Author: leonaldridge2015

Wherever you are, Merry Christmas

“Just remember, the true spirit of Christmas lies in your heart.”
— Santa Claus, “The Polar Express” 2004 movie

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A five-year-old was feeling Christmas magic at his grandparent’s house in Northeast Texas some years ago.

Home for his family back then was somewhere in West Texas. Maybe it was Ballinger, or Muleshoe. Might have been Pampa. One of those places where he made childhood memories before his father decided the family would stop moving after settling in Mount Pleasant.

Visions of St. Nick swirled in his mind as he snuggled close to his grandmother while she read a bedtime story that early 1950s Christmas Eve. “You better go to sleep before ‘ol Santy comes,” she said. “If he sees you’re awake, he’ll just keep on going.”

Suddenly, he heard something. Was that the “ding-ding” of a bicycle bell coming from the vicinity of the living room? “Oh no,” he thought, “Santa can’t see me awake.”

“He’s here,” Granny said. In a flash, she turned off the bedside lamp. The child clinched his eyes tightly shut hoping that if Santa did peep into the bedroom, he would surely appear to be fast asleep.

A few years later in Mount Pleasant, the youngster had learned the secret of how Santa managed to know where to deliver Christmas gifts. And always to the right house. But as the oldest sibling, his duty was to help preserve the legend of Santa for his younger sisters.

Christmas 1945 “V-Mail” telegram my father sent to my mother in Pittsburg, Texas while he was spending Christmas in Europe with the U.S. Army 276th Combat Engineers.

The night sky was fading to gray with the Christmas dawn, No one was stirring when he was awakened by a small voice at his bedroom door. “You think Santa has come yet,” his baby sister whispered?

“I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s go sneak a peek and see.”

All three siblings looked as he quietly opened the living room door just enough for a glimpse of Christmas splendor. His sisters oohed and awed at colors sparkling like shiny magic on the aluminum tree around which were neatly placed gifts from Santa.

He smiled. It was Christmas magic in the early morning dawn.

“I think he has been here,” he whispered to his sisters. “We better get back in bed until Mom and Dad wake up.”

Another twenty years later on a Christmas Eve in Center, he sat in front of the fireplace waiting to make sure both of his children were sound asleep. He had tucked them in bed earlier, using the same line on them that his grandmother had used on him when he was their age.

“You better go to sleep so Santa will come.”

Hoping they had asked for their last drink of water and quizzed him for the last time about mailing their letters to the North Pole, he pulled Santa’s gifts from their hiding place in the closet. Hot chocolate in one hand and tools in the other, he was ready for “Some Assembly Required” duty.

“Just 9:00 o’clock,” he noted with a smile. “This won’t take long.”

About midnight, the Little Suzy Homemaker play kitchen lacked only one “insert tab A into slot 4 and secure with one #6 bolt and one #9 nut.”

“That wasn’t bad, “ he thought. “Only had to take it apart and start over twice.”

All that remained was a tricycle, a doll stroller, and half a dozen small items to wrap. “Just enough time to make a pot of coffee,” he thought. Before experiencing the magic of another early Christmas morning in a child’s eye.

In the decades of Christmas Eves following that all-nighter, he saw a variety of Christmas magic. Like the snowy Yule spent with his family in the mountains of Taos, New Mexico. And the Christmas morning he and his teenage kids rode new bicycles around county roads on Lake Murvaul.

This Christmas, even as he commits words to digital bits and bytes, he’s not sure where he’ll be Christmas Day. So many friends and family from his Christmas past are gone now. And his children live away with families of their own. But one thing’s for sure. Wherever he is and whatever he is doing, the seasonal magic from decades of Christmas joy will fill his heart every Christmas present.

So, I wish … I mean, he wishes for you as well, that the magical blessings of Christmas fill your heart. Not just at Christmas, but throughout the year.

Wherever you are. Merry Christmas.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

I don’t need another cat

“Singin’ the blues while the lady cats cry,
‘Wild stray cat, you’re a real gone guy.’
I wish I could be as carefree and wild,
But I got cat class, and I got cat style.”
— The Stray Cats, American rockabilly band

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Saw another news item about big cats in East Texas last week. A huge one up near Longview that ran out in front of a police cruiser at 3 a.m.

Identified by Texas Parks and Wildlife as a mountain lion, the feline lost its battle with the law enforcement vehicle. Stirring up once again, the popular feud as to whether big cats really roam East Texas. Social media comments became a cat fight with some crying “scam” and others declaring, “See, I told you so.”

I’m not a hunter. Not even much of an outdoorsman if there’s any chance of encountering snakes, mosquitos, chiggers, or having to get up before sunrise. And communing with nature? My favorite camping style is a hotel room with a nice view of trees.

My first sort-of camping adventure involving cats was during grade school. With neighbor friend Eddie Dial on Redbud Street in Mount Pleasant. Roughing it under a tent created by throwing a couple of old bedspreads over the backyard clothesline.

“What’s that noise,” Eddie said in the middle of the night. Just as we were ready to make a run for the house, Mom’s house cats poked their noses into our makeshift tent. LIkely expressing curiosity about the backyard visitors. Or maybe they picked up the scent of our snacks.

