Author: leonaldridge2015

“To do what you wanna do, to leave a mark – in a way that you think is important and lasting – that’s a life well-lived.”

— Laurene Powell Jobs

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Accumulating clippings, notes, earmarked books, unmarked photos, mysteriously scribbled-on pieces of paper, meaningless mementos, business cards, and other small pieces of junk. It’s what writers do. We often consider ourselves to be quasi-historians. Known to keep an immense library of outwardly appearing random reference material. Because we might need it someday.

Or sometimes simply because these things are reminders of an inspiring life well lived. Lives about which we are compelled to write.

While performing the once-a-year, whether-it’s-needed-or-not, organization of outwardly appearing random reference material last week, I matched up a picture, an obituary, and one of my old columns. The photo was taken in 2017. Albert Thompson, Charles Hutchins, Jim Chionsini, and me at the 60^th Anniversary of A&A Machine and Fabrication in LaMarque. The photo hung on my office wall until I came home to write recently. The obituary will be one year old the 17th of next month. Both related to a friend about whom I wrote in the mid-90s while at the Boerne newspaper down in the Texas Hill Country.

“An old friend popped up in the news this week and stirred up lots of memories,” the column starts. “While listening to NPR radio early Friday morning at the office, I heard the name Charles Hutchins.”

I met Charles in the early 1980s. We were introduced by a mutual friend, Jim Chionsini. Charles worked for A&A, cofounded by Jim’s father. In the years that followed our meeting, he became a faithful reader of my columns. Sending notes from time to time, comments, or additional info about something or someone about whom I had written.

I was honored when Charles trusted me to collaborate with him in writing the history of A&A Machine and Fabrication for the company’s 60th Anniversary celebration.

The radio interview focused on the Commemorative Air Force (CAF) life-like reenactment of the December 7, 1941, Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor known as TORA! TORA! TORA! scheduled at a festival preceding the Kentucky Derby horse racing classic. Hutchins was a member, of the CAF and flew his North American AT-6 converted to resemble WWII Japanese aircraft in the reenactment.

“The pounding of horses hooves running at full power at Churchill Downs creates excitement,” I wrote, “but equally exciting is the pounding horsepower of WW II era aircraft engines at full power. If you’re addicted to that sort of thing. Which I am. And so was Charles.

“Charles Hutchins is as nice a man as you’d ever want to meet,” my column continued. “He’s quiet, polite, and best resembles a corporate executive wearing blue jeans. In fact, when he’s not piloting vintage airplanes for fun, or racing them at more than 200 miles-per-hour just above the desert floor, he’s working as vice president and general manager of A&A Machine Shop.”

I smiled, then reread the 2023 obituary. Charles Leo Hutchins passed away on October 17, 2023, in League City at 86. He was a 1955 graduate of Texas City High School. He worked for Union Carbide as a machinist apprentice before he was invited to work with Manuel Chionsini and Fred Heinemann who, in 1957, started A&A Machine Shop. He worked there for 62 years. First as a machinist, retiring in 2022 as a managing partner.

The obit noted that Hutchins possessed a quality that is too often lacking in business today. He was interested in his employees, frequently visiting and talking to each one, shaking their hands, and showing an interest in their lives.

Outside of business, “Papa Charles” was active in activities with his sons and grandchildren, and served as a lay preacher at a church in Texas City. He was involved in the Celebrate Recovery program because he cared about those addicted to alcohol or drugs.

Hutchins learned to fly in 1959 in a Piper J-3 Cub. He joined the CAF TORA! TORA! TORA! Airshow Demonstration Team in 1975, flying his first airshow in October 1976. He became TORA! Lead in 1987, serving for 23 years.

His honors in aviation were many. Winner of the Reno National Championship Air Races AT-6 Gold National Championship in 1995. Cofounder of the Wings Over Houston (WOH) Airshow at Ellington Field. Awarded the Lloyd P. Nolen Lifetime Achievement in Aviation presented by WOH Airshow, the Marvin L. “Lefty” Gardner Flight Excellence Award, and the CAF’s Lloyd P. Nolen Achievement Award. In 2006, he was awarded the Sword of Excellence presented by International Council of Airshows (CAS) for which he was chairman, the highest honor in the airshow industry. He was inducted into the CAF Hall of Fame in 2013.

