Author: leonaldridge2015

My father stood at the base of the massive, towering stone buttresses supporting the majestic Cologne Cathedral. I watched him as he soberly examined the structure that has stood on the banks of the Rhine River in Germany since 1248.

Standing with him that fall day in 1984, I marveled at the incredible monument of religious history not realizing that in his mind, my father was reliving a night 40 years earlier. Then I saw the tears.

“You see that spot right there,” he said pointing into a huge crevice created by two of the many massive buttresses supporting the 767-year old structure.

“Forty years ago,” he continued, “half a dozen of us huddled in that space for most of the night. The rest of our outfit was scattered around the cathedral and down toward the river. We had secured the road for the infantry behind us when we encountered what was left of German defenders in the village. You could have read a newspaper from the light of the flashing gunfire. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out of that spot,” he said.

Pausing for a moment, he continued, “We huddled there and returned fire for several hours until the village was secured. Two of us walked out the next morning.”

My dad never talked much about his service in World War II, at least not about battlefield experiences. On this rare occasion, I listened as we stood there, tears still glistening on his cheeks, “I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out of there that night, and I never expected to be standing here again.”

Leon D. Aldridge graduated from Pittsburg High School in the spring of 1941 as Hitler was marching through Europe destroying smaller nations. He was a freshman student at Texas A&M in December of 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. He was not long into the spring semester of 1942 when the letter arrived, the one that read, “Greetings, having submitted yourself to a committee composed of your local neighbors and friends, you have been selected …..”

He reported to Camp Gruber, Oklahoma and was assigned to a combat engineers battalion that trained in Dixon, Tennessee where he became Private Leon Aldridge in the U.S. Army 276th Engineer Combat Battalion, known as “Rough and Ready.”

After training in Tennessee, he shipped out for Belgium in the Netherlands, but not before meeting a 1941 graduate of Winchester, Kentucky High School who was to become his wife of 63 years and my mother.

Before V.E. Day would arrive, Private Aldridge would rise to the rank of Master Sargent and the 276th Combat Engineers would return home wearing battle ribbons for participation in three campaigns: Ardennes, Rhineland and the Central Europe Campaign.

While he was reluctant to talk about his wartime experience before this day 30 years ago, we walked around the cathedral as his emotions detailed memories of a night 40 years earlier. When we reached the side facing the Rhine, he pointed south and said, “Remagen about an hour down the river, is where I was standing on the abutment when the bridge fell.”

Combat engineers typically preceded the infantry and armored in order to build roadways and bridges for their advancement. Hence his presence at the Ludendorf Bridge at Remagen, a pivotal point in the European campaign and the eventual defeat of the Axis powers.

The bridge was the last German hope for preventing the advancing Allies across the Rhine River. After allowing German forces to cross, Hitler’s troops attempted to destroy the structure with explosives. The result was substantial damage to the bridge, but not total destruction.

The 276th Combat Engineers worked under gunfire for the next five days to complete repairs while units attached to the 276th built floating structures downstream known as “Bailey Bridges.”

On March 9, 1945, the 276th returned the bridge to operational status and American troops began crossing as the combat engineers continued working to strengthen the damaged bridge. On March 17 as the battalion replaced wooden flooring, steel trusses began to creak and groan, rivets started “popping like gunfire,” according to my father, and the structure collapsed into the Rhine. “Some scrambled for safety,” he said, “but many were not so fortunate.

“I had been on the bridge earlier that morning,” he continued. “Part of the unit fell back for materials and supplies. We were back to the abutment, waiting for the unit ahead of us to advance across. Just as we started onto the bridge, it fell into the river. Five more minutes and I would have gone into the river with it and the others who were lost that day.”

My father died in 2007. He was proud of his service and I was proud of him. His story of duty and sacrifice as part of the nation’s military is but one tiny, individual example of why America has survived for almost 240 years as a free and proud nation. Fortunately, I got the opportunity to thank him. If he were here today, I would hug him and thank him again.

November 11 is Veteran’s Day, but every day should be Veteran’s Day. Thank a veteran today, and everyday for their service to our country.

Leon Aldridge, Jr.

Adapted from a column published November 10, 2104 in the Center Light and Champion and the Mount Pleasant Daily Tribune

If you know me, you knew my grandmother whether or not you had the opportunity to meet her in person.

That’s because there’s hardly a day goes by that I fail to quote her on some tidbit of wisdom, things I call “Grannyisms.” My father’s mother, who we all called “Granny,” had a tremendous influence on my life. Hattie Lois Aldridge not only contributed a great deal to my values and beliefs, but she did likewise for anyone she came in contact with. She appeared hard on the outside about “what the world was coming to,” but generous to a fault on the inside.

She never drew a paycheck in her life that I know of, but managed the meager earnings of my grandfather to run a household and raise a child. Funny thing is, she always had more money than those who thought they were rich.

She only worried about two things. “Sit down, I’ll put on some coffee and fix something to eat,” was always her first concern. She wanted to be sure you weren’t going to leave her house hungry.

The other thing she made sure of was that you left her house with money in your pocket. “Here,” she would tell me when I was a youngster, extending her hand with a dollar bill in it. Then she would look around and touching her finger to her lips, she would say, “Shhh, don’t tell anybody.”