Camping trips with Coach Sam Parker’s Boy Scout Troop never involved cats, just cat sounds. Older scouts making noises to scare the Tenderfoot campers. Even weeklong excursions to Scout Camp in the hills of Oklahoma offered nothing but a herd of wild hogs one night. Mount Pleasant High School teacher turned scout camp counselor, James Criscoe, demonstrated hog-calling skills we considered entertaining. Until a herd rumbled through camp in the middle of the night.

But big cats? Nope. None in Oklahoma.

 Nor Arkansas either, I guess. Mom and Dad spent their vacations camping at Albert Pike. I joined them weekends a couple of times. Arriving the first time after dark on Friday night, I looked at their small camper and asked, “Where do I sleep?”

“Here’s a sleeping bag,” said Dad. “That picnic table under the canopy looks like a great spot.”

“But what about mountain lions and stuff,” I asked.

“They don’t have them on Arkansas,” he laughed. “At least I don’t think so.” Sleeping with one eye open, all I saw were big mountain raccoons rummaging in trash cans in the middle of the night.

It was not raccoons, however, that I heard one night several years ago visiting the lower latitudes of Shelby County. Down between Possum Trot and Goober Hill. Yes, those are real places — check your Cracker Barrell road atlas.

Air conditioning did not grace the dirt road residence I was visiting near the Sabine National Forest that night. And being Springtime, windows were open allowing pleasant East Texas breezes for comfort.

It was way after dark when I heard it. A blood-curdling, ear-piecing scream.

“That’s just a panther,” someone said nonchalantly.

That was 40 years ago, and I didn’t dare dispute my host’s opinion. Who was I to say, anyway? My big cat experience in East Texas was limited to lions, tigers, and all kinds of ferocious felines in zoos like Tyler and Lufkin. And that was my first visit to the Possum Trot, Goober Hill area.

I still remember it. A cross between the time Mom encountered a mouse scampering across the kitchen floor and the epic shower scene from the movie “Psycho.”

These days, I see cats daily. Just city cats that call my house home. They are big, only if you count extra pounds from regular feedings of good quality cat food and sleeping upwards of 20 hours a day. And I see them sometimes from the travel trailer I bought a few years ago. I’ve enjoyed many nights camping in it. Right where it’s parked in my backyard, a few steps from the house.

They’re always the same three regular cats: Lover Boy, Fluffy Bottom, and Marshmallow. And two occasional walk-ons nicknamed Scrappy Cat and Mouthy. I just set an extra place at the food bowls when they show up.

If there really are big cats in East Texas, mountain lions like the one that ventured out in Longview last week, I just hope they are not fond of good quality cat food and sleeping upwards of 20 hours a day.

I don’t need another cat … of any class, style, or size.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Still wishing for that slower time

“It is strange that the years teach us patience; that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.”
— Actress Elizabeth Taylor (1932 – 2011)

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“I’m going up to W.R. DeWoody’s Western Auto,” I remember my grandfather announcing one summer day in the early 1960s.

Summertime was fun time for a kid at my father’s parent’s house in Pittsburg. Sleeping late. Home-cooked breakfast. Playing in the tree-filled yard. Afternoons sailing homemade boats in the city park pond.

“What for,” Grandmother quizzed, pouring another cup of coffee.

“See if they have a mower part,” was his short response.

“Why don’t you call,” she retorted. “We got a telephone now.” The recently acquired black dial-operated device connected to the wall by a cord sat mostly ignored. Sometimes, even when it rang and my grandparents argued over who was going to get up and answer it.

“I’m not going to answer that thing,” I heard Granddaddy say often. “I can’t think of anybody I want to talk to right now.”

The number was University 8-3721. I think. All that was required for a local call, however, were the last four digits. The University 8 was used only to give the operator when dialing “0” to place a long-distance call. Which my grandparents rarely did because it cost an extra 20 cents. If you kept your conversation under three minutes.

“I’d rather see who I’m talking to,” my grandfather said, responding to the “why don’t you call” question. “Looking at who I’m talking to cuts down on confusion, builds relationships, and teaches patience. Ain’t got time to talk to nobody I can’t look in the eyes.”

Granddaddy was on to something more than lawnmower parts.

The rush between Thanksgiving and Christmas makes me yearn for that slower time. When people had patience. Except for kids looking forward to Christmas.

From an adult’s perspective, time speeds up every year. But a child is born into the world counting the days until Christmas.

Once counted as a virtue, patience appears to be diminishing as the number of loose nuts behind steering wheels keep increasing. Like the story I heard last week about a driver being tailgated by a stressed-out woman on a busy street. When the traffic light ahead turned yellow, the driver in front of her stopped as the light turned red. As he should have.

The tailgater was enraged. Horn honking and hollering at the driver ahead. She was still in mid-rant when a police officer walked up and asked her to get out of the car and put her hands behind her head. She was taken to the station and held for questioning before the police officer told her she was free to go.

“We’re very sorry for the mistake,” he said.  “I saw you honking your horn, gesturing at the driver ahead, and cussing a blue streak. Then I saw the ‘What would Jesus Do’ license frame, the ‘Follow me to Sunday School’ bumper sticker, and the chrome Christian fish symbol and naturally assumed you had stolen the car.   

