I was reminded of the Sex With Chickens story while eating at Cowboy Chicken the other day. That’s a new franchise in Longview of which the Beautiful Mystery Companion — aka my bride — and I have become quite fond. Cowboy Chicken sounds like an unhealthy food choice, but actually the bird is roasted and the side dishes are fresh vegetables. What a concept: Fresh, healthy food in East Texas, no less.
Anyway, seeing all those naked chickens spinning their way on a spit through the ring of fire to land on plates of hungry people reminded me of a fight I had with the Leander Police Department...
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I have recently become a big-city commuter. I live in the exurbs of Austin — in a land of cookie-cutter houses — and drive daily to the University of Texas campus to draw a paycheck working a dream job. I’m a lucky guy.
The prospect of this commute worried me. I am not good with traffic issues, generally. It makes me crazy when I am headed back to East Texas on I-35, and everything just stops for no apparent reason. The most frustrating aspect of those sudden stoppages is that one has no idea why it is taking place, or how long it will be before things loosen up. Sometimes it is caused...
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My brand-new 13-year-old daughter is in love with my iPhone. One of her fondest wishes is that we buy her one. Well, if wishes were horses, and all that. Both her mother, my bride, and I agree that is an unnecessary expense — considering she has a laptop, iPod Touch and an adequate cell phone on which she can text faster than I can type. And I’m pretty fast.
What she loves to do most of all is take photos of herself. That is an activity that the latest model makes easy, since it allows one to switch the “viewfinder” so that you can see yourself on the screen and aren’t just shooting...
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Golf is a good walk spoiled. — Mark Twain
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Samuel Clemens must have never broken 80. That would have changed his outlook. I have shot in the 70s just five times. You remember such momentous events, though the last time I did so was more than 10 years ago. I lost my obsession with this game when I concluded:
• I will never be more than a mediocre golfer, able to shoot in the low 90s most days but perfectly capable of blowing up and busting the century mark.
• The game takes too much time. I should be more productive in my leisure hours.
• A sport where drinking is not only...
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We met on a cold February afternoon 40 months ago, at a downtown coffee shop in Longview. Julie had emailed because she liked a column I had written about unpacking boxes of books, the simple pleasure of revisiting those old friends as I set up a new house. She suggested we have coffee and see if we might get better acquainted, possibly become friends. I agreed, intrigued. It turned out to be the most fruitful column I have produced in nearly 30 years.
I walked up the alley from the newspaper office at the appointed hour, reaching Green Street as Julie crossed, wearing a maroon raincoat, curly...
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My fiancé and I were walking Rosie, the World’s Cutest Dog, the other day. I am quite certain at least some of you will take issue with me unilaterally bestowing that title on Rosie. Some of you might even be under the misapprehension that the World’s Cutest Dog resides at your house. There surely are a number of dogs owned by readers that are mighty cute. I have two grand-dogs, Zelda and Ernie, who live with my daughters and fall into that category. But both daughters would admit if pressed that Rosie has that cute thing going on in a major way. They want to stay in the will, for one thing.
An...
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One of my earliest memories of my mom comes from when I was four, or possibly five. I was playing with one of those toys where kids pound plastic objects of different shapes into the corresponding shaped holes. As usual, I was trying to put a square peg in a round hole. My mom came outside to say she was going to the store and asked if I wanted to go with her. Normally I would have jumped at the chance and the prospect of perhaps talking my way into a piece of candy. But this time I said no, I would rather stay home and play.
She looked vaguely disappointed, but said OK and left. I’m sure...
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Busking — Chiefly British: To entertain by dancing, singing, or reciting on the street or in a public place. (From dictionary.com.)
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Guy Forsyth said while on stage in Longview a few weeks ago that he started out busking in Austin, a word with which I was just vaguely familiar. I thought I knew what it meant, but I have learned not to rely on guesswork when it comes to words I don’t really know. Such carelessness has caused past problems when I mangle words, using them in the opposite way as intended. Once I used “opprobrium” when I should have used “approbation.” The latter...
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WRIGHT PATMAN LAKE, ATLANTA STATE PARK — A soft drizzle falls across the lake as the wind blows out of the south. Everything is a uniform shade of gray on this unseasonably cool final day of April in East Texas, as my future father-in-law and I whiz across the placid water in a flatbottom boat. We are running two sets of trotlines, each containing 50 hooks with plastic jugs bobbing on either line. We hope to have landed a mess of catfish.
H.K. Teel will turn 80 in October. He complains about having slowed down in old age, that he is not as strong as he used to be. That certainly is true, but he’s...
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My middle brother Scott and I got into a mild argument the other day about what our phone number was when growing up in Allenstown, N.H. in the 1960s. That is where we lived until June 1968 when my parents came to their senses and came to Texas. They hired a mover to load up most of our possessions and pulled a U-Haul trailer with their 1964 Mercury Comet containing the immediate necessities — clothes, etc.
It was a grand adventure, three sons and the parents leisurely winding our way south, stopping at Gettysburg, in the Smokey Mountains, finally arriving in Longview — where I learned that...
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