A Story Worth Telling

Happy knowing only what my kids confessed

“Gray hair is hereditary. We get it from our children.”
— Author unknown; I heard it from my mother

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“I told my children once they were grown,” my friend laughed last week, “If you’ve done dumb things you never told me about, don’t tell me now. I don’t need to know.”

During that chat, we compared stunts our kids pulled that account for our gray hair … the shenanigans we knew about. Incredible examples of “what were you thinking,” praying we never found out.

It happens in every generation. At this point, I’m prone to believe in guardian angels. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be sitting here pounding out this keyboard confession about just one of my temporary lapses in judgment many years ago.

Let’s call it the “Mexican Joy Ride.” While that might sound like a questionable appetizer on a South Texas bar menu, it’s the best name I know for what happened in the summer of 1965 in Monclova, Coahuila, Mexico.

Long-time friend David Neeley and I spent a lot of time at each other’s houses growing up. His mom, Doris Neeley, was like a second mother to me. Always so gracious to invite me on many of their fascinating trips, including one excursion driving into old Mexico.

As a kid from Mount Pleasant, Texas, Mexico was total culture shock. I still have vivid memories of Mrs. Neeley’s big Bonneville sharing the narrow blacktop with ancient, sputtering trucks and mule-powered carts. Seeing living conditions that were a study in stark contrasts—opulent homes just a stone’s throw from dirt-floor huts.

We stayed at the Hotel Chulavista, perched like a fortress on an elevated hill on Monclova’s north side, offering a sweeping view of the city below. Billed as “the place to stay” back in 1965, it was the backdrop for our big adventure one siesta-worthy afternoon.

The hotel driveway was a steep asphalt ribbon that climbed the hill, skirted the pool, and dropped back down toward the city. David’s mom was relaxing in her room while he and I checked out the pool before deciding to explore the hotel grounds. That’s where we crossed paths with a local boy about our age—wheeling a sun-faded, battered Volkswagen Beetle.

How we actually struck up a conversation remains a mystery. We spoke zero Spanish, and our new friend spoke no English. Yet, through the universal “smiles and frantic hand-speak language,” we comprehended his offer of a joy ride. And with the “ten feet tall and bulletproof” confidence of teenage boys, we climbed right in.

Down the hill we went, dropping like a roller coaster into the city. I don’t think speed limits existed in Mexico then—but if they did, our newfound friend treated them as a suggestion. It was a sightseeing tour in fast-forward. Our young driver and guide shouted enthusiastic, non-stop commentary in Spanish, talking just as fast as he drove, while the Beetle buzzed through the streets like a caffeinated hornet.

In 1965, Monclova was home to about 70,000 people—a fraction of its current population of 250,000. But to two small-town Texas boys, it felt like New York City. For 30 frantic minutes, we blurred past bustling business districts and historic neighborhoods. The grand finale was a dizzying spin around the then-famous Glorieta Juárez, a massive traffic circle featuring a towering monument to Mexican President Benito Juárez.

Before we knew it, the tired Bug chugged back up the hotel hill and, with a flurry of laughter and waving, our newly befriended driver sped away.

Not for a single second did it ever cross our minds that getting into a car with a total stranger in a foreign country was a terrible idea. We did, however, have better survival instincts by dinner time that evening when David’s mom asked, “What have you boys been up to this afternoon?”

“Oh,” we shrugged. “Just hanging out around the pool.”

David’s mom and mine are both gone now. Neither ever knew about the “Mexican Joy Ride.”

Recalling that clandestine excursion so many years ago, I completely understand my friend’s request to her children last week. Because we earned our gray hair just like every other parent.

Remembering our dumb stunts and remaining perfectly content knowing only what our kids confessed to growing up.

—Leon Aldridge

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Leon Aldridge is a veteran editor, publisher, and communications professional, currently enjoying semi-retirement while awaiting the next challenge. His columns appear in: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

Walking to school: the great American adventure

“The shortest distance between home and growing up was that morning walk to school.”
— Author unknown.

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Loved those long-ago crisp autumn morning school days at South Ward Elementary in Mount Pleasant. They didn’t begin with Mom cinching a five-point seat harness, however. Or navigating the perils of a long student drop-off lane.

For me, they began with grabbing my Roy Rogers lunchbox and my book satchel, then hitting the street in my Keds high tops as Mom reminded again, “Quit letting that screen door slam shut.“

Back then, walking a few hundred yards from our Redbud Street home to school wasn’t considered a daring feat of survival. It was just what you did if you possessed working legs and the tornado siren wasn’t going off.

To a nine-year-old in the Eisenhower era, those few blocks were a vast, wondrous world to explore. Armed with nothing but a nickel for a carton of Borden’s milk and a profound lack of adult supervision, we stepped out into the world of walking to school.