I smiled again. Then I carefully placed the photo, the column, and the obituary in a file, labeling it “Charles Hutchins – inspiration for a life well lived.”

Because it’s what writers do. That, and share the stories of people who have inspired them. And no doubt inspired many others as well.

—Leon Aldridge

(Photo above: Left to right, long-time friend and newspaper business associate Albert Thompson, Charles Hutchins, Jim Chionsini, and me at the 60^th Anniversary of A&A Machine and Fabrication in LaMarque, Texas, in 2017.)

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune,  the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 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 wanted to say to Elvis Presley and the country that this is a real decent, fine boy.”

— Ed Sullivan, during Elvis’ third appearance on his show, January 6, 1957

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I saw Elvis Saturday of last week. In Center.

Saw him again Sunday at church. Sort of, but that’s another story.

Saturday’s sighting was Elvis tribute performer Kraig Parker who delivered an incredible show for the Shelby County Outreach Ministry fundraiser event. It was only fitting that Parker’s appearance was for an organization whose mission is to help the hungry and those in need. Elvis’s generosity toward those in need was almost as legendary as his singing.

Although a lifelong fan of the King of Rock and Roll, I never saw him in person during his Las Vegas years. But I think I might have seen him early in his career. When he was performing in small towns across the South, between appearances at the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport.

My assumed sighting was in Seymour, some 54 miles west of Wichita Falls. That was home for about four years when I was in grade school. One of those small towns where everything was a couple of blocks from downtown. Our house. The schools. The doctor’s office. The movie theater. Everything, including the high school gym where it was documented that Elvis performed in the mid 50s, was not far away.

About the time of that early Elvis performance, the teenage daughter of a family friend wanted to attend a country music show at the gym with one of her girl friends. Permission was granted on the condition they take a couple of “the younger kids” who wanted to go. Most likely a parental ploy to hinder any plot of meeting boys at the show.

I was one of those younger kids.

My childhood memories for years included a very late night, loud music, some guy dressed in a brightly colored outfit singing and dancing all over the stage, and girls screaming. Little of which made sense to my young mind.

Until years later when I got a phone call.

Fast forward to 2003. A call from Ernst Jorgensen. I recognized his name as the record executive who re-mastered Elvis’s songs into box sets and published books about his career. Said he was working on a book about early Elvis appearances and needed confirmation of an appearance in Mount Pleasant, and that Jordanaires singer Gordon Stoker suggested he call me. “Gordon says you’re from Mount Pleasant.”

“But, we didn’t move there until 1959,” I told him. “We were living in Seymour during the time you’re talking about.”

Jorgensen responded, “Well, Elvis was in Seymour, too. But I’ve documented that one. I’ll email you a copy of a newspaper clipping.” The writeup related a story about a ” Volunteer Fire Department sponsored country music show at the Seymour High School with special guest star, Elvis Presley.” Writer Doug Dixon, who attended the show, wrote, “… the crowd was impatient to see Elvis who was late. Every singer sang twice. Even the man who had taken our money at the door got up and sang.”

His account of the event said the emcee finally admitted that Elvis wasn’t there, but that he would be soon. “Eventually, most of the audience left, grumbling about being ‘took.’ Only the hard-core Elvis fans remained,” Dixon documented.

“Suddenly a girl screamed, ‘He’s here!'” The newspaper reporter described Elvis as “… wearing a fire engine red sport coat, bow tie, white shirt and blue trousers. Both coat and trousers were two sizes too large, so he could make his moves without ripping something. Elvis suddenly grabbed his guitar and broke into ‘That’s All Right Mama’… and the show was on.

“Elvis shook, danced and twisted,” Dixon wrote, “as he sang one song after another. Bill Black rode his bass like it was a horse as he slapped out a rockabilly beat. Scotty Moore’s guitar lashed out adding to the frenzy of the crowd. Girls screamed, cried and several appeared to faint. The girl standing next to me moaned and slid to the floor and lay there jerking, as if she was having some kind of a seizure.”

