Author: leonaldridge2015

“He’s a pinball wizard
There has got to be a twist.
A pinball wizard’s
Got such a supple wrist.“

 — Song lyrics ‘The Pinball Wizard” by The Who

– – – – – – – –

Remember video games?

Yeah, I know they’re still around. I’m talking about early iterations: Nintendo, Pac-Man, Pong, Odyssey. I don’t know the history of video games, but I’m confident my son does.

If I remember correctly, Lee was about seven or eight when he fixed a defunct Apple 2e computer I tossed aside after buying a new Mac Plus. He had it working and was playing games on it in short order. He celebrates his 44th birthday this month and video games have been his life-long hobby. A whole room in his house is dedicated to gaming—thousands of games, hundreds of collectible consoles.

I called games “a fad” in the 80s. Sitting in darkness one night trying to master one. Small objects cascading down the screen and me trying to zap them before they reached the bottom. I am trying to remember what it was called. Lee would know.

Cut me some slack, though. I grew up embracing pinball machines and pool tables for recreation. Frequenting a Pittsburg, Texas pool hall in the old icehouse by the railroad tracks. Where the last time I passed there, church services were being conducted. And my East Texas State University transcript would likely look better had I devoted as much time to studies as I did to Pope’s Pool Hall in downtown Commerce.

When “gaming” was mastering flipper buttons on a pinball machine. Pumped by the rush of ringing bells and flashing of lights, keeping the silver ball in play as long as possible. Becoming one with pinball machines like that one I happened upon one night a few years ago. In a dim corner of an old convenience store in rural Wisconsin, between the Milwaukee airport and my destination hotel.

Dubbed something about “asteroids and aliens,” the game room refugee rested among a couple of tables for convenience store cuisine “dine-in” experiences. Like hot dogs that have been lingering under a heat lamp since the Christmas holidays.

The machine’s faint warm glow beckoned the next pinball wizard to save the solar system.

I paid my tab for hotel room necessities: a bottle of water, aspirin, and a crossword puzzle magazine. Pocketed my change from the store clerk, who conducted the entire transaction without diverting her attention from a dog-eared paperback romance novel and a diet Coke.

Before reaching the door, I stopped. Surrendering to the machine’s siren song, I went to the dark corner, set my sack on a nearby table, and dug for loose change. Feeding the coin slot awakened an aurora of slumbering electronics. Lights flashed, bells rang, and a deep electronic “Darth Vader-ish” voice issued dire warnings regarding my future in the universe.

With a crack of my knuckles, I rolled up my sleeves and gripped the sides of the machine. Following a couple of practice taps with the flipper buttons, I pulled the release knob back and sent the first ball flying around the top and into play.

Game on!

I bounced it off the bumpers. Lights flashed faster. Bells chimed louder. My score was running up faster than numbers on a Walmart gas pump.

My old “pinball posture” was back. I twisted and turned with every ball. I hammered the buttons. I talked to the machine. I defended my ship and the galaxy, fighting gallantly without thought for my own safety. Alien invaders went down one after another, victims of my lightning laser fire with the silver balls.

In mere minutes, I had fought my way to galactical glory faster than Luke Skywalker.

Then it happened.

I met my outer space Waterloo in the form of a sonar-sounding, gun-toting, light-year traveler. It was over faster than a high school summer romance in September. Like awakening from an afternoon nap dream, beamed from far reaches of the solar system back to an aged Midwestern C-store at sundown. The machine slipped back into its slumber.

The cashier was still deep in her alter ego romance and aspartame aspirated refreshment. But I felt other eyes looking at me—a young alien defender who had yet to attend grade school graduation. “Are you through, mister,” the lad asked softly and politely?

I threw my shoulders back, looked at my score with pride, and said, “I am. It’s your turn now. Do you play this pinball machine often?”

“Yes sir,” he said, reaching in his pocket for his fare to fight space aliens.

“So, what’s your best score,” I quizzed him. Smiling with pride at my more than 100,000 points still flashing on the board.

“Just three hundred and forty thousand,” the youngster replied as he fed the coin slot and took his stance at the controls. “But I’m going to beat that tonight.”

I picked up my bag and headed for the door, tossing a “good luck” to the kid. And to the romance reading clerk. Still 20 minutes from my hotel, I drove into the night, looking forward to a cozy evening with a crossword puzzle.

Fourteen across. “Popular space-themed pinball machine from the 1960s.” Six letters, third one is an O.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are published in these newspapers and magazines: 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 Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

“If you don’t like the weather, just wait a few minutes. It will change.”

— Attributed to both Will Rogers and Mark Twain, depending on what you read.

– – – – – – –

A different column for this space was taking shape about the middle of last week. One intertwined with memories of growing up in Mount Pleasant. But that was before spring storms wreaked damage and havoc on much of Northeast Texas late last week, including my hometown.

I’ve lived most of my life in Shelby County. Still, there’s something about the place where you grow up riding bicycles, playing marbles in the dirt, learning about life, and making friends at school. The place that always remains as home in the heart. For me, that was the south side of Mount Pleasant, Texas.

The column I was whittling on can wait while we pray for communities hit by storms to get back on their feet. As I was crafting this second effort column Sunday afternoon, many residents in the storm’s path still lacked electrical service. Many more were surveying storm damage and the aftermath of flooding, processing the impact it will have on their lives.  

Just a couple hours south, down here in Center, we missed the straight-line winds, tornadoes, and other hissy fits Mother Nature was spewing across several states.

I watched reports of weather happening not that far away, remembering other nights here in Deep East Texas when winds wailed, and thunderstorms raged. Waiting out tornado watches and warnings in the wee hours before daring to go to sleep.