The journey required navigating some neighborhood checkpoints. One was the ditch at the neighborhood playtime meeting spot we called “shade trees,” where the drainage culvert yielded some mighty fine frogs to slip into my book satchel. Because you never knew when a frog might come in handy at school. Another was the hound dog at the house where I cut across the vacant lot that demanded a pat through the chain-link fence.

These morning journeys operated under the unwritten law of the neighborhood safety net. If you tripped over an untied shoelace and skinned your knee, you didn’t dial 911 or call up a lawyer to sue somebody.

Bless your heart, you just wandered onto the nearest porch where a mom was sending youngsters off to school. Any of them would give you a heavy sigh, brush the dirt off, slap a Band-Aid over the wound, and send you on your way so you wouldn’t be late for the bell.

The neighborhood was an unappointed committee of surrogate parents; all armed with the authority to scold you while quietly keeping an eye on the roving packs of children.

On city streets today, seeing a grade-schooler navigating to class unescorted would likely trigger an immediate, community-wide panic. Within minutes, frantic social media posts would scream, “Whose unsupervised child is that I saw wandering two blocks from school?”

Social services would be dispatched to investigate the shockingly negligent parents who let a minor go on a morning outdoor adventure without a designated adult chaperone.

All this while parents sit in idling, two-ton SUVs for 45 minutes, inching forward in a line stretching from the drop-off lane down to the end of the street. Just to transport a child a distance that could easily be covered on foot in six minutes flat if we weren’t terrified of the great outdoors.

Granted, defenders of this modern era shift present valid concerns. Traffic has multiplied, sidewalks have vanished in many places, and 24-hour news cycles have convinced us that a supervillain lurks behind every crepe myrtle bush.

It’s sad when looking back at my youth. An era when mid-century kids walked to school, every day, uphill both ways, in the snow, lacking any tracking device, but with absolute certainty that they could handle a stray dog or a missing sneaker lace all by their lonesome. One can’t help but feel a twinge of nostalgia.

We learned how to negotiate the world one sidewalk crack at a time while discovering that society was generally a place full of helpers.

Parents today can argue they are saving children from the perils of danger and the discomfort of the elements by transporting today’s students like cargo. All safely buckled into the back seat, watching a world through a tinted window—a world they are rarely permitted to touch.

Sadly, lacking that kid’s first taste of genuine independence when walking to school was an adventure. When growing up meant skinning a knee, trusting a neighbor, and keeping a frog in your book satchel.

Just in case you needed one.

—Leon Aldridge

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Fragile relics whispering from a curio cabinet

“The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.“
— Malcolm S. Forbes, publisher of Forbes magazine.

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That oft quoted old saying crossed my mind last week as I watched classic cars and their owners wrap up another successful car show in Center.

For as far back as I can remember, loud, fast, and cool cars have “spoken to me.” And I’ve always listened.

But admiring the polished, powerful machines as toys last week made me think about a different kind of plaything—not the automotive classics in my garage, but the fragile relics whispering from my living room curio cabinet. Survivors from the “Depressing Decades” of the Great Depression, specifically a swivel-jointed wooden toy snake and a Fisher-Price “Pop-Up Kritter” Pluto.

My father, born in 1923, played with both, dating them to the 1930s. In the mid-1950s, my grandmother pulled them from the bottom drawer of her chifferobe to entertain me. Looking at them today, these toys stand in stark contrast to the brightly lit, big-box store toy aisle offerings—a transition that represents far more than a shift in materials. They completely rewrite why we play.

If you had money during the Great Depression, you found that “why” in the first Sears Christmas catalog, published in 1933. It tempted families with “Miss Pigtails” dolls, cast metal toy cars, Mickey Mouse watches, Lionel electric trains, and—are you ready? Live singing canaries.

But my father’s wooden toy snake never appeared in a catalog or sat on a store shelf. According to those who deal in such things, it was born entirely of resourcefulness. It bears no maker’s marks, suggesting it’s a product of the so-called “Pocket Snake” folk art era—likely carved by a local rural whittler to sell at a county fair or roadside stand. It’s in great condition, and the metal-pinned hinges still fluidly mimic a live serpent when wiggled.

The other toy is a 1936 Fisher-Price #440 Pluto. Built on a bone-shaped wooden paddle, it was one of the very first licensed Disney toys manufactured. Pulling metal rings attached to strings makes the beaded characterization of the well-known Mickey Mouse cartoon dog dance, bow, or sit. This one still has its original oilcloth ears and beaded tail—appendages usually lost to time and teething toddlers.

They survived my father’s childhood and my own mid-century roughhousing to become a miraculous heirloom, thanks to my grandmother’s careful preservation.

By the time my children were toddlers in the 1980s, the toy box looked vastly different. Wood had given way to injection-molded plastic, and simple mechanics gave way to Saturday morning cartoons.