According to the story, after the fourth or fifth song Elvis paused to explain, “We were booked into Miller Brothers over at Wichita Falls for a dance. We didn’t know about this booking until we got a phone call earlier in the evening. … some kind of mix up.” He reportedly said he asked for a long intermission for a quick appearance in Seymour when they learned that fans were staying late. The problem was compounded, according to Elvis, when they ran out of gas just outside Seymour and had to hitchhike into town.

“Hectic, man,” Dixon quoted Elvis as saying. “Real hectic.” Elvis also reportedly said they would appreciate someone taking them back to their car with some gas after the show, and that “… almost every girl in the house volunteered.”

Later accounts in the book released related that Elvis did not get paid for either event. The Seymour Fire Department reportedly didn’t pay him because he was late, and by the time they got back to Wichita Falls, the show there was over.

Reading the newspaper article was an, “Oh wow,” moment. Was my childhood memory from the long ago night in West Texas; the night Elvis rocked Seymour? I’ll never know for sure, but I like to think it was.

Oh yeah, about last Sunday’s Elvis appearance in Center? Just sayin’ for a friend, if you attempt to silently text someone an inspirational thought from Sunday’s church bulletin, make sure your phone is silenced. And, make sure the last thing opened on your phone is not videos of the previous night’s Elvis tribute concert.

It was good, I guess, that the unexpected song was “How Great Thou Art.”

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune,  the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 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.

“Saturday night at the movies
Who cares what picture you see.
When you’re hugging with your baby,
In the last row in the balcony.”

— Song lyrics by the Drifters, 1965.”

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“Is it OK to sit there?”

My question was about finding a place to land and enjoy a freshly brewed cup of coffee a few Saturdays ago. I was at the Farmer’s Market in downtown Center, where Stacy Riley’s coffee bar is a new addition to her business. Searching the array of fruits and vegetables, arts and crafts, and freshly baked goodies to find a chair, my eyes skidded to a stop on a row of old theater seats resting quietly against the wall.

The quest was a place to sit and enjoy the java, but I couldn’t stop staring at the antique seats. A friend joining me for coffee suggested, “Look, this bistro-style table and chairs will be prefect. I think that’s what they are here for.”

While I agreed that choosing not to roost on the row of antiques was the wiser choice, my attention was still fixated on the movie house refugees. I couldn’t quit admiring them.

“Wonder if they might be for sale,” I whispered to myself. I could already picture them in my living room. Amid my eclectic collection of relics I fondly call home furnishings — my refuge from formality. Where a unique application of “vintage  fêng shui” pieces create a harmonious balance of well-being and positive energy.

No, I’m serious.

Subtle touches. Like a four-foot tall working traffic light that once did intersection duty in Nacogdoches spannig half the distance from the floor to the ceiling. A 1957 Mueller fire hydrant weighing more than three refrigerators that once graced a street corner in Boerne, down in the Texas Hill Country. A 1920s windup RCA Victor “Victrola” with a genuine 1950s “Nipper” display dog, both from the well-known Ken Woods collection. My grandfather’s old manual Underwood typewriter he used at the depot in Pittsburg, Texas. Did I mention he retired in 1954?

“Yes,” I smiled. “The theater seats would go perfectly with the set of drive-in movie speakers that is slated to be added soon.”

Excitement escalated when Stacy shared that the row of four folding wooden seats belonged to someone who purchased them a couple of years ago at a garage sale at the old ice house where her business is located in downtown Center, and never returned to pick them up.

“I’ve reminded her,” said Stacy. “I’m afraid something is going to happen to them.”

It was meant to be upon learning that the purchaser and I attend the same church and have been friends for many years. Who would have guessed? One phone call and a deal was done. I purchased them and the seats were headed to my house.

But wait!

There was a bonus. A story. An antique is just an object, but an antique with a story becomes a treasure. Stacy said the theater seats were said to have once provided seating for movie patrons at Center’s almost 100-year-old historic Rio Theatre. Still showing movies on the downtown square.