As I grew older, she continued to ask, “You need any money? I don’t want you to run out of money.”

Maybe that came from living through the depression, or maybe she was simply generous to a fault. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” was the advice offered by Polonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I doubt Granny knew who Polonius was, or what Shakespeare had to do with anything important to her. However, she subscribed to the same principle. I’m betting that not one financial institution ever earned the first cent’s worth of interest from her. More often than not, if someone really needed something, she simply gave it to them. However, these little donations were not free. With them came a lecture on the value of a hard-earned dollar.

“Money doesn’t grow on trees,” she would say as she offered money to anyone in genuine need. “You need to save some for a rainy day.”

She was a giver, but when she knew genuine need wasn’t at stake, she leaned toward the lending side. The first time I learned applicable lessons from her on financing was when she loaned me the money to buy my first car, a ’51 Chevrolet purchased for the princely sum of $250.

After digging through her many purses she called “pocketbooks” stuffed here and there, she pulled a roll of money out of one and counted out $250. The next thing that came out of the black purse was a little black book. She turned the pages until she found a blank one and carefully wrote the date and the amount of money.

“You can pay me twenty-five dollars a month,” she said. “Can you do that?”

“Sure,” I said. “’I can do that.” And make payments I did as Granny meticulously recorded every single payment and the date in the little book until the balance was down to zero. She charged no interest, but made a point of noting how much the interest would have cost me had I borrowed the purchase price of the old car from the bank. “Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.” That scene and similar admonitions were repeated a few more times when I was younger, each time with a lecture about the value of hard work and “taking care of your money.”

Every time, she searched pocketbooks, dresser drawers and coat pockets to find a roll of bills—places money should not have been stashed.

“Granny,” I asked once, “Why don’t you put some of that in the bank?”

“Don’t need ‘em,” she quipped “Besides,” she said one afternoon while searching a dresser drawer, “After I’m gone, I’m going to sit up there, look down and laugh because y’all won’t throw away one scrap of paper until you’ve looked through it.”

Truth is, it did take several days following her funeral to search everything. Hat boxes, shoe boxes, greeting card boxes, envelopes, purses, pocketbooks, photo albums, letters, books. Nothing escaped the search, but you know what? Not one red cent was found. Not a single penny.

We all chuckled about the thought of her laughing at us all right, because she knew she wasn’t leaving anything behind. There was no money in the house when she died in October of 1993. All she left behind were the lessons she tried to teach us about how to manage money.

I miss my Granny, but am never without an opportunity to recall one of her “Grannyisms.” Don’t know that she ever said this for sure, but I credit her with it because she lived it every day. “If you really want to feel rich, just count all the things you have that money can’t buy.”

—Leon Aldridge

Adapted from a column published in the Naples Monitor September 8, 1999

There are advantages to growing older. No doubt, one of them will come to mind soon; however, memory fails me at the moment. 

My friend in Center, Texas, Tem Morrison called last week to ask if I would take a look at some old car parts. That’s tantamount to asking my dog if he wants to take a look at a pork chop. Tem asked me Thursday and I told him I’d see him early Friday. Problem is, my “light didn’t come on” until late Friday morning.

Blazing a straight line across the downtown square to his office, I apologized profusely while painfully admitting that lapses in memory were occurring at an alarmingly increased rate with me in recent years.

I related to Tem the story of businessman, Cortez Boatner. Mr. Boatner owned a furniture store in my hometown of Mount Pleasant, Texas, and was a well-known and successful businessman. He always wore a dress shirt and a tie when he came in Perry Brothers to visit with my father. For that matter, my father and most of the other businessmen in town also wore dress shirts and ties then. Mr. Boatner always had a small spiral notebook and pen in his shirt pocket. At some point during most conversations, out came the notebook and Mr. Boatner started making notes.

“As a youngster,” I told Tem, “I used to think that was funny. But you know, as I’ve gotten older, I’m finding it hard to remember now exactly what I thought was so funny about it.”

As youngsters, my sisters and I delighted in teasing our mother about her memory, or the lack thereof. Actually, it probably wasn’t that bad. She probably wasn’t any worse at forgetting things, its just that she had this uncanny, comical way of dong it.

Banana pudding was my dad’s favorite dessert and mom made it often. That was during an ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ time when the entire family sat down together for the evening meal. About three bites into dessert one evening, dad stared into the pudding bowl, stirred it with his spoon as if searching for something, then asked, “I don’t think there’s any bananas in mine.”

Right on cue, the rest of us did the same search to discover that there really were no bananas in any of our bowls either, just pudding and vanilla wafers.

“Oh no,” mom exclaimed on the verge of tears. “I must have forgotten to put the bananas in it.” Sure enough, the unpeeled bananas were still on the kitchen counter where she had prepared the evening meal. We consoled her as we ate every morsel in an effort to sooth her remorse.

Then there was the when her sewing scissors mysteriously disappeared. “They were right here,” she said as the frustration in her voice registered higher with each word. “I just had them in my hand.”

“Had what, mom?”

“My sewing scissors.”

In the 50s and 60s , back before it was dangerous for kids to play with scissors, mom’s sewing scissors were the best to fashion a pirate’s hat or a princess’s tiara from scrap paper. However, the “scissors rule” was that we were never, ever, ever to use mom’s good sewing scissors for one of our fun projects, at least don’t get caught doing it.