That’s when the best gift to give your kids at Christmas might have been gift wrapped batteries labeled, “toys not included.”

You didn’t just buy a plastic action figure like son Lee’s G.I. Joe or daughter Robin’s Cabbage Patch dolls; you bought a 30-minute commercial disguised as entertainment.

Today’s toys are even further engineered, designed to exploit psychological triggers. Toy aisles are now dominated by blind-box “unboxing” toys and heavily marketed collectibles, using YouTube influencers bypassing parents entirely to target kids.

And the goal is no longer simply to play—it’s to trigger the body’s dopamine hit on the reveal, prompting kids to “collect them all” before the packaging even hits the playroom floor.

The buyer’s intent has shifted, too. A century ago, a parent gave a child a toy to foster calm concentration, tell stories, or simply give them a brief bit of delight during lean economic times. Today, parents more often buy toys under the heavy pressure of “educational development” or, can we be honest, to secure twenty minutes of silence from a screen-addicted toddler.

Overall, one could argue that toys have evolved from hand-whittled folk art to engineered corporate entertainment systems. But wiggling that wooden snake again last week reminded me of a time before a toy’s digital magic was dreamed up in a boardroom—a time when toys carved from a piece of wood exercised youthful brains.

My grandchildren have grown past the toy stage, and the great grands aren’t here yet. But I can already hear the conversation were I ever to pass this 100-year-old heirloom to one of them to play with.

“What does it do?” they’ll probably ask, looking for a power button.

“It wiggles,” I might say.

“And then what?”

“Then? Well, that’s when you’ll learn to use your imagination.”

—Leon Aldridge

(PHOTO ABOVE: My father’s old toys that I played with as a child. And one from my childhood, a cast metal airplane dating to around 1957—another toy that “spoke to me” as an adult.)

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A beautifully innocent, total lack of worry

“There is nothing more important than a good, safe, secure home.”
— Rosalynn Carter, first lady of the United States, wife of President Jimmy Carter.

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The state-of-the-art home security panel on the wall behind me chimed a warning. Someone was on my front porch.

A glance at the video with night-vision capabilities crisp enough to read the expiration date on a milk carton revealed the intruder—my big tomcat scurrying past the front door in pursuit of a June bug.

The urgency of the alert seemed comical when you compared the actual threat to my home with a system designed to fortify against tactical breaches. I think we’ve successfully turned our homes into digital fortresses, all to protect flat-screen televisions we barely watch, and a kitchen counter cluttered with junk mail.

It hasn’t always been this way. I’m old enough to remember the mythological era of childhood when “home security” was a screen door with a hook that didn’t always fit the eyelet. We didn’t lock the front door at night. Doing so would have felt like we were insulting the neighborhood, as if we suspected the minister or the milkman of moonlighting as a cat burglar.

Also in those days, taking the keys out of the station wagon was an unnecessary chore. They dangled permanently from the ignition switch on the dash. Hey, the Chevy didn’t even need a key to start it. GM switches in the mid-50s were designed to work without one.

Nobody stole it because everyone on the block already owned a used car not much better than the one sitting in our driveway. And our collective net worth was tied up in Tupperware, faith, and a shared feeling that the world was generally a safe place.

Not locking up wasn’t bravery either; it was our beautifully innocent, total lack of worry. The concept of “intruders” was limited to comic books and Dragnet on the black-and-white TV. “Just the facts, ma’am.”

The late-1980s dawn of social paranoia prompted my first security system, one that was hardwired by Ma Bell to a monitoring service in Dallas. The beige plastic monstrosity residing on the wall possessed the digital intelligence of a toaster and the volatile temperament of a cornered raccoon.

I recall one night around 2:00 a.m., the alarm company rang my bedside telephone. I managed a sleepy “hello” before a real person said, “We’re detecting motion in your dining room.”

Instead of waiting for, “We’re dialing the police,” I wildly sprang out of bed and grabbed the nearest weapon—one of my size eleven loafers off the floor.

Creeping down the hallway, ready to do battle with a desperate criminal, I rounded the corner into the dining room. Instead of a burglar, however, I came face-to-face with a helium-filled “Happy Birthday” balloon brought home from an office birthday party. The central heat’s gentle draft was carrying it lazily across the dark room as my sophisticated defense system painted the floating party favor as an intruder sneaking through my house.

Trust me, there’s nothing more humbling than standing in your shorts and wielding a shoe while negotiating with a keypad as a shiny piece of Mylar mocks you from the ceiling.

My security system today is amazing. Cameras and motion detectors send everything to my smartphone. I’ve had it for several years and I’m adding updates in a couple of weeks. Still, I just can’t escape the irony of it all. We’ve traded the open-door freedom of our childhood for a pocket full of push notifications. We are safer than ever, yet we spend evenings watching live streams of our own empty driveways, waiting for a threat that, thankfully, rarely comes.

