Author: leonaldridge2015

I still remember both

You’ll never relive the moment you got your first car. That’s it, that’s the highest peak… it has a lot of meaning to me” —George Lucas, American filmmaker best known for Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

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Cooler evenings a couple of days last week were a nice break from summer’s sweltering heat. But don’t be fooled. Mother Nature plays tricks in East Texas, teasing that there will actually be a real fall.

Cool breezes were just enough, however, to entice me into the garage where my ’50s vintage first-love cars spent the hot summer. The garage where I connect to motoring memories dating back some 60-plus years ago when I bought my first car.

Memories of first cars and first dates have been an American phenomenon for generations. Typically beginning with captivating garage aromas—gasoline, motor oil, chrome polish, and unique interior fabric scents lingering longer than the finest French perfume. Or at least until the fragrance worn by your first date in your first car.

Memories of my first car are somewhat more vivid than those of my first date. But that’s no reflection on the attractive young lady who first caught my eye at Mount Pleasant High School. After all, she was the first to take my mind off cars long enough for me to make a stammering attempt to ask her out for a date.

Still, I must admit that my first date memory moments pale ever so slightly in comparison to the time I laid eyes on the first automobile I envisioned as mine. That dark blue 1951 Chevrolet Styleline DeLuxe. Sitting at Rex Kidwell’s Fina Station on South Jefferson Street in Mount Pleasant, Texas.

Everybody knew Rex. The friendly service station proprietor with autographed black-and-white photos of country music stars on the walls. Most of them signed, “To Rex …”

Where customers were always greeted with a smile, gas was pumped while they sat in the car, the oil checked, the windshield washed, and the floor mats hand swept with a whisk broom, one just like every service station attendant used to keep in his back pocket.

And all that for about 30¢ a gallon.

That service was standard for everyone. Not just customers filling up with ethyl gas and getting change from a five. The “Gim’me a dollar’s worth of regular ‘til payday, please,” drivers received the same treatment.

I was no stranger to driving when the car at Rex’s turned my head. My father and grandfather had groomed me in driving skills since I was 12 years old. I made it legal at 14 by taking driver’s ed, the minimum age for becoming a licensed driver in Texas in 1963.

Stopping at Rex’s station on the way home to gas up Dad’s car that night, I saw the old Chevy. It was love at first sight, gleaming in the spotlight beside the building.

Rex was known for acquiring pristine used cars meeting his standards of ‘nice,’ and parking them at his station with a ‘for sale’ sign.

With some meager money pocketed from my after-school job at Beall’s department store and an interest-free loan from my grandmother repaid at five dollars a week, I was back the next day with the $250 asking price in hand.

If I live to be 100, I will never relive that moment of driving home in my first car during my sophomore year at MPHS.

As time and money permitted, personal touches were added. A split manifold with dual exhaust and glass-pack mufflers from Redfearn’s Automotive. Baby moon hubcaps from the J.C. Whitney catalog.

My first car got me to school, to work, to Saturday night drag races, and to church on Sundays. It was a participant in many nights of cruising fun between the Dairy Queen and “Bobby Joe’s,” aka the Dairy Mart, located at opposite ends of town.

Last but not least, it was a trustworthy mode of transportation for a Saturday night at the Martin Theater to see “Goldfinger,” the third film in the James Bond series. With my first date.

Visiting in Mount Pleasant a few years ago, I happened to see her coming out of a store where I was going in. We spoke briefly, and I wondered if she remembered that she was my first date all those years ago. Or if she remembered my first car.

I still remember both.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. 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.

The picture looks great in her house

“City people make most of the fuss about the charms of country life.”  
— Mason Cooley, American writer and educator 1927-2002

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“Which one do you like?”

The request for consultation from a friend trying to decide between two pieces of artwork was noted. One, a small country farmhouse with a red barn. The second, a white frame country church building.

“I like them both — either will complement the art in your house,” I offered, trying to be helpful but not persuasive. “Visualize each one in your house for a moment; the better choice will come to you.”

Art, like beauty, is the eyes of the beholder. My art collection, I like to call “an eclectic extravaganza.” Some pieces by recognized artists. Some by obscure unknowns. A few, my own personal work from another lifetime spent earning a degree in art.

Likewise, appreciation for where we choose to live is defined by personal tastes and experience. “I like the country farmhouse picture,” my friend smiled. “I wonder sometimes what it would be like to live on a real farm.”

Country life, from a city perspective, often seems charming. Farming, however, is dedication and hard work. I learned this as a city kid in the early 1950s, spending time at my country friend’s house.

His family lived on a muddy county road in deep East Texas near Crockett. Where a dirt driveway circled a huge oak tree. A gate on the left led to the simple four-room farmhouse, and another on the right connected to a cow pasture and hay meadow. Beyond the tree was a shed sheltering a well-worn Ford 8N tractor and an equally used GMC one-ton flat-bed truck, both of late 1940s vintage.

