I spend a few days each week ensconced in the Briscoe Center for American History at UT, looking at microfilms of Texas country newspapers from the mid-1940s through the late 1980s for a book project. I think I’m chasing a pretty interesting character and hope eventually I can cadge a modest book contract out of this.
While perusing I often become sidetracked by a horrific tale of murder, or a gruesome car wreck, maybe a long-forgotten political scandal involving a county commissioner. In Texas, most political scandals involve either county commissioners or sheriffs, in my experience. These...
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Nightmarish tales of my ineptness abound when it comes to plumbing repairs. It apparently is a form of handyman dyslexia. When it comes to carpentry, woodworking, even rudimentary electrical repairs, I am— if not Mr. Fix-It — at least his loyal assistant. I can hang a ceiling fan, swap out an electrical breaker, build a coffee table, replace a windowpane or lay down ceramic tile. But if water is involved, my brain turns to mush.
Past disasters are the stuff of legend:
• I stripped the valve off an icemaker tube as the movers literally were bringing in possessions, thus requiring me to frantically...
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Our 14-year-old daughter was watching another police procedural show the other night. The Abster is hooked on “NCIS” and similar programs that invariably show a corpse cut open on a slab in an autopsy lab. At the moment, she plans to be a forensic psychologist so that she can solve the types of mysteries she watches on television. We are fine with whatever career she chooses, but I likely won’t be visiting her at work. I have no interest in seeing a dead person slit open from stem to sternum.
During the show, a whacky Target commercial came on with folks running around in brightly colored...
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For Lent I gave up two habits of which I am quite fond: nibbling on dark chocolate and nibbling on my fingernails. I never do both at the same time. That would be messy. I love dark chocolate so it seemed a meaningful item to give up for 40 days. I hope going that long without gnawing on my fingernails — admittedly a bad habit — will shed me permanently of this tic before I break any more teeth.
I have healthy but brittle teeth, about half now topped with crowns. The front ones have been patched several times. Years ago, I broke one dumbly and absentmindedly trying to pull out a watch stem...
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DIBOLL, TEXAS — I recently spent a day in this logging town just south of Lufkin, once home to the corporate headquarters of Temple-Inland, a community whose fortunes have risen and fallen as that company’s have done the same. I was here to research back copies of the Diboll Free Press in the History Center for a book project I’ve begun.
First, a word about the Diboll History Center. It is a jewel of a facility, beautifully constructed out of yellow-pine beams and decking. It is a valuable repository of the area’s rough drafts of history. The staff is friendly and helpful. I have a special...
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Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most: that people are basically good. That honor, courage and virtue mean everything, that money and power mean nothing — that good always triumphs over evil. And I want you to remember this: that love — true love — never dies. I want you to remember that, Boy. Doesn’t matter if they’re true or not, you see. A man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in.
— Robert Duvall in “Secondhand Lions”
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Douglassville, Texas — Brad Teel lived...
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The view from the office window at times was like watching a silent movie. That allowed me to fill in the subtitles. For the first few months I was there, a few dozen homeless people slept in the church parking lot each night. About the time I arrived each morning at 7:30, they were rolling up their sleeping bags under the direction of a burly fellow who apparently served as the unofficial straw boss. Slabs of cardboard that served as a thin buffer between the asphalt and bedrolls were collected and deposited in the recycling dumpster across the alley. Cigarette butts and other litter were meticulously...
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Col
According to a recent poll conducted by a blog site whose credentials are likely suspect but anecdotally ring true enough, the New England Patriots — playing in their fifth Super Bowl in 11 years — are the most hated NFL team in America. In fact, of the top dozen disliked sports team — both professional and collegiate — three of them are Boston teams — the Patriots, Red Sox and Celtics. The Boston Bruins didn’t make the list, probably because too few people watch hockey these days to affect a survey. All four comprise my favorite pro teams. It is an inherited trait, because I grew...
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My mother would have turned 82 this week. My dad would have turned 80 this summer. Both are gone now, so this is the first year both of their birthdays are being noted in absentia. As executor, I am wrapping up their affairs and disbursing the estate’s assets, with the able assistance of an attorney. My parents were not wealthy, but they were thrifty. Of course, I would much rather have them back — living independently well into their 80s or 90s as most members on both sides of the family have done — but it wasn’t meant to be. Instead both declined over years until their deaths, just more...
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I was cruising around South Longview and the downtown area the other day, whiling away time on Memory Lane before a dreaded appointment with an MRI torpedo tube. Dreaded, not because it hurts or I’m particularly worried about the results. The deal is I’m decidedly claustrophobic and have to get legally stoned on Xanax to keep from climbing out of that contraption before the scan is completed. I have abandoned ship before, much to the dismay of the medical staff. So to keep my mind off the impending test, I drove around looking for long-gone landmarks from my youth— until it was time to enter...
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