We’ve locked the world out, but in doing so, we’ve locked ourselves into a state of permanent, high-tech anxiety. Scrolling through news stories about rising crime rates and increasing social hostilities.

Yet sometimes … when the night air is just right, I look at my deadbolt-locked doors and check the security camera video to see a ‘possum crossing my patio with a yogurt container pilfered from a trash can somewhere.

And I think about Dad’s old Chevrolet, sitting in the driveway all those years ago, with its keys in the ignition all night.

Still there and ready for duty the next morning.

—Leon Aldridge

(PHOTO — My high-tech security system captures another front porch intruder.)

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Leon Aldridge is a veteran editor, publisher, and communications professional, currently enjoying semi-retirement while awaiting the next big challenge. His columns appear in: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and in Motor Sports Magazine.

Lifetimes anchored by timeless reminders

“There are only two lasting bequests we can give our children – one is roots, and the other, wings.”– Hodding S. Carter. (1907 – 1972) American journalist and author.

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Dear kids and grandkids,

Every day, I live with history around me. Aging pieces that sat unmoved in my grandparents’ home, some of it for 63 years before coming to live with me.

A curved glass buffet with a dining table and chairs purchased as used furniture during the 1920s by your great- and great-great-grandparents. A bedroom suite that dates to WWII. And a library table that predates the bedroom furniture. To visitors, they are antiques. To me, they are time machines.

Please let me explain that connection.

My next birthday will be number 79; the exact age my grandfather was when he died in 1967. I was 19, old enough to know him well as a child, but only years later, old enough to understand the sheer scale of what his eyes witnessed compared to mine. These days, I’m awe-struck by how two lifetimes can span nearly 140 years of rampant human progress yet remain anchored by tangible timeless reminders.

Pieces that graced the small, frame house S.V. and Hattie Lois Aldridge called home at 323 Cypress Street in Pittsburg, Texas. Where they lived from Halloween night 1930, right at the dark beginning of the Great Depression, until my grandmother died in 1993.

Because their home remained a living time capsule, my childhood summers are permanently woven into the grain of this furniture I have. When I look at it, memories flow. I see their dining room filled with family, the table laden with food my grandmother spent hours cooking. I hear the laughter and clinking silverware during many Sunday and Christmas dinners together.

I vividly remember being just tall enough to reach the top of the buffet, stretching for the cut-glass bowls where Granny kept bananas and the cookie jar.

I’m at home with the bedroom suite where I slept during my magical summer visits—the dresser with the same small clock. The bed still wears the chenille bedspread, today some 70 years old, where I played for hours tracing the bedspread’s raised tufted patterns like tracks for my toy train.

Remembering that now feels incredibly poetic, remembering that my grandfather, born in Hamburg, Mississippi, in 1888, went to work for the railroad in 1901 at just 13 years old. He spent 53 years on the rails, a grueling career that ended only because he suffered a heart attack in 1954.

He worked through the transition from horse-and-buggies to automobiles in the early 20th century. He witnessed two World Wars, fought in WW I in France, and saw the dawn of airplanes, electricity, radio, and television. Had he lived just two more years, until 1969, he would have witnessed the historic event of humans landing on the moon.

By contrast, my 78 years have spanned the dawn of the space age, the rise of the internet, smartphones in our pockets, and a completely interconnected digital world.

My grandfather was also a uniquely special figure in my life. Dad’s parents were the only grandparents I grew up with and spent meaningful time with. Mom lost her mother while still in college, and her father died in 1951 right after my third birthday, leaving me with only faint memories of him.

So, the bond I share with my dad’s parents, and the physical things they left behind, became my deepest anchor to the generations before me. When they looked at the buffet, the Great Depression or recovering from his heart attack might have been on their mind. When I look at it, I think of them, and I think of you.

History isn’t just something found in textbooks. It’s alive in my house. It’s in the craftsmanship of a generation that built things to last. And it’s in the resilience of a 13-year-old boy who helped build the American railroad system.

I am writing this praying that you will consider these pieces not as relics of the past, but as a promise for the future. You carry their resilience and my memories in your DNA. I hope some of you will become trusted caretakers of these pieces someday.

And, more importantly, that you will take care of the stories I write that keep them alive.

All my love,
Grandpa Leon

—Leon Aldridge

(Photo above — The guest bedroom chest of drawers that dates to about WW II. On it is the clock that sat in that spot when I spent summers there as a youngster, a picture of Hattie Lois (Farmer) Aldridge, my grandmother, about the time she married in 1920, and a music box I gave her for some occasion many years ago. The lamp? Nah, that’s “vintage” dollar store stuff.)