“Did one of you get my good scissors,” she quizzed us.

“No,” we chimed in unison. “Besides, mom. You said you just had them.” As mom continued searching for her scissors, I raided the refrigerator searching for leftover banana pudding, preferably some with bananas. Moving the bowls around, certain there was pudding in there somewhere, I saw them. There they were. On the shelf right beside the ironing bag. Mom’s good sewing scissors.

These days, a cloths iron is almost an antique. But there was a time when clothes waiting to be ironed were sprinkled with water and stored in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. Everything was ironed. My mother ironed school clothes, she ironed church clothes, she ironed play clothes, she ironed my father’s work clothes, she ironed sheets and pillowcases.

“Mom,” I called out trying to contain my laughter. “Were you ironing before you were sewing?” We giggled as mom retrieved them from the refrigerator, and she would graciously smile each time over the years that we recounted the story, time and again.

I think about my mother on days I make lists like Mr. Boatner used to, then spend my time at the store trying to remember what was on the list I left at home. So, as I think about it now, I’m wondering again. What was it that was so funny about that?

—Leon Aldridge

Adapted from a column originally published in the Center Light and Champion and the Mount Pleasant Daily Tribune July 2014

“Early morning sunlight fell from the upper windows of the cavernous building in downtown Center and bounced off her graceful, timeless curves. Her aging body showed signs of wear, but for an old girl her age, she was still a beauty in the dim light as well as in my heart.”

So began a column I wrote 22 years ago this month while serving as editor and publisher of the Boerne Star in the Texas Hill Country. The weekly newspaper piece was about “Liz,” a member of the Aldridge family for 59 years come this November.

The story of Liz in the 1993 story continued: “The old green ’57 Ford affectionately dubbed “Liz” by my father’s mother sat silently. The car never objected to being neglected while others in the collection were driven and pampered. One might have surmised she actually enjoyed the peace and quiet of retirement, and furthermore relished in her warehouse storage space alongside a varying variety of vintage cousins.

“Over a dozen or so years, scores of wrecking yard refugees came and went in a seeming quest to resurrect and relive automotive history from the 5Os and 6Os. At first, I paraded tail-finned, rag-topped, white-walled and chrome-plated memories past her as she sat quietly and watched.

“But as the dual-carburetor, dual-exhaust, gas guzzlers of a previous generation passed in and out of the building, one remained. On this particular morning, three survivors were being surveyed in preparation for yet another move to a new home in Pipe Creek, Texas. One of them was granny’s Liz.

“My fingers disturbed the thin coating of dust on her still smooth skin sending particles swirling through the air as they twinkled in beams of morning sunlight.

“I opened the driver’s door and once again smiled at the aroma greeting my nostrils. The interiors of old cars always present a unique smell, regardless of their age, make or background—a unique olfactory experience that I prefer over that of a showroom new car any day.

“The seat springs groaned lightly beneath my weight. ‘Not bad for an all-original car,’ I thought as I scanned the metal and chrome dash, then gazed across the expanse of the big green hood. I touched the ignition switch, but on this particular morning, I let Liz rest choosing the peace of deafening silence in the warehouse over that of her V-8 motor.

“Liz was born at the Garland, Texas Ford assembly plant in the fall of 1956 and was welcomed into into the Aldridge family in November at Travis Battles Ford dealership in Pittsburg, Texas. For a quarter of a century, she lived in a white frame garage at the corner of Cypress and Madison Streets in Pittsburg and ran errands for my father’s parents—to town, to work, to the doctor. On many of those trips, I was a youngster in the back seat watching my grandmother drive and listening to my grandfather caution her at every intersection, ‘Watch out sister,’ he might say, ‘There’s a stop sign ahead.’

“After age and illness confined him to a bed, Liz hibernated, untouched in the garage. Several Christmas seasons passed while my grandmother stayed home to care for the man she loved. When he died just days before Christmas of 1967, dad and I went to the garage to check on Liz. Although suffering from neglect, she had traveled only 17,000 miles in ten years, and a new battery and some fresh gas brought her back to life.

“Granny and Liz were quickly reunited, and the two were back on the street going places of which neither had likely dreamed in a while. The old Ford responded well to granny’s loving touches, and the “green blur” with the little old lady peeping over the steering wheel was once again a common sight buzzing around Pittsburg.

“It was the summer of l98I that granny gave in to the temptation of power steering, automatic transmissions and air conditioning. “You still want Liz,” she asked one day.

“You know I do,” I replied, and Liz was headed for a new home in Center.

“Summer’s late evening breeze wafted the smell of freshly mowed grass through the open windows as I guided Liz south that Saturday in May. Driving the old car kindled long forgotten memory after memory. Driving lessons from my grandfather on shifting a “three-on-the-tree;” cruising the Kilgore College campus when Liz served subbing for one of my ailing hot rods; and dating. “Vivian Thompson, where are you today,” I mused that summer afternoon.

“Opening my eyes and looking at the empty seat beside me on this day was an instant return trip to reality. The memories stirred by the old car were very real, but old girl friends were still only a memory. Giving a gentle push to Liz’s door brought the usual solid and rewarding ‘click’ as the door closed and latched with ease.