The truck was the only vehicle the tenant farming family owned, serving double duty as a work vehicle and the only means of transportation to town for Saturday provisions or to church on Sunday.

The old frame house sat up off the ground with nothing to keep a cold North wind from blowing under it. Except a couple of hound dogs calling under the house their home that delighted in barking at anything that moved … and some things that didn’t.

A well-worn path from the back door forked about halfway across the yard. One way led to the smokehouse where pork was cured. The other, more heavily traveled trail passed the firewood stack on the way to the outhouse. Also known as the privy. The “John.” Predecessors to indoor porcelain bathrooms with running water.

In fact, the only indoor plumbing was a hand-operated well pump at the kitchen sink. Electricity was limited to four bare bulb lights, one hanging from the ceiling in each room. Heat was supplied by a wood-burning stove in the kitchen and a small fireplace in the living room.  

A telephone was still on the “maybe someday” list. A television was just a dream.

Air conditioning? A rare commodity anywhere in the early 1950s. The few businesses that had it boasted of the luxury, enticing customers with “refrigerated air” signs in their windows. However, it was enjoyed in very few homes then, especially rural farmhouses.

My initial experiences of country life, all those years ago, included many memorable firsts. Things like riding on a horse. On a tractor. And on the back of a flatbed farm truck.

It was also the only time I took a Saturday night bath in a number three washtub in the middle of the kitchen floor. And my first time sitting in a hot outhouse on a summer afternoon listening to dirt dabbers buzzing.

It was also where I saw family love and friendship. Dedication and hard work. Where I enjoyed home-cooked meals in the most literal sense of the word. Vegetables from the garden, milk from the cows, meat from the smokehouse. Where raising crops, cattle, and farm products was not only their livelihood, but also their means of providing food for the table.

Granted, farming and farm living have changed immensely since my so-called city boy childhood experiences eons ago. For the better, thankfully. But many good memories of those brief farm living experiences remain.

Except for outhouses. Those are probably best left to humorous stories and a sense of gratitude that they are gone.

My friend made her artwork selections last week, and we were off to dinner. I had silently picked my favorite; had I been buying one — the church picture. Because without country churches, family farms would be vastly different, yesterday and today.

By the way, the canvas of the country church looks great in her house.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. 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 was there just for the music

“It’s like I’m 16 again. I grew up listening to this music on the radio.
— Shared by the person sitting next to me at a KC and the Sunshine Band concert a couple of weeks ago.  

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That recent concert was the second time I witnessed the Florida based band perform. The first time was the early 1970s. At the fairgrounds in Longview, Texas. New on the evolving music scene, KC and the Sunshine Band was opening for Willie Nelson.

I was there just for the music, but my Momma didn’t raise an idiot. The venue packed with pocket pint carrying attendees and the aroma of burning wacky weed led us to surrender front row seats for the relative safety of enjoying the music standing near an exit.

Some fifty years and many hit songs later, the most recent venue was very different. Gray-haired grandparents wearing Velcro fastener tennis shoes abounded, shuffling to their seats while adjusting hearing aids.

I wondered if someone would awaken them when the music started.

But just two lines into “My, My, My Boogie Shoes,” at 3.0 on the Richter Scale, the room was glittering with revolving light beams bouncing from the disco ball above the stage. And these same fans I was concerned about mere moments ago were suddenly in the aisles busting moves not seen since John Travolta immortalized “Saturday Night Fever.”

It’s no secret that I love music. Or that my tastes span a wide variety of artists and styles.

Music was instrumental in my formative years. I watched Mom smile while enduring house cleaning chores listening to her high school record collection. Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw.

I laughed at her little brother, my Uncle Bill, who talked about music connecting emotions, and memories. Little Richard, Etta James, Hank Williams, Bob Wills. Before psychological studies ever considered the concept, Uncle Bill related personal stories about early 50s service in the Navy. Guys on ships a long way from home listening to music and sharing memories. Cars they drove, girls they dated, places where memories were made. All entwined in the music.

Realizing that same appreciation for music over the years, I concur that a song can do more than simply entertain. Just a few notes can jog memories and stir emotions rooted deep in the soul.

Therefore, it was no fluke that recent revisit to the music and the subculture of 70s disco unleashed a rush of recollections. Like the time a bunch of friends ventured from Mount Pleasant in East Texas down to Panama City Beach, Florida. On motorcycles. Spending a week at the not-so-glamorous, but affordably cheap, Barney Gray Motel at twelve bucks a night. Before Panama City Beach enjoyed a significant remake into the resort area it us today. A time when it was affectionately and otherwise referred to the “Redneck Riviera.”