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The experience remains the same

“There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed.
Some forever, not for better.
Some have gone and some remain.”
— “In My Life” The Beatles 1965

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Lord willing, in a couple of weeks I’ll join members of the Mount Pleasant, Texas, High School graduating class of 1966 for our 60th reunion.

Anticipating seeing my classmates prompted me to reflect on today’s world through the eyes of the eighteen-year-olds we were in the summer of ‘66. It also reminded me of all the old class photos—rows of little oval portraits in huge frames—hanging high above hallway lockers 60 years ago.

And how I used to wonder what life was like when they graduated and what these graduates had seen and experienced since someone hung their pictures there.

Monday after our graduation, I reported early for work at Jerry Benton’s Monticello Highway peach orchards with a commercial driver’s license that was just days older than my diploma. By sunup, I was wrangling a refrigerated truckload of fruit headed to Dallas.

Life was tangible in 1966. It was whatever we could see and touch. Most everything else was a dream. Working was the reality behind my dream of Kilgore College. Plans? I had none other than playing in the marching band: something I had immensely enjoyed doing at MPHS.

The band performing with the Kilgore Rangerettes at bowl games and Dallas Cowboys’ halftime shows? Well, that was just an unanticipated bonus.

Life marched to a different tune in 1966. No computerized cars for late-night drag racing out at “three bridges” or listening to our favorite tunes with our dates. Just simple motors and radios we tuned ourselves.

And look at what we’ve survived. Sixties muscle cars sipping cheap leaded gasoline morphed into computerized electric powerhouses purring like kittens, sporting digitized sound systems better than what the Beatles had for their Ed Sullivan appearance. And performance far beyond the idolized cars we still cherish today as classics.

We grew up on transistor radios in junior high, then tuned into crackling AM car stations like KLIF in Dallas or WNOE in New Orleans. We were the generation that watched rock and roll and country blend with Motown, British Invasion, and psychedelic music. We heard Buddy Holly, Patsy Cline, and the 13th Floor Elevators.

Often on the same radio station.

While today’s graduates access every song ever recorded instantly and on demand, we combed record racks at White’s Auto and Western Auto before joining the Columbia Record Club so we could forget to reject the automatic monthly record selection.

For us, the “Information Highway” meant we hoofed it upstairs to the library in the old school building downtown and hit the card catalog. Then prayed the needed book wasn’t checked out. Today’s 18-year-olds carry a supercomputer in their pocket, rendering the sum of all human knowledge in the time it takes to say, “… going to the library.”

In 1966, “staying connected” meant a rotary phone on the kitchen wall with a tangled cord that wrapped around the corner for privacy. That came with risks, however. Like me talking to a potential Friday night date and risking one of my little sisters eavesdropping on the hallway extension.

Graduates today communicate entirely through glowing rectangles, using a language made up mostly of digital graphics and acronyms that could pass for secret government codes.

Looking back on the degree in psychology that East Texas State University so graciously let me leave with, I had no idea I’d spend a career in newspaper publishing and communication. Or that I’d watch the world transition from analog to digital, from newsprint to small screens, and paper boys to digital publishing.

Going with a flow that would’ve sounded like “The Twilight Zone” the night we marched across the stage in Mount Pleasant.

But beneath all the mind-boggling changes, the experience remains stubbornly the same. We stepped out into the unknown summer heat 60 years ago, filled with the same concoction of nervous terror and invincible optimism that graduates feel today.

Like them, we wanted to make our mark, find our groove, fall for what we loved—whatever that was. Then see where that road took us.

When we meet in a few days to celebrate six decades of stories, scars, and triumphs, we—the MPHS class of ‘66—can tip our hats to the ghosts of the teenagers we used to be. We survived the peach orchards, the college midterms, the changing tides of our businesses, careers, and families … AND the baffling evolution of television remotes.

We’ll relive memories and compare stories. Acknowledging that, indeed, “Some have gone and some remain.”

Noting the enduring truth that no matter how much the world changes, a good tune, the thrill of a loud, fast car, and a road untraveled never really went out of style.

—Leon Aldridge

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Looking a lot Like Christmas

“The styles have evolved, but the soul is still the same.”
— Overheard at the car parts store.

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“I love this season of year,” I announced to the coffee club last week.

“Whoa, hold on,” one of them muttered, gripping his mug. “It’s not Christmas yet. There’s plenty of shopping days left.”

“No,” I laughed. “I’m talking about the car show. Saturday morning of Poultry Festival weekend. Besides, I don’t start Christmas shopping until the week before.”

“I read where kids don’t care about cars like we did,” someone chimed in. “Some don’t seem want a driver’s license.”