The Rio Theatre has a history of its own. It was built and opened in 1926 by the C.P. Smith family and has been in continuous operation since. It was originally named the Shelby but changed to “Rio” when neon was added. As the story goes, the high cost of neon made the shorter name “Rio” with half the number of letters the more economical choice.

Mike and Nita Adkison bought the Rio in 1975 and renovated it to keep its vintage appearance and feel.

“I recognize this part,” Mike said, pointing to a cell phone photo of the seats. “And this part here,” he noted of the armrests. “I thought the sides were straight and these are curved, but that was a long time ago.”

“Yep,” he finally confirmed, “These seats came from the Rio. Replacing the seats was one of the first things we did when we bought the Rio.” Nita’s recollection added specifics. “Those are the seats that were in the balcony.”

I think I’ll invite friends over to enjoy a cup of coffee and a movie. A movie viewed from seats that, in all likelihood, were once occupied by Center movie patrons watching all-time movie favorites gracing the silver screen over the years. Gone With the Wind in 1939. Citizen Cane in 1941. Casablanca in 1942. On the Waterfront in 1954. Lawrence of Arabia in 1962. Maybe even the Godfather in 1972.

Y’all come on. I don’t have a balcony, but I’ll make the popcorn.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune,  the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 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.

Call it the end of a chapter,
The next stanza of the song.
But the party’s not yet over,
There’ll be no sad, “… so long.”

— The first verse from a new song I’m working on.

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How many ways does one write, “Hello, I’m the new publisher?”

With my first publishing assignment at The East Texas Light in Center some 43 years ago, that message began like this:  “’I’m ready for you, world … is the world ready for me,’ sings Kermit the Frog in The Muppet Movie as he heads for California and Hollywood. Being charged with the responsibility of publishing a newspaper summons me to ask, ‘Are you ready?’ The answer to that lies in the fact that here I am writing this column to answer my questions as much as to answer yours.”

Following that, I noted a few basic principles which I believed then to be the foundation of community newspapers. Principles that have not changed since communication became my calling. A common interest in the hopes, the fears, the happiness, and the sadness of a community. “Reporting the news, good and bad, fully and objectively—all of the news without favoritism, is any newspaper’s highest task, and to that end, I fully subscribe.”

Similar new-publisher-in-town pieces followed with my arrival at Boerne, Marlin, and Naples, before I found myself back in Center a few years later. When “hello” took on a different vibe. That column began, “Some 30-plus years and a resume of publishing stints later, I’m the new publisher at an old newspaper.” In that one, I engaged a line from Ben Kweller’s tune ‘Full Circle’ allowing as how the singer is ‘… havin’ fun sittin’ shotgun ’cause I’ve come full circle.’ 

“I can’t escape the music of this business,” I wrote. “I’ve left a couple of times, not so much by choice, but more so by following my muse. And once again, she has whispered softly in my ear. Crooning her hypnotic song, ‘I’m baaack.'”

Little did I know, however, that even then she wasn’t through with me. That I would make one more “homecoming” at The Light and Champion, Shelby County’s newspaper, three years and seven months ago September 1.

But now the time has come to write that other column. That “good-bye” to the newspaper community piece. How does one say “so long” to a community that has always greeted me with hospitality, appreciation and most importantly, respect? Which I appreciate, recalling my father telling me years ago, “… respect and love have two things in common, son. No one gives you the genuine article for free. You have to earn them.”

First, I say “thanks” to each and every one from the bottom of my heart. The readers, the advertisers, staff members, and associates, the mentors and newspaper owners who opened the doors of opportunity for me along the way. To all, I extend my sincere appreciation. It would not have happened without you. And, in the words of the old crooner, Bob Hope, I will say, “Thanks for the memories.”

But here is where we depart from the normal parting. While this will be my last week as editor and publisher of The Light and Champion, there will be no “goodbye” to the community that has graciously embraced the newspaper during the time I have been fortunate enough to serve as its caretaker.

I have no plans to leave Center. And, I’ve lived my life following the dream that wearing out is a far better option than rusting out. A feeling affirmed by quizzing my retired friends.