But that mattered little to us in 1974. We were there for the sun and the fun, orchestrated and enjoyed to a background of ’70s music.

Just short years out of college and experiencing my first time in Florida, the trip was not only fun for me, but also educational. It’s where I learned about severe sunburn, defied death on “The Starliner,” the infamous wooden roller coaster at Miracle Strip Amusement Park, and cruised the beach road every night lined with hot cycles and cool cars.

That trip was also where I was exposed to another ’70s phenomenon, one immortalized in a well-known musical masterpiece. A Ray Stevens song entitled “The Streak.”

The bare facts are that a half dozen guys were huddled around an arcade pinball machine, challenging each other to pile up points. In the whimsical song, the singer warns his wife, “Don’t look Ethel.” But when two young women ran right past us, au naturel, boogity, boogity through the arcade, I just happened to be the only one not intently focused on the pinball competition.

Steven’s song suggests the streakers he saw were “wearing nothing but a smile.” The genuine, in the flesh arcade streakers I witnessed that night were wearing nothing but a paper bag on their head, qualifying me to testify about everything but facial expressions.

Dumbfounded, I called out to my unaware friends. “G-G-Guys,” I stuttered, “Over here; look at this!”

But they were too late. The girls flashed right by us and out a nearby door before one of the pinball players finally turned and asked, “What are you hollering about?”

“Never mind,” I said, “I could tell you, but the effect just wouldn’t be the same.”

The effect would be perfect at this point if I could say that KC and the Sunshine Band was playing on the jukebox at the arcade that revealing night I got a peek near the pinball machines.

However, the honest truth is even better. Another ’70s disco era hit was providing musical entertainment that long ago summer night down in Florida. A Johnny Nash song that charted as a Top 100 number one in 1972.

A song entitled, “I Can See Clearly Now.”

—Leon Aldridge

Photo info: Front page picture from the Mount Pleasant Daily Tribune dated July 7, 1974. Yours truly is the second face wearing a smile on the left side of the photo.

Photo cutline: “TRAVELING CHEAPLY – 19 Mount Pleasant residents decided to travel cheaply on their vacation this year. They’re traveling for the sand and sunshine on motorcycles to Panama City, Fla. The cyclists plan to have a safe trip. Tribune photo by Buddy Williams.”

An accompanying story headlined: “Family Fun: Local BIkers Leave for Florida” offers comments from some, just before the group departed moments after the photo was taken, Motorcycle travelers named in the story included “Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Spencer, Mr. and Mrs. Leon Aldridge Jr. , Mr. and Mrs. Mike Helbert, Ricky Holland, Kendall Johnson, Jimmy Clark, Kent Bryson, Mr. and Mrs. Terry Shurtleff, and the Spruill family, which includes Mr. and Mrs. Spruill and their children, Kim, Tim, and Scott, and Mrs. Spruill’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Dan Bynum.

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. 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.

Should I update my picture?

“Things that make you go ‘hmmm.’”
— Arsenio Hall, actor, comedian, and talk show host

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Interesting and surprising turns of events. Seemingly unrelated occurrences connecting in unexpected ways. Things that make you go, “hmmm!”

“You don’t know me,” said the man approaching the table where I was sitting. “But I recognize you. You look just like your picture.”

“Oh man,” I thought to myself. “Didn’t post offices stop displaying wanted posters a long time ago?”

We were both guests at a 50th wedding anniversary celebration in my hometown of Mount Pleasant a couple of weeks ago. He was family. I was longtime friends of the celebrating couple.

“My name is Gerald Hampton,” he said. “I read your column. You look just like your photo.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, standing to shake his hand. “I know another Gerald Hampton. From Naples.”

“I’ve heard of him,” the Gerald Hampton standing in front of me said. “But I’ve never met him.”

“Really nice guy,” I replied.

“You know, it’s funny,” I said. “That you recognized me from my picture. Met a nice lady a few minutes ago who said she heard someone mention my name and wanted to tell me she reads my column. Then added, ‘But you don’t look like your picture.’”

“Gerald Hampton in Naples is a really nice guy,” I said again as we chuckled about the photo story. “I met him many years ago, working my first newspaper job as a photographer and reporter at The Monitor newspaper in Naples.

“Gerald’s day job was fireman at a plant near Texarkana,” I said, sorting through old memories. “It might have been the Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant. That one shut down some years ago.

“Gerald also had a sideline business as the local printer. He had a small shop just off Main Street. Back when almost every small town had someone that printed things like letterheads, business cards, and invitations.

“He was a longtime good friend of Monitor publisher Morris Craig,” I continued, “and was in the newspaper office on a regular basis. I want to think he and Craig may have also worked together at The Monitor. When it was owned by Lee Narramore.

