area in the middle of Highway 114 in Downtown where all the good ole boys would stand 'round their trucks crushing beer cans?" Earl's answer would sound something like this: "Oh.. well, let's see, Boyd won State in '83, so that musta been 'round '85."
Time stopped that day in 1983 when Boyd's Football team won the State AA Division I Championship (see water tower picture to the left). I remember it. I was there. I was thirteen. It was cold the day the marching band played in a three quarter empty Texas Stadium, and it was the first time I'd ever marched on fake grass.
There is a problem now, however. You see, time has stopped again in Boyd. It stopped in 2004 when Boyd's Football team once again won the State AA Division I Championship (again, see water tower at left). I vaguely remember this, since I was not there. I was already living here, in Spokane.
What's the upshot of all this? This: I don't know how to tell people in Boyd when I moved away now. I don't think I speak the lingo properly anymore. I now live outside the temporal matrix which has been set up by not one, but TWO State Football Championships. Still, I never paid a lot of attention to sports during my time in Boyd. I'm not sure why.
More on that later.Labels: boyd, tx
psychological landscapes...boyd, tx. writing project...III
It sometimes entered my mind that it was endless. I would, even when I was under ten years old, wander for hours, not only on our little ten acres of north Texas grasslands, but on other meagerly delineated parcels as well. My dirty blond straw straight bowl cut hair, partially sticking to my forehead from the oppressive Texas summer break-from-school heat, and the red dirt covering my shoes and socks, a lone black hawk circling on a thermal, the buzzing sounds of bugs, or maybe rattlers. Always scorpions, and those burrs that get stuck in your socks and in your pants. Dust. These are the things that I remember.
I'd wander far afield, wondering if I could get lost, sometimes finding out that I could. Lost is never something I was for very long, though, for I knew, highway 114 was just over that-a-way, even though I couldn't hear it, and the creek was just back there a-ways, beyond that line of oak trees, though there was no water in it. My dog also, he knew the way home, tagging along with me like some sort of quiet guardian angel that kept it's nose to the ground for any sign of.. well, anything at all, his dark golden-retriever tail, covered in large burrs that I'd have to remove later with scissors.
Once, I took a little CB radio with me, out into all these different places I used to wander without my parents knowledge, to see if I could pick up the truckers over on hwy 114 that was, just a bit further that-a-way, I was sure, though I still couldn't hear the trucks. I remember walking so far that things started looking unfamiliar. I hadn't wandered into these fields before. I wonder who owned this parcel. I wonder if there were cows here, and, if there was a bull I needed to be wary of.
The dry grass crunching under my feet, and the silent crackle of the CB radio, and the vision of my dog's tail going back and forth in front of my path, as though clearing it of any hazards, and the sense of unfamiliarity with my surroundings at that moment, enters my mind now, these many years later. I never was able to pick up that signal, on that CB radio. I was convinced that the problem was that the radio was too weak, but I never was able to find that spot again.
Labels: boyd, tx
Friday, September 28, 2007
setting down the can....Boyd, TX. writing project - II
I wasn't there when they found him. They said he was deliriously blind drunk, laying in the creek that passed behind their house. When I got there, he was already in the bathtub, and a strange silence had descended on the house. What was, a few hours before, a loud an raucous party of underage drinkers, had become a delirious vigil of sorts. I had come back from somewhere else. I'd been drinking, but I never drank much. People always wanted me to drive them somewhere because, well, because I was usually the only one with a car.
The water ran over his head as his mother fussed and cussed over him. Devin's mother. We called her Mrs. K. She and her husband had already gone to bed that night, with assurances from us that nothing worse than a little hanging around talking, a little drinking, and a lot of movie watching, was going to happen. But then, something else had happened.
I stood there in the bathroom doorway, the smell hammering my sixteen year old nose with vileness, and watched a friend...a younger friend, writhe in an absolute drunken mess. How did this happen? Why on earth did he do this to himself? Why did he let himself get so gone that his mother was forced to wash feces and vomit off of him as she would have done a baby...a baby in her bathtub, once again.
Mrs. K. let loose a string of curses in her New York accent that would have made a sailor blush when Devin's older brother walked into the bathroom to see how he was doing. "It's your fault!!" was her main argument. She blamed him...Robert...Devin's older brother, for allowing this to happen. The rest of us backed away to allow this family on the edge to argue amongst themselves. We were too afraid to interfere, but too afraid to leave, because we were concerned about Devin, who had come nearer to death that night, than any of us ever had. Watching one of us get drunk had quickly gone from funny, to terrifying.
We each looked at the empties around the room. The cans, the bottles, the cups. I had one in my hand, a benign can of light beer. It suddenly seemed out of place. Like a poison wreathed in happy marketing. I didn't drink again that night. Not even a sip. All at once, the danger of it had been presented to me in sharp relief. We silently watched our movie, and didn't talk about the incident, for a long time.
Artist - Album - Song
Prince - Purple Rain - Purple Rain
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note: Names changed to protect the guilty, and the innocent.Labels: boyd, tx
Thursday, September 20, 2007
in the beginning....boyd, tx project...