And here I am again, pondering sleep on a Sunday night in Center with storms again passing through East Texas. This time, unleashing on Center.

Tornado season in East Texas always reminds me of grade school years in West Texas, where storm cellars were commonplace in the 1950s. And still are. Underground shelters that provided excellent storage for vegetables from the garden and a place for kids to play hide-and-seek on hot summer afternoons.

But when skies darkened, and weather threatened, families huddled in the cellar. Some trying to ignore the storm long enough to steal a nap on Army surplus cots in the warm glow of kerosene lantern lights.

Dad was not a storm sleeper. He was a storm watcher. Often standing at the top of the stairs in the cellar doorway to watch the show. Black funnels like the one that danced through Seymour, Texas one night. Surreally illuminated by lightning and sparks from snapping power lines. Debris filling the air.

I remember that one and another in East Texas at Crockett. My first year of school in 1954 when a mid-day tornado turned noonday skies to midnight black. When violent winds whipped large trees around like saplings while parents picked up children huddled near a row of lockers at one end of the classroom.

I attribute weather like that, and my father’s affinity for storm watching, to my once secret dreams of being a storm chaser. Hunting down tornadoes, then playing tag with them to gather weather data.

What I have done in reality is keep one eye on developing weather and another on a place to hide should violent storms get too close for comfort.

That skill was learned from the best weather warning system I ever had. A couple of small dogs. Miniature schnauzers named Benny and Sassy. Benny was especially adept at weather prognostication. Sensing an approaching storm long before the weather service reported it on radar,. Anytime he hid under my chair and whined, I checked weather channels.

Once storms blew in, both of them headed for the bedroom. Benny was too old to jump on the bed, so he went under it while Sassy hit the topside and burrowed under the cover. I usually joined the one on top of the bed but kept my options open for joining the senior canine hunkered under it.

With the same curiosity my father displayed decades ago, I used to bravely step outside and watch the weather. Observing late afternoon storms approaching across water was magical when I lived on Lake Murvaul. Seeing nature’s power building and rain rolling toward me were mesmerizing.

However, the first up-close lightning flash usually sent me running, trying to beat the dogs back in the house.

Resuming our respective spots in and under the bed, I usually drifted off to dreamland as storms diminished, tornado watches expired, and dogs relaxed. Thankfully, like Mark Twain or Will Rogers indicated, the weather does always change.

That said, my all-clear for slumber remained reliant on one last thing.

I never went to sleep before the dogs did.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are published in these newspapers and magazines: 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 Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

I’m trying hard to remember. What was so dad-gum funny about that?”— I said that. About 30 years ago.

– – – – – – – –

“Hello, how are ya,” a friend greeted me. We met last weekend where I shop for vitamins.

“I’m in good shape for the shape I’m in,” I joked, laughing like friends do when they run into each other. “But, keeping me in shape these days is getting to be like those old cars of mine. The older we both get, the more maintenance we both require.”

We laughed again and waved as he went one way, and I went the other.

It’s a common commentary on life, I suppose. Joking about aging. Until aging really starts happening to us.

Like my sisters and me at the family reunion some years ago. “You remember,’ I posed the question. “How we used to laugh at Mom and her brothers and sisters. They drove halfway across the country to drink coffee and talk about their aches, pains, and surgeries?”

We laughed.

“Well,” I continued, “here we are, we’re at that age. Talking about our aches and pains and surgeries. And I’m trying hard to remember. What was it that was so dad-gum funny about that?”

I’ve always tried to care for myself, as I do with the old cars I enjoy tinkering with. Routine maintenance for me and for them, to keep us all on the road and between the ditches.

During my three score and ten, plus a half dozen, I’ve jogged, walked, worked out at the gym and at home, water skied, bicycled, or laid on the couch and slept late in varied attempts to stay in shape. Or not.

Like the television commercial that touts a body in motion stays in motion, my goal was always to stay active. I’ want’ve always thought it better to wear out rather than rust out. 

Just as I keep the rolling stock in the garage nourished with quality lubricants and fluids, I’ve also tried eating healthy. Reinforcing diet with vitamins and supplements.

The result? So far, so good. I guess. At this mature age of social security benefits and increased fiber, my checkups are good. And I require only one prescription medication. Still, the journey has had its moments. Shopping to supplement my supplements last weekend reminded me of early one morning in the 1980s, touring Arkansas in a car born in 1957.

Hitting the road early, I wasn’t far into the morning when I sensed my heart racing. Feelng warm. A glance in the mirror revealed a bright red face staring back at me. As if that wasn’t enough, I began to itch. Fiercely.

A quick exit off I-40 took me to St. Mary’s Hospital in Russellville, Arkansas. “Taken any medicine this morning,” the nurse asked.

“No.”

“Have you eaten anything this morning?”

“Just fast-food fake breakfast. Sausage biscuit. Orange juice. Coffee. Black,” I said. Mentioning again how the itching was escalating.

“Where do you itch,” she asked?”

“More all over than anywhere else,” I offered.

“It might be the orange juice,” she commented while checking my blood pressure.

“I’ve never been allergic to anything.”

“No medications,” she doubled back to ask again.

“No. Although I did take my morning ration of vitamins.”

“What did you take?”

“Let’s see … I take vitamins A, B complex, C, niacin, lecithin, bran, brewer’s yeast, zinc, bone meal … that’s all I can think of at the moment.”

She continued writing. “Why do you take lecithin.”

“Helps reduce cholesterol and lower blood pressure. Is that what’s making me itchy and red-faced?”

“No,” she said. “I just like to test people to make sure they know why they’re taking vitamins.”