“I do know he was also a co-founder of The Printing Factory in Naples,” I said as my memories trailed off for a moment.

“I never met him,” the Titus County Hampton said. “But I’ve heard good things about him. And I do have a story about him. My wife asked me about a bill from Sears one evening some years ago. I told her I hadn’t bought anything from Sears recently, and she said, ‘Well, we got a bill from them for two bicycles.’”

Hampton said when he checked with Sears, he learned it was the Naples Gerald Hampton who made the purchase that was mistakenly billed to their account.

Following that visit a couple of weeks ago, other memories about Gerald Hampton in Naples came to mind. Things like walks down Naples’ Main Street. Going to the post office to get the mail… sometimes glancing at the wanted posters. Or to Rodney Cook’s Piggly Wiggly for a snack. Stopping at Gerald’s print shop, for business sometimes, but more often just to visit. Because I knew what would greet me when I opened the door. The rhythmic clacking of the small job presses, a friendly greeting from Gerald, and a good story.

The last time I saw Gerald, 20 years or more ago, he talked about how he and his wife were enjoying retirement, managing camp sites and entertaining campers with their bluegrass music performances.

My short visit with Titus County Gerald Hampton recently taught me that he was a lifelong educator. It didn’t take long to also learn about his congenial nature and his ease in getting to know people. Very much like the personality of the Morris County Gerald Hampton.

Shortly after that visit, however, I learned that the Gerald Hampton I called a friend from Naples had passed away. Mere days before I met the Mount Pleasant Gerald Hampton. I wondered how two Gerald Hamptons with similar personalities lived less than 20 miles apart and never met.

I also wondered about two people seeing the same picture and disagreeing on whether it resembled the person they to whom they were talking. I wondered why wanted posters are no longer displayed in the local post office. And now I’m wondering … should I update my picture?

You know. Just things that make you go, “Hmmm!”

—Leon Aldridge

(Photo Credit: Mom’s photo album. Yours truly about age 3 or 4 in Pampa, Texas. Mom made notes on some photos, but not all of them. )

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. 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.

The morning Sister Claudie Mae claimed her pew

“I have prepared a place for you … just not this pew.”
— The understood 11th Commandment

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“Saw in the newspaper where one of those big mega churches is selling reserved seats for the Sunday sermon.”

“That’s one way to stimulate conversation at the morning coffee shop gathering,” I thought.

Someone near the coffee pot was heard to say, “It’s been done before, long time ago. But in this day and age? In the South?”

“The way I read it, that didn’t end well in the Bible,” said one of the local preachers, an occasional coffee shop drop-in. “Jesus drove sellers, merchants, and money changers from the temple.”

“I don’t know,” drawled another. “Shouldn’t have to pay anything to attend worship service. Offerings when the plate is passed, or a fundraiser — now that’s different. Seems to me,” he went on. “You might be perceived as favoring the rich to get the better seats.”

Silence slipped by for about half a minute before someone chuckled, “Well, it might solve one problem at our house. It’s a challenge to get the kids ready on time. We always get there about the second verse of the first hymn. Looking for a good seat.

“Now, I’m not saying we’re habitually late,” he recanted, “but the smokers on the front porch start snuffing out cigarettes and heading for the door when we pull in the parking lot.”

“Here’s an idea,” mused the preacher. “If we made the front seats free and the back seats the most expensive seats in the house, I could see this working.”

I was trying to determine if he was joking or serious when someone asked, “So, what do you think, newspaper man.”

Taking a long draw on my coffee to think, I carefully submitted the biggest challenge. As I saw it.

“It reminds me of a small East Texas congregation where I worshiped a few years ago,” I ventured into the spirited discussion. “One Sunday morning, some visitors came in, introduced themselves, and took a vacant seat. Little did they know they had parked in a pew known to be Sister Claudie Mae’s undisputed and long-claimed spot. The end of the fifth row, left side.”

Sister Claudie Mae was the sweetest, kindest little lady you could ever hope to meet. She had outlived two husbands and been present for every service longer than anyone alive could remember. Her “on time” arrival coincided precisely with the minister stepping to the pulpit for welcoming remarks, announcements, and to update the prayer list.

Sure enough, on that morning, Sister Claudie Mae walked in right on schedule. The preacher paused motionless in the pulpit, watching her walk slowly to the end of the fifth row on the left side. All eyes were on Sister Claudie Mae when she stopped, smiled and said sweetly to the visiting couple, “Good morning. I do believe you are visitors. Welcome, we are so glad to have you. And what is your name?”

“Thank you,” the man said warmly. “We’re the Wilsons.”

“We are thrilled that you are visiting with us,” Sister Claudie Mae responded. “And we genuinely hope you will come back. However, Mr. Wilson, you and your lovely wife are sitting in my pew, and if you will be so kind as to find another one, we can start our service.”