“I walked away a few steps and stopped to look back. Liz sat majestically in the corner bidding me good-bye with a gleam in her chrome. She knew it would be a while before I came calling again. But she also knew I would be back another day to share in the secrets the old car and I knew on each other.”

The scenario above has been replayed numerous times since that column appeared in print, but Liz is still in the family. She still sits quietly in the garage wearing only 46,000 miles and all but a few of the parts she left the factory with 59 years ago. She still mostly sits at home while her ’55 Ford Crown Victoria and ’57 Ford Thunderbird current cousins enjoy the parties on cruise nights and at car shows.

But, she knows that when the more glamorous and valuable garage mates have moved on, as others before them have, she’s the family member with the priceless memories. And she also knows that she will be the last one to leave the ball when the lights are dimmed for the last time.

— Leon Aldridge

Adapted from a column originally published in the Boerne (Texas) Star September 1993

There’s something alluring about railroad tracks. Steel rails supported by wooden cross ties have beckoned to our curiosities and provoked the muse within us since the Golden Spike tying both sides of the continent together with rail service was driven.

Photographers use them for portrait backgrounds; a generation of movie makers used them employing villains tying maidens in distress to the tracks, only to be foiled by the rescuing hero; and who among us has never stopped to gaze at the vanishing point on the horizon where the two rails converge, fantasizing about where the steel ribbons at our feet might lead us?

For me, it’s the sense of smell that does it. The strong, peculiar creosote odor on cross ties sends me back 60 years in time to Pittsburg, Texas where my dad’s parents lived and conjures up memories of my grandfather.

S.V. Aldridge worked for the railroad, the Cotton Belt as it was known then. He was born in 1888, and began a lifelong career with his first full-time job working for the railroad at the age of 13.

He retired in 1954, about the time I entered first grade in Crockett, and memories of my early summers spent at my grandparent’s house are indelibly linked to the distinct smell of creosote.

Creosote is the black tar-looking stuff used to preserve cross ties. The residue permanently stains anything with which it comes in contact. In the hot summer time, it’s a black, messy residue that oozes from the cross ties. In any form, it has a unique, pungent odor not quickly forgotten, especially for the grandson of a “railroad man.”

Even in retirement, my grandfather was still a railroad man. He delighted in taking me to the Pittsburg depot to watch the telegraph operator. The depot itself smelled of creosote, and the “rat-a-tat” rhythm of Morse code hammered out on a used Prince Albert tobacco can provided background music for the identifying aroma.

A special treat was the rare occasion on which he would mount the rails with the motorcar he rode for years as a section foreman and we would indulge in a short, open-air ride on the tracks. I used to think it was something he did to entertain me, but I still remember the smile on his face as well.

My grandparents lived across the street from the Cotton Belt track just a few blocks from the depot. We’ll never know, but I suspected in later years that buying a house right across from the street from the tracks might not have been a coincidence. For as long as he lived and was able to sit on the front porch in his rocking chair, my grandfather checked every passing train against his pocket watch and commented as to the rumbling freight train’s schedule. “Looks like the 5:15 is right on time,” I can still hear him comment.

They moved into the house at 323 Cypress Street in Pittsburg on Halloween night in 1930. My father was seven years old. My grandmother was living in the same house when she died in October of 1993, almost 63 years later to the day, and 26 years after my grandfather’s death in 1967. Even then, it still looked pretty much as I remembered it as a child from the early 1950s.

I thought about my grandfather when the railroad phased out cabooses in the 1980s in favor of a single small red ”tail light” on the last car, wondering what he would have thought about that. Even today, I still think a train without a caboose looks strange. Sort of like a sentence without a period. A book without a conclusion. A sermon without a closing hymn.

And, smelling creosote without my granddad around still leaves me with the feeling something’s missing. Maybe it’s the same feeling we get looking at railroad tracks and thinking about places we’ve been, or places we would like to go—the mystery of touching a link to destinations unknown. Or, maybe it’s just remembering my grandfather looking at the pocket watch in his hand as the 5:15 rumbled through Pittsburg.

—Leon Aldridge

Originally published in the Naples (Texas) Monitor, February 1999 and reprinted in the Mount Pleasant (Texas) Daily Tribune and The Center (Texas) Light and Champion, September 2014.

Never have thought that I’d retire. For as long as I’ve been in the work force, staying on the job for as long as my health and my ability to contribute allowed, and for as long as I was having fun, was the only option I’ve ever considered.

My working career started long before college, however. That is if you count mowing yards for neighbors on the south side of Mount Pleasant, Texas, at age 12. If not, my first real job at age 13 working for 25¢ an hour at Ben Franklin’s five and dime store on the north side of the Mount Pleasant downtown square where Corbin Merritt was the manager should qualify.

Out of all those years, I count myself fortunate that the majority of my jobs have found me. I’ve actually gone looking for employment only a handful of times. However, a few of the times I’ve perused the want ads and knocked on doors seeking gainful employment have been, well, interesting.

Interesting might be the best way to describe one of my more creative efforts to land a job in the West Texas oasis of Abilene almost 40 years ago. Landing in town the night before, I wasted no time in looking for a paycheck the very next day. With a few years of newspaper experience on my crude resume and a folder of bylined clips under my arm, I went downtown to the Abilene Reporter News. An interview scored me an offer to fill the night city editor’s slot, but after some thought, I declined deciding I needed a break from newsprint and ink.