“Not all of them,” I protested. “The machines look different today, and the technology has shifted. But wheels are still a passport to the outside world for many teenagers. The thrill of sitting behind the wheel the very first time feels the same today as it did in 1963—the year State Trooper Gene Campbell passed me on my driver’s license test at the Titus County Courthouse. And the year I bought my first car.”

I took another sip of coffee. “True, we spent our weekends under the hood of a home-built hot rod or a muscle car then. But look around today, that passion still exists. Same late-night garage hours and pride of ownership. The tools in the garage have changed, but the pride of driving something unique remains.”

The conversation took me back to a time when most young guys were graduating from building plastic model cars to hiding hot rod magazines inside their history textbooks and drawing flames on paper schoolbook covers. Book covers are gone as are books, but model car kits are still flying off the shelves at hobby shops.

It was an era when every Detroit built car had a distinct personality. You didn’t just know a Chevrolet from a Ford or a Dodge at a quarter mile away; even a novice could tell a Bel-Air from an Impala, a Mainline from a Fairlane, or a Coronet from a Meadowbrook.

Getting a license was a sacred rite of passage, and individuality was paramount. Dinah Shore filled the airwaves singing, “See the USA in your Chevrolet.” Ford ads touted sleek styling by promising, “Ford has a better idea.” Not to be outdone, Dodge captured the youthful spirit of the era by proclaiming, “One look and you’ve got Dodge Fever.”

And the autumn unveiling of the new model lines was pure September magic.

That magic never faded for me. I still feel it every time I walk into my garage, where my trio of mid-fifties Fords reside: a ’55 Ford Crown Victoria, a ’57 Ford Thunderbird, and a ’57 Ford sedan. That last one purchased brand new off the showroom floor by my grandparents in Northeast Texas. The very car in which I learned to drive, and in which I dated my first girlfriend. (And my second one too, now that I think about it, but that’s a column for another week).

It is fair to say my life would have turned out much differently if American steel and internal combustion engines hadn’t given me an incentive to survive high school afternoon classes. We lived for the final bell, just to watch the pilgrimage of rolling stock leave the parking lot, carrying classmates to after-school jobs or to the local burger joints.

We lived for the anticipation of cruising the Mount Pleasant city streets at night and blazing the asphalt at East Texas drag strips on the weekends. Slow driving past the Martin Theater on a Friday night to see who was at the movies, purely by the cars parked out front.

“So,” I said, tossing a couple of bucks on the table before exiting the coffee club. “Do yourself a favor and check out the 50th Anniversary Poultry Festival October 1-3 in Center, Texas, including the big car show Saturday 8:00 am to 1:00 pm at the HOPE Community Medicine parking lot. It’s going to be packed with incredible machines and memories for all generations.”

Because whether you’re sixteen or eighty-six, lots of horsepower and a drop-dead gorgeous paint job will always look a lot like Christmas.

—Leon Aldridge

(PHOTO — Dave Hitt Motors on North Jefferson in Mount Pleasant, Texas, in 1964. “Cleanest Cars in Town,” the sign said. Located on the main drag between the Dairy Queen and the Root Beer Stand on the north side of town and the Dairy Mart, I think it was, but better known as “Bobby Joe’s” on the south side, made it a favorite spot for kids dreaming of their first ride when I was in high school.

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Leon Aldridge is a veteran editor, publisher, and communication professional, currently enjoying semi-retirement while awaiting the next big challenge. His columns appear in: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

The lost art of neighboring

“Being a good neighbor is an art which makes life richer.” — Gladys Taber (1899–1980), book author and columnist for Ladies’ Home Journal.

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The tall, gray-haired fellow walked slowly toward me from the small house next door. I was copying the phone number from a “For Sale” sign nailed to a pine tree on a lot at Lake Murvaul in East Texas.

At that moment, I had no idea I was meeting one of the best neighbors anyone could ever have.

This was years ago. Before the “art of neighboring” was killed by five-inch glowing rectangles and buried under a pile of unread text notifications. Before phone screens replaced the loving attention we once gave to family, friends, and the folks living next door.

“Looking to buy a place on the lake?” the old fellow quizzed me that afternoon. “Good fishin’ here. You’ll like it,” he continued. His thinning gray hair and weathered face revealed his age in years. His smile, twinkling eyes, and friendly curiosity uncovered a much younger heart.

“I love this lake, wouldn’t live anywhere else. Retired and moved here from Dallas 17 years ago.”

I bought the property and spent that summer preparing it for a new home, Mr. Bill made the time and the work tolerable. “How ’bout a glass of tea?” became a frequent greeting many afternoons.

“Come on, sit down,” he always laughed. “I got a new joke for you.” No one laughed louder or longer at Mr. Bill’s jokes than he did.

“Come over for supper later. Katherines fixin’ pork chops. I might save you one.”