I laughed, but that recalled an incident my mother encountered years ago. Back when I was a kid counting the days until Christmas. South Jefferson Street in my hometown of Mount Pleasant differed from the busy, booming street it is now. There was no bypass loop then. No shopping Center with a parking lot full of cars. Just three businesses facing the street. The Dairy Bar, a tractor dealership, and Larry Talley’s small neighborhood grocery … without gas pumps. Because there was no such thing then as self-service gasoline.

Mom drove her green-and-white ’54 Chevy under the railroad overpass and slowed at the corner at Boatner’s Furniture. The light was turning yellow as she approached, and being the careful driver my mother was, she stopped just as the light changed to red.

Everything was fine until a honking horn blared behind her. A lady emerged from the car and walked to Mom’s car window while hollering about a carton of broken eggs. A conversation ensued between them about whether yellow means slow down and stop or “floor it and run the red light.”

The discussion was short-lived. The light turned green, and other horn honkers egged them both to get on down the road.

I’m a few years down the road myself since that incident. Christmas is coming again, and I’m, once more, wishing for that slower time. When people had more patience. Took time to relax. Weren’t joined at the hip to a telephone.

My capacity for waiting is better, but I still ask God to grant me patience.

I just ask Him to grant it now … please.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

One thought often begets another

“You can have whatever you want if you believe in yourself and keep your feet firmly planted on the ground.”
— A. J. McLean – American singer; founding member of pop vocal group Backstreet Boys

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Writing a weekly column becomes second nature if you do it long enough.

Arriving at a topic is typically the only trick. Some weeks, a thought takes off with ease. Others, you rush toward deadline, praying for air under the wings hoping something will take flight. And some I call “Biblical inspirations.” Like the way the Bible relates genealogy. “And unto Enoch was born Irad: and Irad begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: and Methusael begat Lamech …” and so on for centuries.

The piece published a couple of weeks ago chronicling my grandmother’s first and only airplane ride begat this week’s offering. Reflecting on that time Granny took her feet off the ground to fly was with me piloting the aircraft. A day of miraculous memories. One, I was 20-something with a brand-new pilot’s license on which the ink was still wet. I passed my FAA check ride just the day before with a logbook recording scant few entries of hours flown.

And two, no one even blinked before accepting my offer. “Anybody wanna go for an airplane ride?”

You’d have thought someone would have said, “Ahhh, that’s all right, you go first. If it all works out, I’ll think about it.”

Dad was the first to climb aboard. No questions, no hesitations, no fear. At least none he admitted. We flew around the area, over the newly constructed power plant and lakes, over to Pittsburg where he grew up, back around Omaha — just sightseeing. I didn’t know if he had ever flown. I assumed not, but I never asked. And he never said.

Later that afternoon, Mom and Granny followed suit. Mom flew once commercially from Texas to Kentucky in the early 1950s. Took me with her. I was a preschooler. Still have the “First Flight Certificate” and wings I was given for the trip on a Lockheed Constellation, known to aviation enthusiasts as a “Connie.” To this day, the most gorgeous propeller-driven airliner ever to grace the skies.

We circled Pittsburg for Granny to see her home on Cypress Street, completely unaware at the time that we may have been flying over the same ground as a Texas airship built at the P. W. Thorsell Foundry in 1902. A year before Orville Wright achieved powered flight in 1903 with his brother Wilbur running alongside him on the beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

History doesn’t record it, but I’ve often wondered if Wilbur might have told Orville, “Ahhh, that’s all right, you go first. If it all works out, I’ll think about it.”

Three of Cannon’s employees reportedly built The Ezekiel Airship said to have been inspired by the Biblical book of Ezekiel, chapter 1, verse 16, “The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the color of beryl; and they four had one likeness; and their appearance was as it were a wheel within the middle of the wheel.” And, verse 19, “And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them … And when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.”

It was reportedly destroyed in a storm near Texarkana as it was being transported to St. Louis for the 1904 World’s Fair. Plans and other documents were later destroyed in a fire, common in foundries and sawmills during the day. And after that, Cannon gave up on building another airship.

A full-size replica of the Ezekiel Airship was built by Pittsburg craftsman Bob Lowery and the Pittsburg, Texas, Optimist Club in the 1980s using one surviving photograph. I saw it once displayed in the Pittsburg Hot Link Restaurant, where it resided until 2001 before being relocated to its present location just down the street in the city’s Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Center and Museum. It remains there today, along with artifacts related to the craft and Cannon, including Cannon’s Bible, displayed with pages opened to the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel.

With no physical evidence of the flight, most historians discount claims that the Pittsburg, Texas airship ever flew.

My fledgling family flights over East Texas and Pittsburg decades ago were never repeated. Dad, Mom, and Granny were all presumably satisfied with their excursions that one time, placing their trust in me to take them up and get them back down safely.

With my apologies to A.J. McLean, I suggest that to have whatever you want, you not only have to believe in yourself, but you also sometimes have to get your feet off the ground.

Oh, and beget trust to your pilot.

—Leon Aldridge

Photo credit: The Ezekiel Airship replica on display at the Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Center and Museum in Pittsburg, Texas. Wikipedia Commons. Author: Michael Barera.

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

We can usually be thankful in the end

“Gratitude turns what we have into enough.”
– Anonymous

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“Lifelong member of the church of Christ, serving as song leader most of those years.”