My next stop was at the accounting office for a tire store group to interview for business manager at one of their Abilene locations. This is probably a good time to mention something that I failed to mention during in the interview that day—that I had no background or education in business management or bookkeeping. I thought credit was something the corner grocery store extended and debit was … actually, I had no clue what debit meant. The simple act of balancing my checkbook was challenging. But needing a job, I decided not to let that deter me from applying. My “in” for this interview was a mutual friend with the company’s accountant who was conducting the interview.

After a couple of hours in the city library speed reading the first few chapters of a “basic bid-ness book,” I figured I was ready for the interview. Through a series of most fortunate events and a rousing conversation about the mutual friend, I landed the job. The good news was I had been in Abilene less than 48 hours and I had a job. The bad news was, to say that I was ill prepared to do the job would have been an understatement of the greatest magnitude.

Working in my favor was the afore mentioned library book and it was still available to check out. Also working for me, Abilene has three fine institutions of higher learning—and night classes in accounting were enrolling that week.

I successfully met the challenges of my new job about a year and a half before moving back to East Texas and back to the newspaper business with new experience and additional college classes on my resume.

Through a set of unfortunate events this time around, this summer has found me again looking for a job, while at the same time “testing the waters,” as I call it, for retirement.

It’s been a great summer, but I’ve arrived at Labor Day with two conclusions. First, I’ve been right all along. It’s not time for me to retire just yet. So don’t be surprised if I show up in a new position in town soon. Second, and perhaps best, is that I’ve gained enough experience and education over the years that bluffing my way into a job is no longer necessary.

— Leon Aldridge

“Go on to Mount Pleasant,” advised the voice on the aircraft’s com radio, “They’ve got a long, wide runway up there.”

The voice was Bill Neve, Center Airport manager some thirty years ago. The radio was in the Piper Cherokee 180 I was piloting out of the Center, Texas Airport on a sunny Saturday afternoon. The destination was just north of Center at Mount Pleasant for a visit at my parent’s house.

The short 45-minute hop with a panoramic perspective of East Texas made numerous times before was routine, but this one would turn out to be more of an adventure before we got the bugs worked out.

Memories of that adventure grew wings again last weekend as Gary Borders and I pored through files at the Mount Pleasant Daily Tribune office in preparation for the newspaper’s move downtown.

A photo of the old Mount Pleasant airport in a dusty box recalled fond memories of time spent there. The big tin hanger with the Mobil flying red horse over the doors and the windsock at the roof’s peak caught my eye. Faded letters above the doors noted for aviators, the airport’s name and elevation.

I remembered Bill Phinney was the airport manager when pilot friends taking me up for fun created a keen interest in flying. People like David Brogoitti, Ronny Narramore, Jim McGuire, Gale Braddock and James Spann kindled an interest that ultimately lead me to enrolling in flight school.

Doyle Amerson got me through ground school and first solo stages before his untimely death. Soon afterwards, Grady Firmin returned from military duty as a flight instructor guiding me to the goal … a private pilot’s license.

Preflight for the adventure 30 years ago was routine. Family on board and knowing my mother would be waiting for us, I taxied the aircraft onto the main runway and applied full power for the takeoff roll.

About midpoint of the runway, the airplane began to feel light and ready to fly. A check of the airspeed indicator to verify liftoff speed didn’t look right. The ground fell away beneath us, but the airspeed indicator was not moving. Climb out felt normal. We were airborne, but critical instruments were not functioning.

“Bill,” I said frantically into the mic. “We’re airborne, but the airspeed indicator isn’t working.”

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

Taking a few seconds to process, I responded, “How do I set up an approach without an airspeed indicator?”

After a similar silence on Bill’s end, he said, “Go on to Mount Pleasant they’ve got a long, wide runway up there.”

The typically short trip aloft seemed like an eternity without benefit of useful, if not vital information. The pitot-static system is a pressure system used in aviation instruments to determine an aircraft’s airspeed, rate of climb, altitude, and altitude trend. Lack of this data lends new meaning to flying by the seat of your pants.

Pilot training emphasizes a need for being sensitive to the feel and sound of your aircraft. I’m pretty sure I could have described every sensation shared between the two of us that day in a relationship nearing intimacy.

With my “oneness with the airplane” and little else at my disposal, I guided the craft toward the runway threshold as the airplane slowly transitioned from a body in fight to a mass of metal with wheels on the ground. The sweet sound of the tires gently touching the asphalt conjured visions of a bumper sticker popular at the time … “God is my co-pilot.”

Taxiing the plane to a stop in front of the very hanger pictured in the photo in my hand last weekend, I wiped sweat from my brow, dried my hands and looked up to see mom waiting for us, smiling and waving.

No maintenance was available on Saturday. So, assuming that if we did it once, we could do it again, the visit was cut short in order to ensure completing an encore performance before dark, and hopefully as successful, at the Center airport.

An old saying among pilots allows as how there are three useless things to an aviator: runway behind you, altitude above you and fuel at the pump. With this in mind and the sun setting behind me, I took the airplane to an altitude of comfortable height and aligned it with the Center runway heading miles prior to seeing the airport. The result was a long, gradual straight-in approach to home.