“No one told me to expect a pop quiz,” said. “Does trying to stay out of hospitals count as a reason to take vitamins?”

Until that moment, I never knew that some nurses have no sense of humor.

I contemplated my fate. Was it circulation, heart trouble, or old age? After all, I was approaching 40.

”Good morning, ” announced the doctor. “Do you like broccoli?”

“Broccoli,” I asked before pausing? “Yes, I like broccoli. But tell me, doc, what does green veggies have to do with our unplanned, but nice, chat?”

“You eat lots of it?”

“Sometimes.”

“I think that’s causing your symptoms this morning.”

“Broccoli,” I paused. “As a rule, sausage biscuits don’t come with broccoli. Even in Arkansas. It wasn’t even listed as a side on the menu.”

“You told the nurse you take niacin.”

“I did. And I do.”

“And you took niacin this morning. I’m guessing before breakfast?”

“Maybe,” I conceded.

“I think you’re experiencing a niacin reaction. If you eat broccoli, you’re probably getting a sufficient amount of it without added niacin. If so, an extra dose on an empty stomach can trigger the symptoms you’re experiencing.

“Seriously,” I asked. “I turned around on the interstate, delayed my trip half a day, saw my life flash before my eyes, and spent quality time with you this morning. For a niacin reaction. Shouldn’t you at least keep me for observation or something?”

“Nope, just lay off the niacin a few days and reduce your dosage,” he laughed. “No joke, you’ll be fine in an hour or so.”

It really wasn’t funny at the time. But funny is sometimes a matter of perspective. Like having a temporary health scare and a trip to the ER while your antique automobile that never once hiccupped during five-days covering three states waits on you in the parking lot.

Now that’s funny!

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are published in these newspapers and magazines: 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 Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

“Remember the good times? When phones were dumb, and people were smart?”

 — Spotted on a tee shirt. Worn by someone using a smartphone.

– – – – – –

Old movies and television shows are the best. People enjoying life with each other. Without a cell phone. Where the only phones we had were tethered to the wall with a cord.

In that not-so-long-ago time when there was no expectation of being instantly and always available. Before being anatomically attached to a cell phone was considered a vital sign of life.

“Is he going to make it, Doc?”

“It doesn’t look good. His heartbeat is strong, but he’s losing cell phone signal.”

Who can argue that smartphones have enhanced some aspects of life? But who can deny that, like most technology hailed with the hooray of reducing workload and making life easier, they have also heaped harmful effects on society? One, the inability to develop quality interaction and conversation skills without hiding behind an electronic device. And two, the mental health hazard of never comprehending it’s not only OK to enjoy personal time disconnected from the world, but it’s also healthy.

“Wow, look at that gorgeous sunset!”

“Hold on. I haven’t checked messages in ten minutes.”

With all this weighing heavy on my mind last week, I launched an experiment. I turned off my phone. That’s off. Not silenced. For 24 whole hours.

It was pure heaven. Peace and serenity unequalled since television stations (all three of them) signed off at midnight with the National Anthem.

After a couple of hours, it crossed my mind that my kids might try to contact me. Not my daughter. She started practicing cell phone use only during selected hours long ago. And my son? He calls more than my daughter, but he’s a busy guy and travels a lot. If he misses me, he’ll leave a message or call back. Maybe someone involving business will need me. Maybe not. This was a Saturday.

Satisfied that anyone wanting to talk to me could wait, I relaxed and enjoyed the bliss of no one “reaching out to touch me.” To coin a twist on an old AT&T jingle.

But when I turned the despised device back on …

“Have I offended you?” The tone of the first text message was hurt.

“Have you seen that message I sent you? It’s been half an hour since I sent it, and I haven’t heard from you. Call me. Now.” Let’s label that one impatience.

“Where are you,” another yelled? Such frustration.

The idea of going “you can’t hear me now” mode came to me a couple of weeks ago. In a business meeting where everyone was reviewing reports and participating in discussions. Or at least doing a better than reasonable job of pretending to be interested.

Except this one guy. Silent. Head bowed. “How inspiring,” I thought. “While the rest of us are laboring with the load, he is praying for divine guidance in plotting a business course.”

Then I saw it—thumbs flying on his cell phone under the table. “It must be important,” I thought. Apparently. It was important enough that he spent the entire meeting head down, looking at his phone. Chuckling and texting.

Or maybe it was the day I heard someone shout, “What’s the matter with this guy? Everybody today has a cell phone permanently attached to their hip.” Frustration and rage. Because he had not received a response—in less than five minutes.

Actually, his exact words varied slightly regarding the precise part of human anatomy to which he felt phones were forever affixed, but you get my drift. I must admit however, when you notice how many people have cell phone protrusions in their pockets and which pocket predominately protrudes … I don’t know. Maybe Mr. Impatient’s analogy was more than a metaphor.

Call me crazy, I know, but I bought an old phone at an antique store, just like the one we had at home when I was a kid. A black one with a dial. Ours was in the kitchen. It was the only phone in the house. Convenience or coincidence, the cord was long enough to reach the dining room. So it was easy to grab a chair and talk.

“Leon, the phone’s for you.” My sister sounded perturbed. “Hurry up. I’m expecting a call,” was her last shot before surrendering the phone to me.

“You kids get off that phone, now,” Mom chided from the living room where she watched Perry Mason on our black-and-white television. “It’s a school night.”

It was just a few years later when my mother stood on the front porch and said, “Bye. Call me when you get there. Call me from a payphone if you need me along the way. I love you.” I was leaving Mount Pleasant, driving to my uncle’s house in Southern California. I was nineteen years old, way before cell phones were even science fiction fodder.