I wrote that last week. One of many notes on one of many yellow tablets cluttering my desk. While struggling for a reasonable resemblance of a forward for my book. I’ve resolved to finish it soon; the forward or the book. Maybe both.

And yes, it was on my list of resolutions for this year and the year before.

A revered mentor once offered as how writing something in longhand commits it to memory. He bought more yellow tablets than anyone I knew. And amazed many with his astounding feats of recall in conversations.

The same practice also works well for soul searching. Remembering years of church singing is one thing. But writing about it was like, “Wow! That’s a long time for someone not to notice that I can’t sing.”

 Most church of Christ congregations reply only on a cappella singing in worship service. No pianos, no organs, no recorded background music. Guitars, drums, harmonicas — nada. However, my adolescent friends and I at Southside Church of Christ in Mount Pleasant used to sit on the back seat and hum a lot. We were always in trouble for something.

Saving theology another time, the purpose for mentioning it in this missive is simply background for the way life is when you were raised in a church of Christ family. Like most of my generation of cousins on Mom’s side. Because Mom and her siblings were reared the same way. Which leads to the story about my cousin Leigh who grew up in the small Panhandle Texas community of Kress, population 596 — salute!

In Kress, you could easily walk anywhere in town then. Probably still can. The town’s one grocery store, the farm supply, the Phillips 66 service station, and even Lawson’s Café were in walking distance. Most drove on Sundays, though. Everybody gathered at Lawson’s after church.  

As the story goes at family reunions, Leigh was in grade school when she attended the Kress Baptist vacation Bible school with her friends. The first morning, singing songs about Bible characters got underway in Baptist tradition. Kiddos singing with the piano while reading words from books. One verse in, Leigh stopped singing and folded her arms. “Why did you stop singing,” the Bible school volunteer asked? “Can you not read all of the words?”

“I can read the words just fine,” she countered defensively. “But I can’t hear the song over that piano.”

I still remember the first time I heard congregational singing as a young song leader. Part of Bible training for young men in leadership roles. Singing, teaching, praying. But the hymns I’d heard growing up resonated differently when I first stood and faced the singers looking back at me.

Luckily, I survived that first song on a Sunday night. And when the last note of “Blessed Assurance” fell silent, I returned to my seat relieved, expecting someone to say, “Well, that one can’t sing.”

But no one objected. So, I learned the basics of 3/4 and 4/4 time. Shaped notes and four-part harmony. I attended singing schools; traveling teachers who visited churches to teach singing. And learned from the old timers about hymns called 7-11 songs. Seven words sung 11 times.  

I was even around for the pitch pipe controversy. Disagreements over whether the use of a pitch-pipe for exact notes was scriptural. Saw it escalate once to the point of two brethren arguing over it before they settled down and agreed to disagree; still being friendly with one another. A rare occurrence in congregational differences itself. I don’t think either changed their mind. They were just no longer enemies as Sweet Hour of Prayer resonated through the church house.

The guy who didn’t want to give up his pitch pipe continued to nonchalantly slip it out of his pocket, though. Blow one quiet note, and then quickly pretend he didn’t do it. The other one simply ignored him.

A lifetime of witnessing debates in doctrine has brought me to believe that whatever the controversy of the day, if we all just focus on God’s word and His will, we can usually be thankful in the end.

I hope everyone enjoyed a Happy Thanksgiving this week. And I pray each of us paused long enough to count our blessings realizing that our gratitude can make what we have feel like just enough.

I’m thankful that I might actually finish my book project soon. And I am grateful for the opportunity to still lead singing in God’s house every week.

But maybe most of all, I’m thankful no one has noticed that I still can’t sing.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

It’s the 1970s, all over again

“Sooner or later, everything old is new again.”
― Stephen King, American author known for horror novels.

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Marveling at the things my grandparents must have seen in their lifetime was something I often did when I was much younger.

Having reached that “grandparent” stage, I find myself drawing similar conclusions about my own life. Remembering things that have faded away. Seeing others miraculously survive to live another day.

Dad’s father was born in 1888. We gathered at Rose Hill Cemetery in Pittsburg to celebrate his life in 1967. During my second year of college when the whole world was still new and changing to me.

My grandfather went to work at 13. Child labor was common then. Ten percent of girls between the ages of 10 and 15, and 20% of boys had jobs to help support the family. The internal combustion engine was gaining popularity, and mass production of powered buggies called “automobiles” was catching on. But only the wealthy could afford one.

Connecticut became the first state to pass a speed limit that year, limiting motor vehicles to 12 mph in cities and 15 mph on country roads.

My grandmother lived until October of 1993. The Wright Brothers flew one of the first airplanes at Kittyhawk in 1903, two years before she was born. She lived to watch man’s first walk on the moon on her black-and-white television. She was never convinced it really happened, though. Truthfully, she was never sure television was real, either.  

My grandmother flew in an airplane one time during her life. With me after I earned a pilot’s license in 1974. She spent most of the 30-minute flight around northeast Texas to see her house in Pittsburg singing “Nearer My God to Thee.”

She went to be with God in 1993 without ever flying in an airplane again — with or without me.

My grandmother, that flight, and life since then crossed my mind a couple of weeks ago. Along with my 1970 Chevrolet pickup in which I drove her to the airport. I loved that truck. My first air-conditioned vehicle. It was equipped with AM/FM radio, tape player, and CB radio. All at a time when a pickup truck was still primarily a utilitarian vehicle.