Once again, wheels gently kissed the runway without even waking the kids as they slept in the back seat.

It’s been a number of years now since I’ve piloted an airplane. I just wonder if dirt daubers are still a threat to working the bugs out of flying?

— Leon Aldridge

Originally published in the Center (Texas) Light and Champion and the Mount Pleasant (Texas) Daily Tribune August 2014

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” —Captain Kirk

We had no idea what lay in store before embarking on our first mission chosen for the newly acquired ship.

“Strange new worlds?” Well, I wasn’t sure about the others, but I had been there before.

“New civilizations?” Nope, didn’t expect to be passing through any uncharted regions on this voyage.

“To boldly go where no man has gone before?” Not likely. We were all pretty sure Indianapolis had been explored and settled long ago.

The mission: blaze a trail to Indianapolis, Indiana for the 71st running of the Memorial Day classic, Indy 500 auto race May 24, 1987. Then return successfully to Center, Texas, without the loss a single soul, all while traveling in an early 70s vintage Winnebago that by reasonable rationale should have been scrapped at least 100,000 miles ago.

“Logic is the beginning of wisdom; not the end.” — Spock

While testing retirement waters the last few months, a recently retired friend was working hard to convince me how much fun I would have doing fun retirement things—like camping. I explained to her that I didn’t think I was cut out for retirement. “I don’t own an RV and I have a miserable record of failure at gardening attempts.”

She none-the-less assured me that camping in a motor home was “lots of fun,” but admitted without hesitation, “I’ve never driven ours.”

The thought of my one-and-only time driving an RV made me smile. We counted it a success when we made it back alive.

“I have been, and ever shall be, your friend. Live long, and prosper.” — Spock

Oscar Elliott and I met at South Ward Elementary School in Mount Pleasant, Texas, in 1959. He was in the sixth grade and I was in the fifth. In the 56 years since, Oscar and I have survived numerous adventures, living to tell about the ones that we dare.

Gary Hart and I became friends when he moved to Center, Texas, in the mid 1980s to open the community’s first McDonald’s restaurant. It was only a few years prior that Wal-Mart had opened its doors in Center. New galaxies were already being discovered in the East Texas community.

The three of us set out in Gary’s old Winnebago, newly acquired in the course of his classic car deals, something for which he was well known. Gary accumulated projects—neat old vehicles that needed anything from as little as lots of major work all the way up to complete restoration.

However, the Winnebago was different. It resembled the rest of the rusty resemblances of rolling stock in his repository with one exception. It ran. Under its own power. Or at least he assured Oscar and me that it did.

“Don’t let all the corrosion, dents and duct tape fool you,” Gary smiled.

“Ahh, Mr. Scott, I understand you’re having difficulty with the warp drive. How much time do you require for repair?” — Spock

The wrecking yard refugee that was to be our trusty transportation to Indy sat quietly rusting in the parking lot next to Gary’s fast food franchise at 9 a.m. on the designated departure date. “Gary sometimes runs a little late,” I warned Oscar.

After finishing lunch about noon, we rumbled out of Center rolling north with plans to drive without stopping. The schedule was four-hour shifts at herding the old heavyweight with a refrigerator full of food and a heart full of hopes that the noisy little fridge functioned.

“Checked everything out, we presume,” I asked Gary about an hour into the voyage.

“Absolutely,’ Gary again assured us. “She’s in tip-top shape.” That was about ten minutes before the alternator belt gave up the ghost with a nasty noise. Lucky for us, it expired within sight of a garage.

One repair down and somewhere in northern Missouri at about 2:00 a.m. on a stretch of highway that had expansion joints the size of speed bumps, Oscar was struggling with his sleep shift in the rear bedroom, Gary was piloting and I was riding shotgun. Sleeping was no easy endeavor with the smell of musty drapes flapping in the window and rotting plywood the only thing preventing us from plummeting to the pavement. Any sleep Oscar may have managed ended abruptly when a tire on the inside rear dual exploded, sending the elderly RV to rocking and its passengers to praying.

“So much for the Enterprise.” — Beverly Crusher

“We barely knew her.” — Picard

Once again, lady luck lingered with us when we determined the glow ahead to be an all-night truck stop. However, it was at that very moment, dead tired, several hours behind schedule and sitting on the side of a dark highway, that we lulled to laugh and lauded the worn out Winnebago with the logo, “Star Ship Enterprise.”

“Ru’afo, we’re getting too old for this.” — Admiral Dougherty

The trip going to Indy evidently eradicated the eccentricities from of the ailing Winnie. The races were great, the trip home uneventful and the experience endearing. However, I still harbor no hallucinations of having an RV as part of my retirement plan—should this test turn out to be a real retirement.

“I think that is the weirdest and most surreal adventure we ever went on. I can barely remember anything that happened.” — Oscar Elliott

— Leon Aldridge

Eddie Burke had a story, and learning Eddie’s story taught me that it’s true—everyone really does have a story. After meeting Eddie, I began to challenge students at Stephen F. Austin State University, where I taught writing, to find the story in every person they met with the assurance that it would not only make them a better writer, but also a better person.

It did me.