My favorite act of rebellion against being surgically attached to a cell phone might be the prank I pull in restaurants. Where for some inexplicable reason, business associates and family alike feel it’s rude to ignore phone messages, but not to ignore those with whom they’re having dinner.

When that happens, I often ask everyone to place their cell phone in the middle of the table for just a minute. Once all the phones are stacked neatly together and curiosity peaks, I announce, “First one to touch their phone picks up the tab for the whole table.”

Then I start a conversation. Like the ones in old movies and television shows. People enjoying life with each other. Without a cell phone.

“Say, did anyone see that episode of Perry Mason where he …?”

Maybe, just maybe, it’s not too late to reverse the intelligence of people and phones—back to the way it used to be.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are published in these newspapers and magazines: 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 Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

“Go on to Mount Pleasant. They’ve got a long, wide runway up there.”

— Center Airport Manager Bill Neve’s advice after I reported instrument issues with my airplane.

– – – – – –

It was almost forty years ago. Give or take a flight or two. A sunny Saturday afternoon. Piloting a Piper Cherokee 180 out of the Center Airport. Destination Mount Pleasant, to visit my parents.

The short 45-minute hop with a panoramic perspective of East Texas was easy. A familiar one made many times flying a variety of aircraft. Previous trips had been routine, but this one went in a different direction from the get-go.

Before we got the bugs worked out, you might say.

Memories of that trip grew wings again last week in a discussion about airplanes and the old Mount Pleasant airport. The field where I learned to fly was located smack dab in the middle of what is today Preifert Manufacturing’s complex.

The present-day Preifert event center, in fact, started life as a hangar at that old Mount Pleasant Municipl and remains as the last reminder of where the airport used to be. Whether it is the one that was called “the main hangar” back then, I don’t know. The hangar once adorned with a Mobil flying red horse and a windsock at the roof’s peak. The one with faded letters noting the airport’s name and field elevation. About 400 feet above mean sea level as I recall.

Bill Phinney was the airport manager. Pilot friends who encouraged my interest in aviation to take off at there included David Brogoitti, Frank Glover, Ronny Narramore, Jim McGuire, Gale Braddock, James Spann, and others for which brain cells are failing to fire at the moment.

Instructor Doyle Amerson got me through ground school and my first solo before his untimely death. Soon afterward, Grady Firmin returned from military duty as a Vietnam-era military pilot and flight instructor, guiding me across the finish line to getting a private pilot’s license.

The preflight for that trip to Mount Pleasant a few years ago was routine. With family on board, I taxied onto the runway and applied full power for the takeoff roll.

Midway of the runway, the airplane began to feel light and started to fly. That was good. However, clear of the ground and just as I saw Highway 7 passing underneath us, the airspeed indicator fell to zero. That was not good.

Contradictory to the instrumentation, we had power and the airplane was performing as it should. We were airborne and climbing. I could feel it. But critical flight instruments were not functioning.

This lack of primary data gave new meaning to the old saying, “flying by the seat of your pants.”

“Center unicom. We’re airborne, but we have instrument issues. Pitot instruments not functioning.”

“Probably a dirt dauber,” Bill said. “Come on back around and land, and I’ll clean in it out.”

The pitot-static system controls three flight instruments: airspeed indicator, altimeter, and vertical speed indicator. So, we were flying but I had no idea how fast. I could tell we were gaining altitude, but I had no idea how high or how fast.

Silence. “Ahhh …,” I hesitated before replying. “How do I set up a landing approach without knowing airspeed, altitude, or rate of descent?”

After silence on his end, Bill suggested I continue to Mount Pleasant and the bigger runway.

What was typically a short trip felt like an eternity. Time to listen to the plane. Pilot training emphasizes becoming sensitive to the feel and sound of your aircraft at all times. I felt and heard everything this one offered me for the duration of the flight. It was a 40-minute relationship best described as intimacy between man and machine.

Mount Pleasant appeared on the horizon. Using my “oneness with the airplane” and little else other than the seat of my pants, I began descending. Runway in sight, I executed an approach catching every clue the airplane offered. Then the sweet feel of tires touching asphalt offered visions of a bumper sticker popular at the time … “God is my co-pilot.”

Taxiing the plane to a stop at the terminal was followed by a long sigh. Which was followed by wiping sweat from my brow before pausing for a prayer of thanks.

No maintenance on weekends. An attempt to clean the blocked pitot tube with a piece of wire was the best amateur effort I had to offer. However, the only test I could administer was to fly it. “We did this once, we can do it again,” I told myself. After a shortened visit with Mom and Dad, we were back at the airport, loaded and ready for take off. In time to beat darkness back to Center.

The second trip sans flight instruments was not as scary as the first. Shadows were long and the sun’s orange glow mere moments from the horizon behind me when wheels gently kissed the runway. Again. At Center. Perhaps one of my best landings. Sleeping kids in the back seat didn’t even wake up.

Re-flying that trip in my mind last week reminded me that some things never change.

One, it’s been a while since I was “pilot in command” of any aircraft, but memories still stir up a smile. Two, apparently, dirt daubers are still a threat to working the bugs out of flying. I still see red “Remove Before Flight” flags on pitot tube covers.

And the most important. That God is still my co-pilot. In the air or on the ground.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are published in these newspapers and magazines: 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 Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

“Bells started ringin’ and chains rattled loud,
I knew I’d moved in a haunted house.”

— ‘Haunted House’ song lyrics, recorded by Jumping Gene Simmons 1964.