The startled couple scurried to the closest empty pew, allowing the good sister to sit in “her seat,” thereby ending any further discussion on the 11th Commandment of “thou shalt not sit in someone else’s pew.”

With that story, I suggested to anyone in the coffee club thinking paid seating at church was a good idea might want to first determine who among them would break the news to the many Sister Claudie Mae’s in congregations everywhere.

“Who is going to tell these lovely ladies that they will have to pay every Sunday to sit in the seat they have called theirs since before many of you spent Sunday mornings in the nursery,” I asked.

The conversation quickly moved to other stimulating topics like courthouse politics, the weather, and the rumor that yhe vacant lot near being cleared near Walmart is going to be a Burger King.

But I pondered more intriguing matters. Recalling the morning when Sister Claudie Mae claimed her pew. Was the song leader’s opening hymn selection merely coincidence or quick thinking when he invited the congregation to join in the singing of “I Shall Not Be Moved.”

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. 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.

Will I need my walking shoes?

“Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.”
Steven Wright – American comedian, actor, writer, and film producer.

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“Just another mile and a half,” cheered the treadmill display. “But 3,000 more steps,” groaned the voice in my head.

The same voice reminds me every month about gym membership fees. Some months I call it dues. Others, I just call it a donation.

Walking is more than the dying art of getting from one place to another on foot. Some walk to exercise. I do. On the streets. At the gym. Mornings. Evenings. Keeping the heart healthy, the body moving, cholesterol levels down, weight off. It works for some. I keep hoping for me, too—someday.

Walking is also a good time to think. Like I did last week, reminiscing about walking to school. Back when grade-school kids actually did such things. Through rain, sleet, and snow. Uphill, both ways. Carrying 87 books and a Roy Rogers lunch box emblazoned with pictures of Roy and Dale, Trigger and Bullet.

I also wondered how many miles I’ve walked in my lifetime.

I walked to school during third, fourth, and fifth grade in the West Texas town of Seymour. The elementary school was about four blocks north of our house on East Morris Street. Which was about the same distance east of the downtown square. My father ran the local five-and-dime Perry Brothers store, and walking to town for a haircut after school and riding home with him is a great memory.

When we moved East to Mount Pleasant, hikes to school at South Ward Elementary were just two blocks from our house on Redbud Lane. Walking then also included real hikes. Saturday five-milers were commonplace in Coach Sam Parker’s Boy Scout troop. Sometimes hiking to a spot for a cookout lunch, then hiking back to town. A ten-mile hike or even an occasional 20-mile hike provided miles of memories.

Not every walking experience is intentional, however. Walking can sometimes be a necessity. Even a last resort. Like the time my son, Lee, and I stopped at an antique mall while traveling home to Pipe Creek in the Hill Country after a visit to East Texas. As I made my exit, I noticed the fuel gauge. “Gas at the next stop,” I noted.

Back on the road and making good time on I-10 west of Houston, the truck hiccupped a couple of times then went silent. “Oh yeah,” Lee reminded me. “Don’t forget, we need gas.”

Coasting to the top of the next hill revealed a fuel stop down the road. A long way down the road. I didn’t count the steps to the station. Nor did I count them walking back carrying our newly purchased fuel can with a couple of gallons in it. At the station to top off the tank, the odometer pegged our walk there and back to be at a little over two miles. Lee swore it was 20. One way.

Then there was that flight from Milwaukee to Appleton, Wisconsin. Arriving late one summer afternoon. The Appleton airport was small, and so was the airplane that got me there. My hotel was located on West College Avenue, which conveniently ended at the airport entrance.

“I can have a cab here in 30 minutes to an hour,” reported the ticket agent seeking transportation to the hotel.

Squinting a little, I looked down the street and convinced myself I could almost see the place where I had reservations.

“Thanks,” I replied. “My walking shoes are in my bag. I can beat that.”

“It’s 2.3 miles to the airport,” the hotel desk clerk said later. Looking at me askance while tapping on her keyboard.

Thank goodness my bag was a roller. I skipped the treadmill session I’d planned for the hotel gym that evening.

These days, according to the app on my phone, I breeze through about 3,500 to 5,000 steps a day, gusting to 7,500 or more on days when the treadmill and I connect. That’s 1.75 to 3.75 miles a day. Some charted exercise; some not so much.

I can honestly say that I’ve learned a great deal from walking. Like watching the gas gauge more closely. And I’ve given up walking from airports to hotels.

As I finish writing this just now, I’m wondering how many steps is it from the couch to the refrigerator?

And will I need my walking shoes?

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. 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.

Practical application of a good education

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”
— Albert Einstein

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Mom talked fondly about her father. I remember some things about Arthur G. Johnson, my maternal grandfather. He died February 15, 1951. That I can remember him at all seems incredible when I think about it. Considering that I celebrated my third birthday a month before his death.