The woman who watched man walk on the moon via television, however, never owned a radio until after she was married. When she married my grandfather, electricity was still years away from most rural homes. And cars then had little more than headlights, horns, and a hand crank for a starter.

Radios appeared in cars in the late 30s and evolved into sophisticated sound systems over the decades. Basic AM, and FM radio, still survive today despite some electric car makers having dropped AM claiming electromagnetic interference affects the performance of EVs. Don’t count AM out yet, though. Congress has responded by threatening legislation requiring auto manufacturers to keep it.

It was surprising to learn however, that despite rumors of its demise, the last bastion of vehicular radio devices in my pickup that day 50 years ago when Granny consented to a trip into the wild blue yonder has surprisingly made a comeback.

Citizens Band Radio (CB) originated in the U.S. around 1945. Primary purchasers were farmers and the U.S. Coast Guard.

I was introduced to CB radio in the early 1960s as a member of Mount Pleasant’s “Emergency Service” Explorer Scout Post 206. Back when an FCC-regulated call sign, a license and “professional radio etiquette” were required. The two-way radios provided communication with first responders for our scout post aiding at wrecks and fires. Howard Townsend was the Post Advisor, monitoring our radio sets and conversations to ensure regulations were strictly followed.

But CB became a cultural craze in the 1970s. It was depicted in films such as ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ and ‘Convoy,’ on TV shows, and in music. Their use in trucker blockades to protest 55-m.p.h. speed limits and keeping tabs on radar speed enforcement became a thing of legend. And with it all, regulation went out the window when enforcement became impossible. The FCC threw in the towel on licensing in 1983.

CB antenna on author’s 1956 Ford Thunderbird for a trip from Center, Texas to Daytona Beach, Florida in October of 1984.

Popularity rendered CB radio as its own worst enemy. Frequencies were overloaded, making communication difficult. Business users switched to other frequencies before the introduction of mobile phones saw CB’s popularity drop faster than temperatures in a Texas Blue Norther. Everywhere, that is, except among over-the-road truckers, touring motorcycle riders, and classic car clubs traveling to shows and events in caravans.

As a touring cyclist and an old car enthusiast, I knew CB radio never really disappeared. At least not in my garage. And from what I have read recently, CB radio sales are flourishing better than sometime in the 1990s. While “entertainment radio” still evolves, CB has survived. It’s making a comeback to live another day. And it’s the 1970s, all over again.

“Breaker, breaker one-nine. Anybody have eyeballs on that CB I used years ago. Negatory? Well, CBs are back again, good buddy!”

—Leon Aldridge

(Photo credit: From Leon Aldridge personal collection of a few thousand Kodachrome slides. Photo at top of the page: CB Mounted on motorcycle for a trip from Mount Pleasant, Texas to Leadville, Colorado in October of 1975. Safely secured by a state-of-the-art bungee cord. )

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

A return for the championship round …

“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t… pays it.
— Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-born physicist, considered one of the most influential scientists.

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It’s your shining moment on the big television game show. The emcee declares loudly, “For today’s jackpot and a chance to come back next week for the grand prize championship round … what is the Eighth Wonder of the World?”

While there appears to be no single official list of “wonders of the world” found among internet intelligence, real or artificial, several unofficial lists claim legitimacy. Included are Natural Wonders of the World, Ancient Wonders of the World, and the New Seven Wonders of the World. The latter still leaves one wondering what the Eighth Wonder of the World might be.

But if, like me, a card-carrying Texan old enough to remember when a dollar’s worth of gas would get you to school and back all week, then you don’t have to be an Einstein to know the correct answer. The architectural masterpiece dubbed the Eighth Wonder of the World in Houston was part of our youth.

All of this came to mind recently after passing the world’s first domed sports stadium for the first time in many years. I was lost in Houston, a common occurrence when I visit there, but I knew where I was when I saw the Astrodome.

Originally named “The Houston Domed Stadium,” the name was reportedly changed in 1965 when the new expansion team, the Astros, opened the stadium with a 2-1 exhibition victory against the New York Yankees. It was the age of space exploration, and Houston had just landed the NASA Space Center. Local businessman R.E. “Bob” Smith teamed with former Houston Mayor and Harris County Judge Roy Hofheinz to develop what would become known as the Astrodome.

“The Eighth Wonder of the World is looking a little forlorn,” I thought when I saw it recently. Less glamorous than when it was a frequent destination for me in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Astros Baseball games. Oilers football games. Motorcycle races. The Fat Stock Show and Rodeo.

My relationship started with sports. Sitting high in the only domed stadium in the world. Taking it all in with Mount Pleasant friend, Randy Brogoitti. The baseball was great, but the after-game concerts by country music stars of the day were icing on the cake.

Into the ’70s, my focus shifted to championship motorcycle racing. Anticipation for the January trek from Mount Pleasant to Houston for Camel Pro Series racing began building the day after Christmas. The Mount Pleasant crowd making the trip differed yearly, but Oscar Elliott and I were always there. My archive of thousands of Kodachrome slides includes trackside shots of 70s standouts like Yamaha rider Kenny Roberts. Waiting to be viewed one more time. Along with press and trackside credentials for many of the events.