– – – – – – –

The old house was charming, even in stages of ruin. A once elegant two-story dwelling in decline. Paint gone so long that it was impossible to tell what color it might have been. Probably white. Nearly all houses were painted white the last time this one enjoyed any.

Weathered gray boards hung from the eaves. Some by a nail and a miracle. Broken windows allowed remnants of curtains to wave in the wind. Birds freely flew in and out.

A front porch larger than whole homes today once spanned the front. But it had fallen in, leaving the front door chest-high to most wanting to venture inside. Still, it was easy to envision a time when it was a gathering place. Evenings in rocking chairs. Talking about the spring garden or the neighbor’s cows across the road. Listening to doves cooing. And singing “Blessed Assurance” together. Like my grandparents did. Before television. 

What was left of someone’s country home sat off an oiled county road amid knee-high grass and weeds. For a quarter mile in either direction in rural Hunt County, Texas, a few miles outside of Commerce, no other house or any sign of life existed. 

I was in the house twice: once for educational endeavors and once during a temporary lapse of good judgment.

The first was a class assignment. I was doing time at East Texas State University at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. Left there with a degree in psychology and art. Graduated short of Magna Cum Laude, closer to “Laudie How Come.”

Today, the school goes by the name of Texas A&M at Commerce.

Visiting the derelict dwelling one spring afternoon was part of learning oil painting techniques in Professor Karl Umluaf’s class.

Yes, the same Karl Umlauf, whose work today is found in more than 40 museums and public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Modern Museum of Art in New York City, and the Dallas Museum of Art.

His assignment was for young minds to find inspiration in the old house worthy of capturing on canvas.

Many set up easels around the outside and began capturing the structure’s aging essence in oils. I found my muse inside, looking through massive windows from huge rooms with 12-foot ceilings.

Applying paint to canvas, I daydreamed of what life through the long-gone glass looked like over the decades. My completed masterpiece resembled an East Texas rural setting. Trees, fences, flowers, and crumbling front porch columns. All framed by the window openings from where I stood.

Done and headed back to campus, I had no way of knowing the old house, and I was not through making memories. 

I am trying to remember how that next meeting developed. It’s miraculous how the brain protects us, deleting total recall of youth’s stupidity.

What I do recall is winding up in a carload of guys one night with nothing better to do than “check out this old, haunted house.” Other cohorts from my hometown of Mount Pleasant matriculating at ETSU may or may not have been involved. I’m not saying until I’ve confirmed the statute of limitations.

When headlights hit the old house, I thought, “I’ve been here before.” It differed from daylight, looking like an old house in decline. In the dark, it looked like something straight out of a midnight movie horror flick at the Martin Theater in downtown Mount Pleasant.

Then some idiot said, “Let’s have some fun.”

An hour later, we were back, leading a carload of unsuspecting victims. All corralled at the Sonic back in town, they were dared to check out a haunted house. “Unless you’re chicken!”

Two refused to get out of the car on the spot. “Y’all go ahead, we’re good.”

After climbing to reach the front door from what used to be the porch, we stood in the two-story foyer, illuminated only by moonlight.

This is as good a time as any to define, “Let’s have some fun.” Two “plants” remained at the house while we went to town looking for suckers.

The group moved slowly toward the staircase leading to a landing at the top that overlooked the foyer. About two steps up the creaking stairs, one of the planted “haints” shuffled out of an upstairs bedroom in the darkness, a flashlight under his chin. Moaning, “Who is in my house?” On that cue, the other co-conspirator echoed similar sounds from the downstairs hallway.

Unsuspecting victims made a mad rush for the front door. The leader left the building in full stride. Completely forgetting there was no front porch. And that the ground was five feet below the door. The rest was a scramble of bodies knocking down anyone blocking the path to preservation.

We watched as taillights disappeared in a cloud of dust, dimly illuminating shadows of those still trying to climb through car windows.

Surprisingly, everyone survived. Not surprisingly, however, some never spoke to us again.

Sadly, only memories remain of my oil painting. An unfortunate victim of improper storage in later years.

The old “haunted house” is also long gone, I’m sure. But memories remain of my good, bad, and … uh, otherwise episodes at the haunted house in Hunt County.

More than 50 years ago.

—Leon Aldridge

(Note: The old house pictured above is not the infamous Hunt County dwelling. It was almost gone the last time I saw it decades ago. And the oil painting it inspired met an untimely ending some years ago. The stock photo above is not an exact representation, but it offed a vibe close enough for story telling purposes.)

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Aldridge columns are published in these newspapers and magazines: 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 Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

“My memory isn’t faulty; it just goes on vacation more often than I do.”

— I would tell you who said that. But I forget. Check back with me later.

– – – – – – –

“Tell us all about it,” was a friend’s general greeting as I walked in at church Sunday morning.

Pausing momentarily, trying to come up with a crafty comeback, I replied. “Well, I was planning on doing just that, but unfortunately, I won’t be able to today. I just forgot everything I had intended to say.”

Those within earshot laughed sympathetically. At least I took it as sympathetically. “It’s something that occurs more often that I would like to admit.”

“I know what you mean,” he shot back. I’m losing my short-term memory, but my long-term memory is getting better all the time. Sometimes, I can’t remember what I want to say at the moment, but give me a minute. Or two. Or a few hours. Sometimes, until next week. It will come back to me at some point.”

And just like that, what started as humorous banter became a serious discussion. About something so commonplace, most of us regard it as funny. Until it happens to us.

The late John Walker, a long-time friend and Center attorney, was the first to share the “long-term memory theory” with me some years ago. As John told it, he and some other Center adventure seekers who went to Colorado every summer to ride ATVs in the mountains, discovered it.