Eddie’s obituary simply reported, “Eddie Gene Burke, 69, died Sunday in a local hospital. An Army veteran of the Korean War, he was born Nov. 1, 1927 in Beaumont, Texas and was a retired musician in the entertainment industry and a 10-year resident of Las Vegas.” The obit also listed a handful of survivors and noted, “Graveside services will be at 8 a.m. Friday in Palm Valley View Memorial Park.”

There were far too many details about Eddie the brief obit failed to reveal. It said nothing about how he could write. Eddie could write a poem, write a story, or write a song. He could sing a song, play a piano, cook for a restaurant, or preach a sermon on Sunday morning. I knew those things about Eddie because I saw him do all of that—in the same week.

Obits also often fail to convey the desperation or the hope that a person can display when life causes it or demands it. At well past 50 years of age and without a job, but with a terminally ill wife and a modicum of experience, Eddie sat across the desk from me applying for an entry-level sports writer’s job at the Center newspaper.

That’s how we met.

“What is your writing experience,” I asked the quiet, humble man looking back at me through dark rimmed glasses. He was a short and frail person whose narrow face was both etched by hard times and anxious with an immediate need. He was balding, wore a tattered coat in the dead of winter and sat on the chair’s edge, wringing his hands in his lap.

With a voice barely above a whisper, Eddie told me his last job was cooking at a small restaurant on the lake, but was looking for something with a little more income in his quest to care for his wife. For experience, he said that he had worked at the Beaumont Enterprise, but confessed that was more than 20 years ago. What he didn’t confess to until after he had drawn a couple of paychecks was that it was a part-time stringer’s job. But, that didn’t matter, we were desperate for a sports writer and Eddie was desperate for a job.

Eddie hit the ground writing. He wrote pages, and pages, and more pages. And that was just about last night’s basketball game. Eddie wrote with a vengeance and with great detail about the game. He wrote about the coaches. He wrote about the players, about the cheerleaders, about the spectators and about the concession stand.

Between sports assignments, he wrote about his coffee cup, about his desk and about the traffic light on the corner. His style was, let’s just say a tad shy of journalistic standards, but for what he lacked in writing skills, Eddie more than made up for in volume.

Eddie wanted to succeed.

Obits also often fail to reveal successes achieved and lost. One night as we worked toward deadline while listening to 50s music on the radio, Eddie nonchalantly offered, “I used to play piano for the Big Bopper.”

“Really,” I countered instantly with a tone of doubt. Eddie was also a talker. His stories were interesting, but you had to wonder. “If this guy has done half of what he’s talked about…”

“I played piano on Chantilly Lace,” Eddie continued, never looking away from his work. “I cut a record of my own, too. ‘Rock Mop’ on the old ‘D’ label down in Houston … where the Big Bopper started out.”

Later at home, I wasted little time digging through music reference books, and it didn’t take long to oust the truth. There it was, “Rock Mop.” Recorded on the “D” label June 8, 1959. Flip side, “Too Many Tears.” Both titles written and recorded by Eddie Burke.

Shortly after that revelation, radio storyteller “Tumbleweed” Smith stopped in the newspaper office checking with local columnist and historian Mattie Dellinger for new program material.

“I got one for you,” I quickly offered Smith.

We asked Eddie if he would play a little piano for us at the bank’s community room across the street. He apprehensively obliged us, but fear and trepidation gripped his demeanor as sweat appeared on his brow.

He gingerly touched the keys with trembling fingers for several minutes before the first note rang true. “It’s been a while,” Eddie murmured weakly as he looked at us and smiled, almost apologetically.

Soon however, remnants of “Pinetop’s Boogie” from the 1920s were easily recognizable, followed by strains of random tunes that became more polished with each bar he played. While Smith’s tape recorder rolled, Eddie perfectly executed the mournful country standard “You Win Again.” He played honky-tonk, he played blues, he played rock and roll, and the more he played, the better he got. Eddie “closed the show” with Jerry Lee Lewis’s rocker, “Great Balls of Fire” putting on an exhibition that would have made “The Killer” himself smile. He stood on the piano stool, playing and singing, before kicking it behind behind him while swiping his fingers the length of the keyboard for a rousing finale.

Eddie Burke was back.

He had a new found happiness that reflected in his writing skills and his attitude for weeks. Sadly, however, Eddie’s wife died in late spring. After that, the flame’s brightness kindled from rediscovering his musical talent also faded, and it wasn’t long before Eddie disappeared. He left as mysteriously as he had arrived, leaving his key under the door early one morning with a note apologizing for leaving.

We wondered what happened to Eddie. Someone said they thought it was him they had seen hitchhiking north on 59 toward Carthage. Then one night almost a year later, my phone rang. “Guess who this is,” a familiar voice loudly and cheerfully asked. “I’m in Vegas and I’m playing piano at the Horseshoe.”

In the years that followed, Eddie sent me playbills, cards, photos and entertainment clippings from Las Vegas documenting his return to the entertainment industry. One packet included an autographed picture of a smiling Eddie Burke standing beside Fats Domino at the piano, and a clipping that noted he was opening for the 50s rock and roll singer in the desert city of lights.

Eventually, Eddie’s health began to fail, but he was back on top at the end, a place he hadn’t been since long before that cold winter day in East Texas more than ten years earlier.