Fat Stock Show and Rodeo entertainment hosted in the ‘Dome included names like Alabama to Alan Jackson, Bob Dylan to Chicago, Conway Twitty to Dolly Parton, and more. Record attendance concerts over the years included Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, Willie Nelson, and George Strait, who set the venue record at 80,266 at the last show in the Astrodome in 2002. Strait’s “One Last Time” performance closed the Rodeo and said goodbye to the Dome.

Even Evel Knievel staged one of his historic motorcycle jumps, successfully clearing 13 cars there two nights in a row.

But for all its records, glory, and history, time caught up with the Eighth Wonder of the World in 2008 when the Houston Fire Department declared it non-compliant with fire codes. The seating was removed, and parts of it demolished, rendering it closed.

In 2014, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In a 2023 competition by the American Society of Heating Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), a University of Houston architecture team spent the summer studying the building. A plan was proposed to transform the iconic structure into an indoor public street with a botanical garden, retail space, hotel rooms, and a massive museum dedicated to the Dome’s history.

The concept was awarded first place. However, according to information available, county leaders have yet to respond. Still, local architects are hopeful the plan will save the historic architecture.

Seeing the famous stadium recently renewed old memories. Restoration will take lots of money at simple or compound interest rates. But maybe she will get a chance to return for the championship round soon.

“Yes, Alex, I’ll take $1,000 for Eighth Wonder of the World in Texas.”

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Update: This piece was penned last Monday and appeared in print publications around midweek. Thursday, an article posted in the Texas Flyover, an excellent online news source with all Texas news content, announced the unveiling of a $1 billion redevelopment plan by the Houston Astrodome Conservancy. The plan seeks to turn the empty Eighth Wonder of the World into a multipurpose space with four modern buildings, a retail village, and a central boulevard inspired by New York’s High Line.

It also stated that The Conservancy hopes to raise up to $750 million from private sources.

So, it appears that the historic structure will get to return for the grand prize championship round after all.

—Leon Aldridge

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(Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons – Reliant Astrodome)

Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Friends we haven’t yet met

There are no strangers here, Only friends you haven’t yet met.

— William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) Irish poet

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Friends come from everywhere. Some we have for a short time, some for a lifetime. And a few, it takes a little longer to meet.

I used to ride motorcycles. I used to fly airplanes. Both have taken me to many places where I’ve met many friends.

Like the time about 1978, give or take a year. I left out of Mount Pleasant, heading south on a motorcycle. Harlingen in the Texas Rio Grande Valley was the destination. To an air show. Not just any airshow, but the annual October event staged by the Texas war plane preservation group known today as the Commemorative Air Force. Their trademark was, and still is, a realistic reenactment of the 1941 Japanese attack on the U.S. Naval fleet at Pearl Harbor. Flying authentic 1940s vintage combat aircraft.

At the Harlingen airport, I dismounted my bike and walked toward the entrance gate, camera bag over my shoulder. I saw a small portable building off to one side bearing a sign simply saying, ‘Press.’ So, I pulled out my Texas Press Association card. I was not preregistered for credentials, but as my grandmother always told me, “It doesn’t hurt to ask, all they can say is no.” In this case, the young lady at the desk said, yes. “What publication are you representing?”

“The newspaper in Naples, Texas … The Monitor,” I reported. Then waited for questions.

“Here’s your credentials.” She shoved a lanyard across the table and added, “There’s a golf cart outside. Someone will take you to the media bleachers.” I was disappointed that she didn’t ask, “Where’s Naples, Texas?”

The cart stopped at a grandstand on the flight line and center stage for the show. “Take any seat not marked VIP,” instructed the driver. From where I stood at the moment, it all looked like VIP to me.

Spotting an empty seat just aft of the designated ones, I settled in as a black 1941 Lincoln convertible pulled up. “Ladies and gentlemen …” the PA system blared. “Featured announcer and celebrity guest, Tennessee Ernie Ford.”

Ford, popular singer and television host known in country and western, pop, and gospel musical genres from the 1940s through the 1970s, served as a navigator and bombardier in World War II leading to his involvement with the CAF from 1976 to 1988. He was seated in the VIP section. Right smack dab in front of me.

I would attend many CAF air shows in the years to come, but that first time was memorable for several reasons. Sitting near Tennessee Ernie Ford. Meeting Greg “Pappy” Boyington, the World War II fighter pilot Ace portrayed by Robert Conrad in the 1970s TV show “Baa Baa Black Sheep” about Boyington’s wartime service. And learning the perks of a press card.

I also remembered the Pearl Harbor dramatization. Fighters, bombers, pyrotechnics, smoke, sirens blaring. And that pause in the middle of it all clearing a Southwest Airlines commercial flight for landing.

That trip, and the events of that day, I would remember for a long time. Some 30 years later, in fact, when I was at the EAA Air Venture air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin watching the CAF reenactment again. Working an outdoor trade show at the largest airshow of its kind in the world. Where every July, aircraft take-offs and landings total 21 to 23 thousand in 11-days. This time, working with Portacool colleague, Jim Altom.

A guy stops and greets Jim as a longtime friend. Jim turns to me and says, “Leon, meet Randy Henderson … best pilot you’ll ever meet.”

We quickly became acquainted as airplanes buzzed overhead. I learned that Henderson was a championship aerobatic pilot flying airshows worldwide and a captain for Southwest Airlines.