“It became a joke,” John said. “During the two days of traveling, we talked about a lot of things. But not one of us could complete a story before forgetting a name, a place, or a date. Where that good place to eat was located. Or the name of it.

“All of our stories were about ‘what’s his name’ or a ‘you know where I’m talking about.’

Then, later on down the road, an elusive piece of information would magically appear in someone’s mind whereupon they would throw it out, without hesitation. Before it disappeared again.

“The game became measuring the trip by the length of time it took to recall a lost memory,” John said. “We’d say, ‘That was a 60-minute memory,’ or a ‘two-hour memory.’”

“That’s funny,” I laughed.

And it was. Until that day. The day I was sharing a story about a long-gone Greenville restaurant that had good coffee. The one where Elvis ate.

“It was on the interstate at Greenville,” I said. “Back when I-30 came out of Dallas and ended at Sulphur Springs. My grandparents stopped there every time they made the trip from Pittsburg to Seymour, where we lived in West Texas. I was young, and the thing I remembered most about it was the plate that hung on the wall. It looked like one of those colorful Fiesta Ware plates. Someone had printed on the it, ‘Elvis ate here,’ and the date, ‘3-14-58.’

“Oh, what was the name of that place,” I hesitated, trying to wrap up my recollection of … that place I couldn’t remember the name of. “It was just like home cooking and the best pies of any cafe anywhere. We ate there every time we passed through Greenville.

“I was a young music fan about the time Elvis ate there,” I offered. Hoping the name would come to me in a vision. “And we always stopped because my grandfather liked the coffee. Plus, I got to see the “Elvis plate” in the cafe where Elvis ate.

The name of it was … oh, what was the name of that place?

“Even in the 60s when I was a student at nearby East Texas State University in Commerce, I drove over to Greenville,” I continued. Not just for a good cup of coffee but also for fried chicken steak. Or a piece of pie. And to see the plate where Elvis ate.

“Then, sometime after graduating, I passed through Greenville,” I tried to wrap up, certain the name was going to come back. But it was gone. The café and it the plate Elvis autographed.”

“What was the name of that place?” I conceded, “I’ll just have to look it up and let you know.”

About two weeks after forgetting to follow through on the research I vowed to do, it came to me. Out of the blue. Without any provocation whatsoever, it just appeared in my mind. Floyd’s.

I grabbed my phone and called my friend. “Floyd’s. It’s Floyds,” I said.

“What’s Floyd’s,” he said. “Who is Floyd and what is his?”

That cafe I was telling you about—in Greenville, where Elvis ate—was Floyd’s.”

“OK,” he said like he understood the meaning of my outburst.

“That was about a two-week memory,” I laughed.

“A what kind of memory,” he asked. “You feelin’ all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “And I’m not forgetful, I’m just spontaneously experiencing selective memory loss. But I remembered, It was Floyd’s. And I thought I better tell you about it.

“Before, this two-week recollection becomes an ancient memory.”

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are published in these newspapers and magazines: 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 Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

On the road again,
goin’ places that I’ve never been,
Seein’ things that I may never see again,
And I can’t wait to get on the road again

—Song lyrics written and recorded by Willie Nelson

– – – – – –

I’m thinking about going in the opposite direction.

Geographically speaking, that is. This trip I’m thinking about could be made going two different directions. Center is only 17 miles from the Louisiana border, so going north for 127 miles would take me to Texarkana. And 134 miles of windshield time south would find me looking at the city limits of Beaumont.

Whichever way I venture from home, the initial leg of this proposed journey would be only 1/24, or roughly four percent, of the entire journey.

Traveling the perimeter of Texas.

An episode of Texas Country Reporter featuring three ladies who did that three years ago started me thinking. They spent nine days on the road, covering something like 3,100 miles of Texas roads less traveled. Avoiding all interstate highways.

Learning of their adventure sent me searching, looking under the seat in my car for that 1999 edition of the Cracker Barrell Road Atlas, Nationwide Store Listing, and R.V. Guide. And trying to decide whether I would follow their route traveling clockwise or take the opposite direction and circumvent the state on a counterclockwise heading.

Regardless of any direction, such an endeavor didn’t cross my mind until last week when, ironically, friends in two different parts of Texas sent me a link to the Texas Country Reporter blurb. One of them adding, “This sounds like something you and Oscar would have done.”

Oscar Elliott and I met at Mount Pleasant’s South Ward Elementary School in 1959. At the bicycle rack during lunch. It was my first week as a fifth-grade student in N.A. Mattingly’s home room class, recently transplanted there from way out west at Seymour.

“Haven’t seen you before,” Oscar said. “You new here?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I live on Redbud Street.” We mounted bikes and headed home for lunch in the same direction. When I dropped off at my house, he waved and continued to his house on Stella Street.

That two-minute two-wheeler trip began a 57-year friendship that would include many two-wheel rides. Before Oscar’s earthly journey ended a few years ago, we logged motorcycle miles on summer trips to sunny Florida. When Panama City Beach was known as the Red Neck Riviera. When budget bike riders stayed at high-class joints like the Barney Gray Motel.

We went to wintery Colorado, waking up in legendary burgs like Leadville to find bikes covered in overnight snow. And crossing 11,000-foot mountain passes. In the snow. We made short scenic trips through Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. Saturday trips that were often well underway 15 minutes after a “What ‘cha doin’ today” phone call about coffee time a.m.

All on motorcycles.  

But traveling the circumference of Texas never crossed our minds.

Which might seem odd because road trips, most with little notice, are always on my mind. My mother’s family gene pool has a basic unit of heredity that just can’t sit still. With five minutes’ notice, anyone of us is good for a trip across Texas.