The most vivid memory is waiting at the bottom of the stairs leading to his second-floor bedroom at 382 South Main in Winchester, Kentucky. Waiting to hear him call my name when he awoke from his nap. That was my signal to sneak up the stairs and hide under a bedroom dresser while he continued calling my name, pretending he couldn’t see me.

Called Pop or sometimes Poppa by Mom and her four siblings, Arthur Johnson was an educated man. Photos picture him as stoic in stature, exhibiting a state of calm and composure—someone that most might expect to face life with education, practicality, and wisdom.

He came from a long line of Kentucky stock documented back into the 1700s. A schoolteacher and a principal in both Kentucky and Tennessee, he also served as an educational director for the Civilian Conservation Corps, commonly referred to as the CCC. Before the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, the CCC constructed public buildings, fences, and state park facilities still in use today; often recognized by their stone construction.

In addition to his educational and professional presence, however, I learned last week that Arthur Johnson also had a penchant for practical applications of learning.

“Let me tell you one story,” my Uncle Bill said last week at the annual reunion of the descendants of Arthur G. and Bernice Conlee Johnson held near Winchester, Kentucky. Uncle Bill is my mother’s last surviving sibling. He celebrated his 90th birthday in May and has always been a great storyteller.

“Pop had a degree in psychology,” Mom’s little brother began. “He was educated and intelligent, but he applied his education with practicality.

“There was a little boy in the neighborhood, also named Billy. And he was … well, he was bad. I mean, he was a really bad seed. His mother couldn’t control him. He got into more kinds of trouble, but she always defended him. He never did anything wrong; you know. It was always the other person.

“At one point, I had a little dog,” Bill continued. “It got caught up in a wire fence around the back yard and couldn’t get out. But this kid killed my dog rather than help it get loose. That’s the kind of evil bad he was.

“One day, his mother comes down the road,” Bill’s story continued. “I’d had a bunch of run-ins with her son. So, when she came flying down the road and turned in at our house, I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, what have I done now?’ That woman was as bad as her son was.”

“’Is Mr. Johnson here,’ she asked me? People in the community often sought Pop’s advice since he was a respected teacher. I told her I’d check; that I didn’t know. So, I went up to his room that was his own world in that house. I told him, ‘Billy’s mom is down there and wants to talk to you.’ He sighed and said, ‘OK, let her in.'”

“She went in, but the door stayed open just a little,” Uncle Bill continued. ” I just stood there, you know, and listened. She started telling Pop about Billy. ‘I just can’t control him anymore,’ she said. ‘He’s mean, he’s out of control, and I don’t know what to do with him.’”

“Pop was quiet for a minute,” Uncle Bill related. “Then he gave Billy’s Mom some advice. ‘I’ll tell you what to do. You go down here to the local library, and you check out a book called Elements of Psychology. Remember that title. It’s a big book. It’s a good book. Check it out and take it home. Then when you get home, you take that book, and you beat his butt with it. Two or three doses of some applied psychology will help straighten him out.”

I laughed. I had always heard that the grandfather I barely got to know was a wise man. One who valued education and the value of a good book.

But I never knew just how well he understood the practical application of them.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. 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 still hear those words

“Art washes away from the soul, the dust of everyday life.”
— Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973) Spanish artist

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While hanging the painting of a sad, wet dog on the wall in my newly refurbished “music room slash library” last week, words from some 30 years ago came back to me.

“You collect some heavy stuff, man.”

They were the words of Judy Snouffer. About July 1993. The day I accepted a generous offer from her and her husband Chuck to help unload truckloads of household belongings at my newly acquired Hill Country home near Pipe Creek, Texas.

As the newest editor and publisher at the Boerne Star, my charge included producing the Boerne newspaper and looking after Granite Publications properties in Bandera, Gonzales, and Fort Stockton.

Judy (better known to friends and co-workers as “Jet”) was composing supervisor and graphic artist at The Star. Chuck worked for the City of Boerne. What I didn’t know was Judy’s artistic skills reached far beyond that of just newspapers.

What Chuck and Judy didn’t know was that I collected unique but heavy stuff. Books, artwork, phonograph records, juke boxes, neon signs, gas pumps …and cars.

I knew Chuck and Judy owned a car. I don’t remember ever seeing it, but I did hear them talk about one. Their daily transportation was matching motorcycles. Not just any motorcycle, but Moto-Guzzis. Manufactured in Italy. Also, the oldest European manufacturer in continuous production.

Jet parked her bike by the newspaper office back door every morning. Far outclassing my Honda Shadow, whenever I rode it.