Obits seldom address friendship. Perhaps we don’t learn the value of friends until we’ve been up and down, a trip that Eddie made like a yo-yo. He befriended a lady the last few years of his life in Las Vegas, and they married before his death. She called to tell me Eddie had died, and that she was sending the newspaper obituary clipping with a note.

“He loved you Leon,” she wrote. “Some of his happiest times were when he worked for you at the newspaper, the friendship you two shared and allowing him to learn that he could still play the piano.”

Since then, I’ve read many obits and thought, “Wonder what else about that person’s life, like Eddie’s, would be an inspiration for others—if we only knew his or her story.”

Because everyone really does have a story.

— Leon Aldridge

Originally published in the Boerne (Texas) Star – November 1996  •  The Center (Texas) Light and Champion – July 2014  •  The Mount Pleasant (Texas) Daily Tribune – July 2014

So, here I am lounging on a Florida sugar sand beach, watching blue-green waves and listening to the ocean’s roar while Gulf breezes cause me to forget that it’s 100-plus degrees back home in East Texas.

No stranger to the region, like a moth drawn to a flame, I’ve been lured by the Sunshine State’s sandy shores to revisit here many times over the years.

The scenario is a vast improvement over one of just a few days ago. I was lounging in an East Texas hospital bed watching the sterile clock on the wall count off minutes and hours, listening to the rhythmic clicking of a medical device plumbed into my arm as it dispensed fluids allowing me to forget about pain—and almost everything else.

We’ll reserve descriptive details of the experience for the setting where such conversations belong—at family reunions where comparing one’s latest medical problems and procedures are prime points of comparison. Suffice to say, however, while the medical malaise that landed me in an infirmary scant days before the Florida trip’s departure date was scary at the moment, it ended well.

Pondering recent medical matters during early morning walks on Florida beaches this week has prompted me to count blessings. First, that my years numbered 67 fading in the rear view mirror before seeing the inside of an ambulance or spending the night in a hospital room, at least one with my name on the door.

For better or worse, those two were crossed off my “never have” list last week.

Another is that the fortunately few times I’ve required acute attention to reinstate a healthy status quo have been neither serious in nature, nor in attitude. Likely through some derivation in my DNA, facing medical urgency invokes humor more often than fear.

More than humor or fear, excitement is usually the mood during the summer of one’s college graduation. That was perhaps the summer I first recall working my way through a trip to an emergency room, laughing all the way.

With degree in hand, full-time job secure and my first home purchase completed, I moved into 107 Dogwood Lane in Mount Pleasant. No newcomer to the home I purchased from Doris Neeley, no introduction was needed either for next-door residents, Mr. and Mrs. Nat Hoggat.

Décor for a single-guy, recent college grad’s domicile was by no stretch demanding. A sofa borrowed from parents on one wall and cinder block and board shelving supporting a tiny television and lamp on the other completed the living room. While it was a far cry from the exquisitely furnished ambiance the house had become accustomed to when Mrs. Neeley and her son, and my friend, David lived there, it was my first home purchase—my castle.

I was barely done with unpacking (paper plates, three pairs of blue jeans and my velvet Elvis painting) before the Hoggats called on a Saturday evening wanting to come over and welcome me to the neighborhood.

Minutes before the retired couple’s arrival, I engaged a moth (also known as a candle fly in the south) in hand-to-hand warfare over rights to the living room lamp. The insect fluttered from under the shade, I swatted, and he darted—right into my ear.

The more I tried to remove him, the more entrenched he became. In desperation, I stuck my head under the kitchen faucet hoping to flush him out. The sound of the tiny creature treading water in the proximity of my eardrum was excruciating. At first it resembled a rumble, then acquired an odd resemblance to a doorbell.

My neighbors! They were at my door.

“Come in,” I said opening the door and standing aside, observing the startled looks on their faces. Could it have been the wet head and the towel in my hand? “Are we early,” asked Mr. Hoggat.

We made small talk as they sat on the sofa facing me where I was perched on the edge of a chair borrowed from the kitchen. “I really like the day lilies you have planted along your fence,” I said, smiling at Mrs. Hoggat. “ I enjoy them every day.”

“Good,” she replied. “Perhaps you could plant some flowers in your yard for me to admire.”

I opened my mouth to offer light hearted remarks about “brown thumb” gardening skills, but instantly closed my eyes and winced in pain as the winged insect in my ear sprang back to life at that very moment producing sounds rivaling the intensity of a high school marching band taking the field. Grimacing, I jerked my head to the left and back to the right in hopes that the blasted bug would take exit of my cranial cavity.

It stopped moving and I stopped flopping my head about. Thankful for the respite, I opened my eyes to the sight of an elderly couple staring at me with wide-eyed wonderment. Disbelief. Horror.

“Is everything OK,” Mr. Hoggat asked.

“Actually, no.” I admitted. “I have a bug in my head.”

“Oh my,” they said in unison as they rose and quickly headed for the door without looking back. “You should get that seen about right away.”

The good news was that it took ER personnel less than five minutes to flush the errant insect, ending the candle fly’s deafening diatribe in my ear. The bad news was that for the five years I lived on Dogwood Lane, my neighbors never came back to visit. In fact, I was pretty sure that they retreated into their house every time I stepped outside.

The best news however, is that while I’m still drawn to the warm Florida sand, I have yet to encounter another moth drawn to my ear.