Like a few weekends ago when Abilene cousin Derf called. “What are you doing this weekend?” he asked. Everyone calls him Derf; that’s Fred spelled backward, but that’s another story. Said his wife was planning a girl’s weekend with the daughters, and he needed to get away.

“Nothing,” I replied. “Come on.”

So, he drove five and a half hours—one way—to spend the weekend in Center helping me with my kitchen remodel. Then drove five and a half hours back home. That’s our family. We’re like that, and I love every one of us.

Will I make a trip around Texas? First, I’ve got to decide in which direction to start.

Border-to-border, the longest distance across the Lone Star State is 801 miles from north to south. Going east to west, it’s 773 miles. While we’re elaborating on geographical data, real estate contained within the 4,137-mile perimeter of the state totals 267,339 square miles. That’s 7.4 percent of the nation’s total area.

Less important is deciding how long it will take. After mapping it with the tattered but trusty road atlas, I’m somewhat certain my trip could take longer than the ladies on Texas Country Reporter. Depending on which way I turn at El Indio near the border or whether I try to include the Big Bend area by hanging a left at Marfa for a couple days’ diversion.

Maybe I will do it. Just because there are some things people should do when they reach my age. The trip likely won’t happen on a motorcycle, however. Just because there are some things a person should not do when they reach my age.

One thing for sure, the trip will be dedicated to Oscar’s memory.

Because it’s one direction we never thought about going.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are published in these newspapers and magazines: 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 Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

“Well, it’s one for the money, two for the show,
Three to get ready now go, cat, go
But don’t you, step on my blue suede shoes.”

— Rock and roll standard written and recorded by Carl Perkins in 1955. It was a hit song for Perkins in 1955 and for Elvis Presley in 1956.

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I never noticed how many songs have been written about them until I wrote last week’s column. Shoes, that is.

“Old ladies’ shoes,” someone remarked on my column last week. “What’s that?”

“You’ve seen ’em,” I said. “Shoes that, let’s call them mature, women wore when I was a kid. Black. Lace up. Stocky heels. Back when, to a youngster, an older woman was one that had graduated from high school.

It was a memory on the fly. Popped into my mind as I was writing about two “mature” women visiting, one of them my grandmother. Back when shoes were real.

I like nice looking shoes. Leather shoes that are comfortable and last longer than temporary government programs.

Shoes like I wore to school. When tennis shoes were all high-top black-and-white lace up Keds or P.F. Flyers. Because other than cowboy boots, that’s all there was. High-top tennis shoes and real leather shoes.

Shoes that Mom made sure I polished every Saturday night, for Sunday morning church service. Shoes that were sold in shoe stores where clerks measured the customer’s foot to ensure the correct size. Then double checked by gently pressing the shoe to see where the toes were. Shoes that could be purchased in all sizes and all widths.

Shoes worn until the heels were run down and the soles were more holy than righteous. Well-worn shoes that weren’t thrown away but taken to the local shoe repair shop. Where the smell of leather lingered. Where the proprietor wore a canvas apron and used industrial strength sewing machines to bring shoes back to life. Repaired, polished, and returned to the customer shined to a gloss that dazzled in the sunlight.

I remember buying my first pair of leather loafers at Beall’s Department Store in downtown Mount Pleasant. Working after school during my sophomore year. Virgil Tolbert was the manager, Gerald Birdwell the assistant manager, and classmate Janice White’s mother was a salesclerk. Where Saturdays, I wore a sport coat and tie, and sold men’s clothing and shoes. Wearing frehly polished cordovan Bass Weejun loafers for which I had paid $4.95 out of my average $20 weekly earnings.

Then, in the early 1980s, the tennis shoe craze catapulted sportswear smack dab in the mainstream of “acceptable anywhere” dress. Overnight, everyone was wearing tennis shoes—with everything. In all colors and styles. For all occasions. Everywhere.

That’s when a friend noted that she thought it might be an excellent time to buy stock in one of the trendy tennis shoe brands. I sure hope she did. It was probably a good idea. She’s probably rich today. And probably owns lots of shoes.

– – – – – – –

Well, she walked in the shoe store, picked out a shoe,
She tried on a twelve, but that wouldn’t do.
Betty Lou got a new pair of shoes,
Betty Lou bought a new pair of shoes.
— Song lyrics by Bobby Freeman.

– – – – – – –

I watched shoe styles change again with my children in the 1990s. Daughter Robin was a teenager. “I like those,” she proclaimed, pointing to a store window in the San Antonio mall.

“Those combat boots,” I asked? Still wearing cordovan Bass Weejun loafers. For which I paid a lot more than $4.95.

“They’re Doc Martin’s, Dad,” she said. With an “Ugh.”

Those shoes would be the first of several pairs of combat boots … I mean shoes … that Robin would own and wear with jeans, shorts, dresses, formal wear—everything. Everywhere.

I always wondered if my tennis show friend invested in combat boots.

Regardless of the show style, I’m told my focus on footwear formulated at an early age. Mom delighted in talking about it. Told it far and wide. How the first thing I inspected was someone’s shoes. And it was a “no go” if I didn’t like them.

“We hired a babysitter one time when we lived in Ballinger,” Mom told every year at family reuninons. About a hundred times, “You looked at her shoes and started crying. Only after the poor woman removed her shoes and hid them in a closet would you consent to being in the same room with her.”

Even after Mom started losing her memory, she still managed to remember that story. Bless her heart.

– – – – – – –

“And someone else will fill the shoes that I once wore,
Cause them shoes, don’t fit me anymore.
— Written by Hank Cochran and Velma Smith, recorded by Patsy Cline.