After we moved in, Mr. Bill and Miz Katherine quickly “adopted” my children. He timed his afternoon coffee with the arrival of the school bus. “Y’all better get over here,” he’d greet them. “Katherine just made cookies.”

“Bug” was the name my daughter, Robin, selected for the scruffy Terrier mutt she adopted, but Bill called the puppy “Bitsey.” Robin constantly corrected him to no avail, but by any name, the dog soon became Bill’s “bus alert.”

Before his failing ears caught it coming, the dog’s head popped up toward the arriving bus.

Good hearing was not a requirement for Bill’s fishing, however. You could hear his boat on many mornings, heading out at full throttle before the sun came up on the cove.

“Catch anything?” I’d quiz him later.

“Naw,” he’d laugh. “One tried to jump on my hook, but I talked him out of it.”

More than one Saturday morning, he was at my back door. “Got any more of that coffee? Katherine won’t let me have any more. Says I don’t need it. And if she calls, don’t you tell her I’m over here,” he’d laugh, pouring himself a cup.

It was Miz Katherine who determined one day that it was time to move closer to family in Ft. Worth.

“Crazy woman,” Bill said, shaking his head that evening on the back porch. “I came to this lake to stay.” He protested to everyone, except Miz Katherine, of course. The “For Sale” sign went up on the hilltop place they had called home for 20 years.

“Where ya’ going?” I asked one afternoon, seeing him heaving suitcases into the car.

“Goin’ to see the kids,” he replied. Looking around to make sure Miz Katherine wasn’t within earshot, he smiled and said, “If anyone stops to look at the house, tell ’em it’s eaten up with termites, the roof leaks, and the plumbing’s shot.”

“Got ’cha,” I laughed. “Have a good trip.”

The little place next door eventually sold, and they moved away. Coincidentally, about that same time, opportunity called me to Boerne in the Texas Hill Country where I stayed for about five years before returning to East Texas and to Lake Murvaul a second time.

Even today, however, having been away from that lake many years, when someone talks about how we used to have good neighbors, I still think about one who made my life richer.

Looking for another cup of coffee, laughing and saying, “I got a new joke for you…”

—Leon Aldridge

(PHOTO ABOVE: Sunset view from my pier at Lake Murvaul in East Texas, circa early 1990s where my neighbor, Mr. Bill, and I frequently enjoyed coffee, conversation, and a new joke.)

– – – – – – –

‘A great place to eat’

“A fine dining restaurant impresses your date, but a truck stop counter saves your soul 24 hours a day”
— Overheard at a truck stop cafe.

– – – – – –

There was a time in America when veteran travelers agreed that one trusted clue clearly signaled “great place to eat.”

That was any place where constantly rattling diesel engines and sporadic spewing of air brakes oddly harmonized amid a profusion of pumps on acres of asphalt. All under a sign declaring, “Truck Stop.”

On a cool fall morning some 40 years ago, the sun was repainting the night sky with rays of color when I had already logged a couple of hours cruising through southern states in my ’56 Ford Thunderbird. The goal was going home to the East Texas pines after a trip to Daytona Beach, Florida.

So began one of many stories from my days traveling highways and back roads, sometimes astraddle a motorcycle with packed saddlebags. Others driving a car that rolled off the assembly line during Eisenhower’s administration.

It was a time before shiny new travel stops, cookie-cutter truck stops with attached chain restaurants, and gas pumps that require credit cards.

Craving coffee and a hot breakfast, I spotted my clue. “Truck stop and cafe ahead.” I pulled in, roosted my ‘Little ‘Bird’ with the cars, and smiled at the glowing neon-trimmed sign that shouted, “Open 24 Hours.” As if any truck stop cafe ever closed.

Inside, George Jones on the jukebox blended with the chatter of truckers stories as they caressed coffee mugs. I knew I was in the right place.

Claiming the last open barstool at the counter, I was still eyeing the split in the plastic seat cushion when a white China mug landed just shy of my chin. I saw a name tag. “Bettie Lou” was pouring coffee without asking, dispensing it like a pro.

Hot Joe was still rippling in the mug when a menu landed in front of me. Bettie Lou flashed a smile and offered “good morning, honey” as warm as if she’d just awakened her sweetheart. Then she strode away, turning every man’s head like a synchronized chorus line.

Blinking away the distraction, I lifted my mug, anxiously anticipating that first sip. One gulp delivered that “good morning, inspiration,” waking me up faster than a country preacher’s alter call. Gotta love coffee with a little muscle. Especially when it’s strong enough to hold up a spoon.

In a flash, Bettie Lou was back, packing an order pad and pulling a pencil from behind her ear. “What’cha havin’ this morning, sweetie,” she asked between smacks of chewing gum.