I related to my newfound friend, the story of that first CAF event down in Harlingen where the show paused for a Southwest flight to land. “I couldn’t help but think,” I laughed, “what an experience it must have been for passengers looking out the window and seeing WWII “war birds” and a full-scale “battle” underway.

“You were there, too,” Randy smiled? “I was a rookie pilot on that Southwest Flight. And I remember that day.”

Sometime after that simply-by-chance meeting, Randy performed his Texas T-Cart flying skills at a Center, Texas airshow on a Spring Saturday afternoon. We visited again, laughed, and talked about Jim Altom.

Randy is retired from Southwest now, but still dazzles spectators with airshow performances. I haven’t talked to him since our mutual friend, Jim Altom, passed away three years ago. Maybe I’ll catch Randy at a show. Soon.

I don’t ride motorcycles anymore. I don’t fly airplanes anymore, either. Both activities best left to those who keep their skills sharp.

But I do still believe that God sends people into our lives, turning strangers into friends. Some we meet right away. And some we come close to, but have to wait a while for the meeting.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Just allow me one wrong turn

“The best music a parent will ever hear is the sound of his or her children laughing.”
— Unknown

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“My daughter got her driver’s license, and I never see her anymore.”

This casual comment coming at the coffee club gathering last week hit close to home. So I took advantage of it. Being one of the group’s senior members allows me to offer first-hand experience. And share valuable advice. All, services I offer completely free of charge.

“Yep,” I said. “But don’t’ worry. It gets worse. Wait until she takes her first road trip. Then starts giving you directions on how to get somewhere.”

“They really do that,” he asked?

“I remember the time some years ago when Robin was giving me directions to the country church where her upcoming wedding was to take place,” I said.

“Robin was directionally challenged when she first started driving,” I explained. “I was riding with her after she got her learner’s permit one day. I let her drive five miles before she noticed she was going the wrong way. Kept asking her if she knew where she was going. She said she did, so I let her drive on.

After a while, she asked, “Where is the turn that goes to Boerne?”

“Oh, ’bout five miles behind us,” I offered nonchalantly. She did not laugh. I reasoned with her that some lessons are better learned when we’re allowed to resolve our mistakes without help. “Even when your little brother is laughing in the back seat.”

With that, I shared an old analogy about how raising children is like flying a kite. How we work diligently, running tirelessly to get the kite airborne. Then, once it’s flying a little, letting the wind take it up. Using the string to pull back when obstacles threaten and letting it out again as winds lift it clear. Then, one day, when it’s flying high and ready to plot its own course, you have to let the string go. Your job is done. “Just like kids,” I concluded.

“Teaching a child to drive is one of those alternately ‘pulling and letting out more string experiences.’ For them, it’s an adventure. For parents, it’s another gray hair. Or three.”

I also shared the first time Robin struck out on a cross-country trip with her brand-new driver’s license, traveling more than 300 miles from the Hill Country to northeast Texas. In a new car. With her younger brother, Lee. And her dog.

With my children gathered around the dining room table the morning of the journey, I announced, “Here’s your mission, your map, and your instructions. Lee, pay attention so you can help your sister.”

GPS for cars was yet to be discovered. So, for this trip, I unfolded my most trusted navigational device. A Texaco road map.

They watched me draw a dark, heavy line along the intended route. “Now here’s where you might have problems,” I said, carefully detailing the loop around Taylor, turns to navigate at Hearne, and other opportunities for getting lost that would be lying in wait.

“Any questions,” I asked? Drawing a deep breath; remembering Robin’s directional instincts.

Lee raised his hand. “Can ‘Buggie’ go with us?”

“Were you paying attention to the highway changes,” I asked, while adding instructions for traveling with a dog.

“Yes,” they said in unison.

“I’ll follow you for a while. Until your first major turn.”

Down the driveway, they went. They laughed. I followed. I prayed.

At the first highway change in New Braunfels, a convenience store parking lot provided for one last round of “bye” hugs and wishes for safe travels.

I felt good about the trip, until I watched Robin leave the parking lot without hesitation. To the left. When she should have turned right.

“No,” I said out loud.

Evidently, Lee must have said the same thing. Or it might have been the dog. Brake lights came on, Robin turned into a parking lot, circled through it, and re-entered the highway. Going in the right direction this time.

The kids waved and smiled as they passed in front of me. I’ll never forget the look of terror on Buggie’s face in the back window. My confidence of mere moments ago was waning. I was still praying. I was feeling sorry for the dog.

What was to have been a 300-mile trip probably took 500 miles or more. They never told me. I never asked.

Prayers were answered, however, when they called to let me know they had arrived safely. They were laughing, and that’s all that mattered.

“I reminded my daughter of that trip a few years later as she was giving me travel directions,” I told the coffee-drinking confab last week. “They probably made that trip better than I would handle my trip to her wedding.”

“Oh, I know I’ll find the church all right,” I told Robin. “Just allow me one wrong turn. I won’t have the dog to help me.”

She laughed.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Choose friends wisely, they will shape your life

“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”
— John Lennon (1940 – 1980) English singer, songwriter and musician.

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When traveling alone, something I’ve done far too much of in my lifetime,  I’ve spent unknown hours just thinking. My brain’s hard drive revs up with the open road, shifting a myriad of memories into overdrive.