– – – – – – –

When I closed the door on the “every year, whether needed or not,” spring closet cleaning ritual recently, 35 pair of shoes remained. Yeah, it scared me, too. Mostly dress and casual shoes, most of them leather. Seven pairs of cowboy boots, all leather. One pair of Bass Weejuns that cost more than I paid for my first car. One pair of tennis shoes, just for the gym.

And … from Lansky Brothers Men’s Shop in Memphis. Where Elvis shopped. The store that still markets themselves as “Clothier to the King.”

One pair of genuine blue suede shoes.

—Leon Aldridge

(Photo taken by the author in May of 2021 during the renovation of a downtown Center, Texas building that was for many years an attorney’s office. Obviously at some point before “legal” was the office buzzword, “leather” was. Removing the facade revealed signage advertising “Shoes 2 pair $5. Even thought they were real leather, it’s a safe bet they weren’t Bass Weejuns.)

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Aldridge columns are published in these newspapers and magazines: 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 Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine. © Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

“But the mere sight of a needle makes me pass out, I can’t even knit!”

— Mrs. Betty Slocombe’s character in the 1977 film “Have You Been Served.”

– – – – – –

“On a scale of one to ten …,” the nurse began.

“Pain? About a one or two,” I responded. “On the stupid scale, about an 87.”

“Accidents happen,” she said politely.

I nodded. Maintaining a death grip on the kitchen towel hastily wrapped around my finger as I headed for the ER. After my unfortunate Saturday afternoon encounter with a power saw.

“Pressure on the wound.” Distant voices from Boy Scout first aid training. Sometime during Dwight Eisenhower’s second term.

The exam room was silent, save some medical sounds like those heard on TV doctor shows. A blood pressure cuff tightening and releasing. Beep, beep, beep beside the bed. Assurance that I still had a heartbeat. The nurse methodically placing various medical apparatus on the tray beside me. Enough tools for a major organ transplant.

“I don’t think it’s that bad,” I offered. “I’m just here as a precaution, you know.”

“The doctor will see you in just a few minutes,” she said. Politely.

I nodded again. Alone for a few minutes with silence to savor, questions crossed my mind. Things like “when was the last time I had stitches in an emergency room?”

My racing mind was quick to respond. “It was that warm summer afternoon at your grandparent’s home in Pittsburg,” it whispered. “Before you entered first grade.”

Summer days spent with my father’s parents in Northeast Texas as a child were good times. Great memories.

Granny lived in Pittsburg in the same house from 1930 until she died in 1993. That likely had something to do with why she had lots of friends.

Mrs. Martin was one of those friends. She lived on a street somewhere south of the old downtown depot. Over toward what I remember everyone calling the box factory.

Granny and Mrs. Martin enjoyed coffee together. On that afternoon that came to mind, Mrs. Martin’s grandson was visiting. Lucky for me. I was rescued from listening to their coffee chatter. Not having to sit quietly in a house adorned with ornate little knickknacks on every table. Each one arranged on crocheted white doilies. And not having to look at Mrs. Martin’s shoes. Black lace-up shoes with thick high heels. What I called “old ladies” shoes.

“You two be careful,” the grandmothers harmonized. And we dashed out the door.

As I recall the rest of the day, my newfound friend was the good guy for a game of cops and robbers. I was the bad guy. Fair enough. We were on his turf.

Roles established; play time was on. In the 1950s, kid-type make-believe. Shooting at each other with trusty pistols that were always with us. Three fingers rolled into the palm, the thumb stuck up for the hammer, and the index finger pointed to resemble the gun barrel. Shots mimicked with lots of loud “pows” and “p-pings.”

I hid beside a car in the driveway, confident I had found temporary cover from make believe flying bullets. That’s about the time law and order got the drop on me. Literally.

From out of nowhere, something landed on the back of my head. I was hit. The renegade outlaw was down. Crying his eyes out. Blood everywhere.

Grandmas to the rescue. Granny took me to Pittsburg’s M&S Hospital on Quitman Street. The old white 1940s structure with hospital rooms on one side and doctors’ offices on the other.

“Let’s have a look at that,” said Dr. Reitz.

Percy Reitz was a World War II veteran physician who often saw me during summers spent in Camp County. Our relationship began in 1948 when he delivered me into the world on a cold January night. That same M&S Hospital. Snow was falling, so I was told.

He had a deep, husky voice. Primarily professional. Not much chit-chat. Medical treatment often delivered while smoking a cigarette. An ashtray sitting among the medical paraphernalia. It was the early 50s. Everybody smoked. Everywhere.

“Hold him tight, Mizz Aldridge,” he said. “I need to stitch him up, and he doesn’t like needles.”

Dr. Reitz knew me. This was not our first rodeo.

Granny got my attention with promises of an ice cream cone from Lockett’s Drug Store and a trip to the toy store down by the post office. Just as I let my guard down, she embraced me in a bear hug that would have rendered even Walker Texas Ranger immobile.

I was snapped back to the ER at Center, Texas and to 2024, when The ER doctor came in. Whisked away from memories of the last time and the only other time I’ve required emergency room stitches.

“That’s gonna need a few stitches,” he said, assessing the self-inflicted wound. “But your finger is otherwise OK. No major damage. Luckily.”

“Just some stitches on my left gun barrel, huh,” I chuckled.

“What’s that,” the doctor asked?

“Aw, just on old memory,” I said, rubbing the scar on the back of my head. With my good hand.

“Just don’t hurt me, Doc. Granny’s not here to hold me. And I still don’t like needles.”

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are published in these newspapers and magazines: 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 Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.