She was different. A cool kind of different. Like a refugee hippie from the 1960s. An artistic soul who worked and thought outside the dust of everyday life. She wore black fingernail polish before it was a thing. She personalized her work area with stars, moons, and crystals. Motivation for her creative vibe.

And creative she was. Jet surprised me one day with the painting I still have of a sad, forlorn looking dog in the rain. The dog closely resembled Max, the adopted basset hound who made the move to the Hill Country with me. He hung out at the office on Fridays, quickly becoming known to the staff as “Office Max.” Jet was moved by my story one day about Max getting rained on and wet in the back yard before I got a doghouse built. That’s when she gifted me with her painting titled, “Dog Day Blues.” Noted on the back as “No. 507” dated January 22, 1994.

It blew me away. “This is beautiful,” I said. “I knew you were an artist, but I didn’t know you painted.” Jet was humble, shyly showing me photos of her other work plus a feature story from the San Antonio Express News about her artistic awards.

Jet wasn’t the only one who contributed to my lifetime of acquired pieces still hoarding memories today in my music room slash library. “How would you like a Boerne fire hydrant for your quirky collection,” Chuck asked one evening?

“You’re speaking my language,” I quickly responded.

“The city’s replacing old ones. A pile at the yard is headed for scrapping,” he said. Go with me after work tomorrow and we’ll get you one.”

I was thrilled. Until I grabbed one end of it. “You didn’t tell me a fire hydrant weighed as much a Buick Roadmaster station wagon,” I laughed.

‘Bout like your Seeburg jukebox or that Mobil gas pump we unloaded,” he quipped.

I left the Hill Country in 1998. It was a few short years later the day the message arrived from a mutual friend in Boerne. An obituary.

Judy “Jet” Atkins Snouffer died tragically March 18, 2004. The way she would’ve wanted to go – on her motorcycle. She “died with her boots on.”

“Jet” was survived by her loving husband, Chuck Snouffer of Boerne, the obit continued. Judy grew up between Texas and Germany. She worked at the Boerne Star and STPS. Judy was a very free spirit, living life to the fullest. Aside from being a very eclectic personality, Jet was a very creative and talented person; a “’ane of all trades.’ She was a recognized artist having won several awards.”

The obit concluded with, “Ride on Jet!”

I think of Chuck and Jet when I glance at the painting.

And I still hear, “You collect some heavy stuff, man.” 

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. 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.

If I’m lucky, it will happen again

“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.” 
— Mark Twain (1835-1910) celebrated American writer, humorist, and essayist.

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“Do you think animals … our pets, will be in heaven,” my friend asked.

I thought for a minute before answering. Before taking time to shovel another spade full of dirt from the hole I was digging. Helping my friend in their time of loss.

“I don’t know,” I said. “The Bible doesn’t directly address that topic. Some say yes, they will be, based on indirect reference to animals in the scriptures. Others say no because the Bible doesn’t mention animals having a soul or the ability to follow God’s will.”

I took my time to fashion the hole a little larger while considering whether my answer was appropriate. Or sufficient. Then, resting on the shovel for a minute, I said, “There are lots of topics in the Bible that have no bearing on salvation. The kind where our opinion one way or the other won’t have any bearing on where we spend eternity. This is one of those questions.

“While I can’t tell you for sure whether our pets will be in heaven,” I rambled on, “I can tell you about a few I’ve had that deserve to be there … in my humble opinion.”

I shared memories of my first dog at about the age of six. A faithful mutt named Brownie I had to give up when we moved. And how that broke my childhood heart.

I talked about Max, an old, rehomed basset hound I adopted later in life. Mine and his. A dog that traveled Texas with me. A fine dog by any standard.

And I recalled Benny, the fisty and funny miniature schnauzer that enjoyed every minute of life. His and yours.

“A dog is the only creature on earth that loves you more than he loves himself,” I said. “Love a dog and it will love you back tenfold — no questions asked. Scold one that loves you, and with its tail tucked between its legs, it beg your forgiveness with its eyes. Never questioning whether you were right or wrong.

“And if you don’t believe that,” I laughed. “Try coming home late one night to your wife and your dog with no explanation. Then pay close attention to which one of them is happier to see you.

“Never trust anyone who tells you your pet is just a dog,” I added. “A dog that gives you so many good times to remember. Afternoon walks around the neighborhood. Never tiring of fetching a toy or a ball as many times as you throw it. Napping at your feet, letting you know that its favorite time is with you.

“Dogs come into our lives to teach us about love,” I said. “And they depart to teach us about loss.”

I thought no dog could ever replace Max. I sat on the floor and wept when it was his time to go when arthritis robbed him of his joy and his ability to walk

But I was wrong. Benny, the runt that no one wanted in a litter of schnauzer puppies, came along and changed that. The tiny puppy napped in my lap from day one, assuring me that I had a new furry friend just as loving, trusting, and entertaining.