I was born on the same day as the release of the very last Beatles album, Let it Be. Ominous? I don't know. Unfortunate, definitely. In point of fact, it's a small miracle that my brother and sisters and I exist at all. You see, a few months after my parents were married in 1956, my dad was drafted. Drafted during peacetime, you say? Yes, drafted. From 1948 until 1973, during both peacetime and periods of conflict, men were drafted to fill vacancies in the armed forces which could not be filled through voluntary means. The story, from the voice of my own mother, goes like this:
We had been married only a few months when he received his "Greetings from Uncle Sam" letter. He was told to report to the Army somewhere in Dallas on a particular day. His brother Bill was still in the army at the time - the war was the "police action" going on in Korea. Bill had received a similar letter, boarded the bus for Dallas, and didn't come back home that night! He was in! So that was why we felt that would be his fate also! We had a few weeks to adjust, prepare, and get things in "order", and so we even moved out of our little first apartment and into the front bedroom of my parent's home a few days before he was to leave. We had no furniture, just stuff, so it wasn't too hard. We only owned a car, a boat, and a piano!
When he reported and he went through all the necessary stuff, everything looked like he was going to be accepted until the eye exam. The doctors noted that he had a "bad" right eye, and even though they didn't consider it beyond the physical limitations, it was questionable. They consulted with other doctors, and finally one doctor looked at him and asked "Do you want to go to the Army?" Dad answered, "No, not really, sir." And the doctor promptly stamped his paper with the "4-F" rejection stamp and he was suddenly free to go home! We were amazed and I was very greatful! He stayed in the Army Reserves, went to meetings once a week, and two weeks of training every summer, for about ten years, finally getting out after we returned from living in Yuma - which was sometime after 1963.
So, there it is. A bad eye and a dubious 4-F designation is all it took to ensure the very existence of the four of us (or three of us, mom didn't mention whether she was pregnant when dad went to the selective service office, did she? I'll hear about it, I'm sure, after she reads this).
When I was four years old, we moved to a house in rural Boyd, Tx that was built by my fathers hands. My brothers and sisters spent the 1970s in this house. All of us lived in the three bedrooms upstairs. I remember green shag carpet in my sisters room, macramé owls and plant holders. I remember the sounds of Chicago blaring from my brother's room at the end of the hall upstairs. I remember having strange feelings when looking at the Tijuana Brass Whipped Cream & Other Delights album cover in my sisters room when they weren't around. I remember being made to cry about whatever my brother made me cry about so often, and then having my crying face shoved into a pillow as my brother loudly whispered "SHUT UP! Mom and dad will hear!!"
I was the youngest, can you tell?
I also remember one particular late night. I remember waking up because there was some sort of commotion and noise in my sister's room, and their light was on. I remember her kneeling down on the floor in front of me, to get down to my level, and holding me tight, her sobs never ending. I didn't quite understand what was going on then, someone had died, a car wreck I think. One of her high school friends. I remember just wrapping my arms around her in return, not quite knowing what to do. I was probably only six or seven years old at the time.
In 1978, my oldest sister married and moved away from Boyd. In 1979, my second sister married and moved away from Boyd. In 1980, my older brother graduated high school and moved away from Boyd. In 1980, when I was ten years old, I had the house in Boyd to myself, I was ten.
NOTE: I will occasionally add a streaming music to these posts. Most of the time, it will be a b-side from some 1980's iconic group. I've chosen 1980s music specifically because it was a strange time musically, and that it was the decade in which I came of age.
Artist - Album - Song:
Duran Duran - Seven and the Ragged Tiger - The Seventh Stranger
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Tuesday, September 18, 2007
boyd, tx....a writing project....
In 1988, I graduated from Boyd High School, near the bottom of my class, after thirteen long years of trying. Graduating at this level was quite an achievement, since there were only fifty people in my graduating class. I was in band. I was a in drama. That was about it. I didn't do much in High School but complain about being in .. well .. High School.
Next year, in May, it will be twenty years since I graduated from Boyd High School. I don't plan on attending the festivities, that is, if they even decide to have any sort of get together. Oh sure.. it would be interesting to see what some people have been doing in the last ten years, but not interesting enough to make the trip back. It might be neat to see the people who made the journey with me from kindergarten, through 12th grade, but I'll just ask a couple of people I'm still in contact with to get the dirt, and to pass on information about myself. I'll let them be the conduit through which I keep in touch.
Over the next few months, over the fall and into the spring, I plan on doing a little writing journey through the personalities, places, and feelings of this long ago time. A time when I was such a different person, as I'm sure many of my classmates were as well.
As my first assignment on this journey, I'll dredge up an old post about Boyd, TX. itself. You can find it on Google Maps, and even on Google Earth. It's not much to look at, but it's the place I grew up. It's the place that, from age four on, helped to shape who I am today, for better or for worse. The post below, is called donut shoppe. I hope you enjoy it.
At four am they start to trickle in, talking louder than is usually allowed this early elsewhere. They've been wreathed in silence, however, on the fifteen or twenty minute drive to this small town meeting place. They breathed in fully the coveted early cool moisture that is still lingering before the dawn for they knew that this would pass away soon. The heat would come and the dry air return as the moisture and coolness sank back into the earth from whence it came.
Wearing overalls with tiny blue stripes over denim, and covering their grey heads with feed store hats or John Deer hats, they drove away in that pre-dawn hour to come together with their peers over coffee and donuts. There's dirt on the white tiled floor, there's cigarette smoke in the air, the counter is coffee stained and cracking with age and use. The lights are fluorescent and harsh, the questionable cleanliness of the tables is thrown into sharp relief.
This place is beautiful. It is a welcome place in the minds of it's patrons during this special hour. They aren't here for the coffee, for the donuts, or for the ambiance, though they soak it all in. They are here, right now, because they can connect with each other. Before most of the rest of the world gets out of bed, they will be back at their farms, their ranches, and be getting on with their day in quiet solitude under an unforgiving sun.
This post inspired by "West Texas," a poem by A. Scott White: link here.
Labels: boyd, tx