“What do you think about the sausage and cheese omelet,” I inquired. “My favorite,” she smiled. Not coincidentally, the same smiling response I overheard her give the guy at the end of the counter when he asked about the pancakes.

Bettie Lou was back in a heartbeat, balancing an omelet as big as Big Tex’s hat. Two biscuits the size of Cadillac hubcaps drowning in cream gravy, accompanied by hash browns hanging over the edge.

I was still eating and debating whether I could finish more than half the plate when I caught a glimpse of an older couple coming through the door. I sized them up as having arrived in the big Coupe DeVille I just watched pull in beside my Thunderbird.

The silver-haired, sophisticated lady stepped inside with her well-dressed husband following. She looked around the room, heard the music, took one look at the gimme-cap crowd, and caught Bettie Lou’s “honey” and “sweetie” greetings.

Then, with a look of disgust, she whirled her hubby around in his shiny Florsheims, grabbed him by the arm, and escorted him out the door.

Still sopping gravy with the remains of the last biscuit, I thought to myself, “How sad. They just missed the best omelet east of the Mississippi, the chance to collect a first-hand story about a truck stop meal, and a friendly waitress named Betty Lou … sporting one of the tightest-fitting waitress uniforms south of the Mason-Dixon line.”

It just doesn’t get much better for breakfast than an old-fashioned truck stop cafe.

—Leon Aldridge

– – – – – – –

A special kind of educational tool

“Modern schools use computer programs for misbehavior issues. When I was in school, rebooting bad behavior with a paddle worked faster than a software update.”
— Source unknown, but I’ll give it an “amen.”

– – – – – –

“Special education,” answered one of the long-timers group last week. We meet occasionally for solving the world’s problems. And coffee.

The corresponding question arose during discussion on news accounts about declining performance and rising violence in public schools, and what to do about them.

“It’s not called special education anymore,” someone quickly corrected. “These days, it’s called somethin’ like Specialized Academic Instruction.”

“No-o-o,” groaned the first. “I’m talking about a special kind of educational tool that’s sadly missing from today’s classrooms.”

“I think he’s talking about the ‘board of education,’” I chimed in.

“The school board?” another asked.

I laughed amid the comedic confusion. “You guys sound like ‘Who’s on First.’ Listen, problems in public education began when two things were removed from the classroom. I don’t remember today’s issues arising years ago when we were in school up in Mount Pleasant. What I do remember is, when it came to learning and discipline, some of us just required, um … ‘additional training.’”

During grade school at South Ward Elementary, teachers like Mrs. Page, Mrs. Beck, Mrs. Edwards, or Mr. Mattingly diligently delivered lessons from textbooks. But occasional deviations from the published curriculum landed a few of us in the principal’s office for an application of that additional training.

“Tommy Milam and Leon Aldridge,” Mrs. Page announced one Spring afternoon just before recess. “You boys remain with me when the bell rings.” After the classroom emptied, she let us know in no uncertain terms that trying to disrupt the class behind her back would not be tolerated and we had just earned a trip to the principal’s office.

Hardin Whitaker was a tall man from the perspective of a grade schooler. His office sat right in the middle of the building — near the front door, the restrooms, and the water fountains. That was likely the result of astute facility planning, since most mischief was primarily perpetrated near the water fountains. Unless it was spit-ball practice behind the teacher’s back.

Regarding school conduct, my father and I had a special agreement. We agreed to it, but I didn’t get a vote. The deal was for every lick I got at school; I got one at home. No questions asked, no excuses, and my parents never once stormed up to the school to give my teacher “what for.” Because we also agreed the teacher was always right.

As I got older, Dad and I amended our agreement — again, without my vote. That if I were ever arrested, he would not bail me out. Police Chief B.C. Sustaire would keep me overnight, and my father would deal with me at home after I was released. Because Dad taught me the value of respecting authority.

Thankfully, for me, we never tested that last part of the deal. Probably because, by that time, we already understood the principles of respecting authority learned at school.

At school, Mr. Whitaker had his own board of education, aka “additional training” for unruly students. “Boys, you know why you’re here,” he recited, slowly removing his paddle from the desk drawer for us to see. “You are both smart young men, too smart to have behaved badly. I’m certain your parents would not be very proud of you right now.”

We politely agreed.

Rather than the anticipated “Bend over and grab your ankles,” Mr. Whitaker then slapped the palm of his hand with the paddle, resulting in a loud pop that made both Tommy and me flinch.

“You boys think that if I let you go, you could go back to Mrs. Page’s class and behave?”

We politely agreed again.

“Great story,” laughed one of the long-timer’s group. “I bet I know what that other missing from school thing is,” he chuckled. “Prayer.”

“Naw,” I said. “Granted, it was a mistake to remove it verbally. But silent prayer never left the classroom.

“Just ask any student today on test day.”

—Leon Aldridge

– – – – – – –

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