And he was right.

“One thing about our pets,” I said, “no matter how many years we get with them, it’s never enough. Max, then Benny, became traveling companions. Going many places with me. Making memories and giving me stories about the love and companionship of a pet that I could bore you with for hours.”

Finishing the sad task I had volunteered to perform for my friend, I placed the small, lifeless, furry body in the hole I had been digging. Then covered it with dirt.

“Thank you, little kitty,” I offered as an abbreviated eulogy, “for the brief moments of happiness, love, laughter, and memories you shared with us.

“The best thing I can say about our pets,” I added, “is if we’re lucky, they will come into our life, steal our heart, and change everything before they have to go.”

While I can’t say with any authority where our pets go from here, I can say without hesitation that I’ve been blessed more than once by ‘just a dog’ or ‘just a cat’ that has left me with heavenly memories.

And if I’m lucky, it will happen again.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. 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.

Why careful career planning is crucial

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”

— Zig Ziglar (1926 – 2012) world-renowned motivational author and speaker

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“So,” friends ask, “How is retirement going?”

“Great,” is my go-to answer. “I get just enough of it … between calls from people who need my expertise for a while.”

I’ve always advocated that careful planning of one’s career, even through retirement, is a crucial step in life. Having survived my attempts to chart a course from a very early age, I offer my thoughts on successes and failures while adding the best advice all. Advice is worth what you pay for it..

Before entering junior high, scrutinizing Popular Mechanics magazine classified pages at the barber shop was my source for career possibilities. Rare opportunities for unique businesses. Things like making authentic Bowie knives to marketing assembly plans for constructing scale models of the U.S.S. Constitution. In a bottle.

One I liked a lot seemed like a lucrative field. Army surplus dealers. “Return the postage free card for details,” the ad beckoned. “High demand, big profits.”

Exploring these and other rare opportunities kept both me and the Mount Pleasant, Texas, postmaster busy. My requests for information in outgoing mail and loads of informational literature coming in.

My concern was about which one of these money makers would be the best choice. The postmaster’s concern was which one of them I might be harboring plans to enter.

“You’re not thinking about anything like mail-order pot­bellied stove kits are you,” he quizzed me one day as I handed him another stack of postcards.

My search was going well when one Saturday afternoon while pondering empty pockets in front of the old Martin Theater in downtown Mount Pleasant, Texas, I heard voices. Mystic musings offering new concepts on career choice. “You see, son,” Dad said as he put his arm around me. “Think about this. No work … no money.”

I think he sensed I was broke and had missed the sci-fi flick matinee “I Married a Man From Outer Space.”

From that day forward, my life became a testbed for various after-school careers. I.E. Paying jobs. Sweeping floors at Perry Brothers five-and-dime store after school. Working Saturdays in the men’s department at Beall’s. Pumping gas and washing driveways at the Fina Station at night.

Efforts that dropped postage-free postcards going out in exchange for spending money coming in. Plus, providing valuable experience. Experience that led to seeking college advice on careers that didn’t involve manual labor. ” Well, Leon, looking at your grades,” I remember MPHS counselor Mrs. Sanders telling me, “It’s tough to tell … um, exactly what your field of expertise might be.”

“I’ve been thinking,” I replied. “I was trying to decide between truck driving and funeral director. But I really enjoyed Mr. Murray’s mechanical drawing class, so i’m leaning now toward being an architect.”

So, with a high school diploma plus extracurricular credits in fast cars, loud music, and late-nights, I was off to college to study building design. It was the beginning of five years spent trying to circumvent the evil conspiracy among college professors to prevent me from passing math courses and working when not in classes. To stay in school. Auto body shops, wrecker driving, and oil roustabout to name a few.

Then one day to everyone’s surprise, when the registrar’s office wasn’t looking, I slipped out the back door of East Texas State University with a degree in psychology and art.

“Tell me,” my understanding father asked after graduation, “what is it you plan to do with this varied preparation for your future.”

“It’s really very simple, Dad,” I assured him with my best college graduate look. “Unless I change my mind before Monday, I think I’ll teach school.”

Not long after that, by pure luck, I was afforded the opportunity to get the best career advice ever from motivational speaker and author Zig Ziglar. All right, so we just happen to get on the same hotel elevator together. I was still the only one in the room with him. For 12 whole floors.

“If you can’t control the events that happen to you, you can control the way you choose to respond to them,” he offered with a smile and a handshake.

All that said, I’m hoping to finish my long-awaited book by the end of the year. And I will include in the forward how all of this careful planning was crucial in leading me to a successful career … in communication and journalism.

I still get Army surplus brochures, though. And I’ve got a couple of canteens and a folding field shovel.

If anyone’s searching for a career path.

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. 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.