With the touch of a button, I have satellite radio, Bluetooth, and even antique CDs for entertainment. All waiting to be turned on as I sit thinking, listening to the hum of the highway that is still my preferred pastime for making miles fly by.

Driving last Saturday, alone, I reflected on knowing most of my life is in the rearview mirror, anticipating that whatever time is left will fly by all too quickly. That’s a thought that becomes increasingly poignant every time I’m headed home dressed in my Sunday best with a folded funeral home program in my pocket.

Loving parents instilled many good things in me. One being to “choose your friends wisely; those you call friend will shape your life.” Many good friendships were forged with members of my Mount Pleasant, Texas, high school graduating class. Friendships that have lasted a lifetime.

Ronnie Lilly and I graduated in that generation of students that remembers hearing the news at school that President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.

A couple of years following that memory, in the fall following high school graduation, Ronnie and I were roommates at Kilgore College along with a third “partner in adventure.” Our mutual friend and high school classmate, Mike Williams. Memories of said adventures include sharpening our skills at at the pool hall, late night card games, the night clerk at the corner 7-11 we affectionately nicknamed “Hostile,” overflowing the washing machine with soap at the laundromat across the street from the girl’s dorm, and one memorable night that we drove to downtown Dallas. Seeking verification of rumors regarding the fun of experiencing a Texas O.U. weekend in “Big D.”

Then traveling back to Kilgore that same night.

Ronnie was driving, I was riding shotgun, and Mike fell asleep in the back seat. Arriving at our Kilgore apartment just before dawn, Ronnie and I went in and hit the hay while Mike continued snoozing in the car. He awoke sometime after sunup, initially miffed at us thinking we had stopped to rent a motel room and left him in the car.

Through these memorable moments of fun and more, we miraculously still found time to attend a few classes.

Following spring finals, Ronnie and I flipped a coin to determine whose old Chevrolet, his ’57 or my ’58, was more likely to make a trip to Southern California. Memorial Day weekend, we were headed west in his car. The first night, we bunked with my aunt and uncle in the Texas Panhandle, then continued on to the second night in Las Vegas where we stayed at The Thunderbird on the old Vegas strip. Before the days of high-rise hotels and sprawling casinos.

After learning that the bellman knew where Mount Pleasant, Texas was and had family living there, we were just walking and gawking when we heard Dean Martin singing. Following the voice to the hotel’s nightclub entrance, we caught a glimpse of the crooner performing through an open door. No one was there at the moment to tell us we couldn’t, so we walked in and quietly disappeared into the shadows at the back of the room. After enjoying most of a couple of songs, this tall gentleman in a black suit walked up beside us and graciously offered two 19-year-old underage kids from Texas some options to consider. We heeded what we agreed was his best one. To leave … immediately.

Staying with my Uncle Bill in the Los Angeles San Fernando Valley suburb of Canoga Park that summer, Ronnie and I packed a lot into the experience. Working days to make money for school in the fall. Cruising popular hangouts Saturday nights listening to the Beach Boys on jukeboxes, and drooling over California cool cars and hot rods. Occasional weekend trips up the coast to Pismo Beach roaming the dunes in sand buggies with Uncle Bill and his friends.

Pismo Beach sand dunes, summer of 1967. Ronnie Lillly (left) and Leon Aldridge (right).

And those Sunday afternoons. Watching surfers at Malibu Beach and conducting memorable observational research on the still somewhat new beachwear fad of the mid 1960s. Bikinis.

Loaded with memories by Labor Day, we headed east back to Texas. Crossing the desert in the middle of the night to avoid excruciating daytime temps put us in Southern Arizona well before dawn. Sleep was beckoning, but a motel was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t the Hilton. It wasn’t even Motel 6. But we found a couple hours of shut-eye stretched out on picnic table in a middle-of-nowhere roadside park. Nestled near a rock bluff that, by dawn’s early light, was one of the most spectacular views of the trip.

Ronnie’s faithful ’57 made the journey without a hiccup in spite of one minor inconvenience. The gas gauge didn’t work. That proved to be a problem just once, however. Not far over the state line from New Mexico into Texas. In the middle of another nowhere between Carlsbad and Pecos. Ronnie flagged down a guy in a pickup for a ride into town for gas while I stayed to safeguard the car. About the time I reclined across the car’s front seat for a quick nap, some helpful motorists stopped to offer assistance. A host of hippies in a VW van covered with flowers and love symbols. I assured them everything was all right and gas was on the way back. So they rolled on, waving peace signs as they departed.

Ronnie returned with a can of gas, and we were back on the road. I was never sure, however, if he really believed me about the bus load of hippies. “We’re back in Texas,” he laughed. “We left all that behind in California two days ago. You sure you weren’t dreaming while you napped?”

It really happened.

Someone once said, “Life is an adventure best shared with good friends.” I’ve been blessed with many good friends like Ronnie Lilly, sharing adventures and making memories that have lasted a lifetime.

Friends and family gathered in East Texas last Saturday to remember Ronnie and celebrate his life. Afterward, I drove home. Alone. Dressed in my Sunday best. A funeral home program folded up in my pocket.

Thankful for memories and for friends like Ronnie.

Friends who have definitely shaped my life.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: 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 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.