“Retirement is all right,” said one. “The only trouble I’ve found with retirement is that you never get a day off.”

Said another, “I’m spending my time trying to find something to do with the time I rushed through life trying to save.”

The best answer, however, the one I embraced long ago is, “Being at the end of something should be viewed as being at the beginning of something else.”

What that something else might be is but a vision today as I cobble these thoughts into my last weekly column wearing the title of editor and publisher. And on that thought, rest assured this weekly column will continue. I can’t quit. For too many years, it’s been my cheap therapy. Writing helps me to put order in the weekly chaos we call life.

Therefore, wherever you see me pop up down the road, I will still be writing. Not just for local readers, but also for the handful of other newspapers and magazines where my column appears.

“Thank you” to everyone who stopped in at the office Friday afternoon, some coming from as far away as Austin with decades of memories, laughter, and well wishes. And, If I didn’t see you at the office Friday, I’ll see you around town. Somewhere. Soon.

In the meantime, I’ll be working on my new song.

It’s still a work in progress, you know.

— Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are published in these newspapers and magazines: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune,  the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, The Fort Stockton Pioneer, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

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

“I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going.”

— Maya Angelou, (1928 – 2014) American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist.

. . . . . . . . . . .

I’ve been looking back through tons of archived yellowing newsprint for the last year or more. Perusing things I’ve written in preparation for authoring a collection of my work for posterity. For my children. For future garage sales.

And, the strangest thing has been happening.  The more I read, the more I learn about the person who started all of this. For instance, this piece I penned December 4, 1975, and published in The Naples Monitor. One that I had long forgotten ever having written. 

“Every county has an abundance of old cemeteries and Morris County is no exception,” it started. “Cemeteries rich in history, sentiment, and knowledge. Most of it not recorded anywhere outside of weathering marble that is all too often crumbling and surrounded by overgrown grass and weeds.”

That intro paragraph evoked memories of my mother and her sisters combing Kentucky cemeteries every summer during family reunions. Hot summers driving miles to graveyards on hillsides and behind country churches. Time, that as a kid, I preferred to have been splashing in a mountain stream somewhere close to a picnic lunch instead of cleaning decaying grave markers trying to read names and dates.

“Besides being the final resting place for the earthly remains of relatives, friends, and loved ones, old country cemeteries reflect a lot about us,” I wrote.

“Public cemeteries are, relatively speaking, something of recent times. Before becoming the “here today and there tomorrow” mobile society that moves every few years we have become, people were often born, lived and died in the same area, if not the same parcel of land.”

A good example of which played out about the same time this 1975 missive appeared in print. I was standing at the parts department counter at Sandlin Chevrolet and Oldsmobile on Mount Pleasant’s north side. The same place where the business established in 1937 still sits today. 

A sign a couple hundred yards north of there on Highway 271 north declared the tiny burg of Talco to be 17 miles away.

While I waited for my order to be filled, an older gentleman came in looking for a part for his aging Chevy truck, announcing that he had just come from Talco. While one of the parts guys, probably Alvie Neely or “Cotton” Huff, both of whom worked there at the time, was in the back retrieving what he needed, the old guy gazed out the window at the 271 and Highway 67 intersection in front of the Titus County dealership. 

“This north end of Mount Pleasant sure has changed since the last time I was down here,” he drawled. 

“Really,” I asked. “How long’s it been since you ventured over from Talco,” I inquired. Just to make conversation while we both waited.

He thought for a minute before replying, “… near about 17 years. I don’t get far from the farm very often,” he laughed. 

“Hence,” my 49-year-old column continued, “most families had their own cemetery where family members were buried.” Like the Kentucky mountaintop property where my mom’s great-grandparents were born, lived, died, and were buried. A hike that required wading a river up to that plot one summer in the 1980s leading to a small family cemetery with Johnson tombstones bearing date in the 1700s. 

“Visits to one of the older plots will often reveal family lineage bearing birth and death dates etched in stone; some with a line of wit, wisdom, or philosophy inferring that the one interred is ‘gone but not forgotten’  or is ‘waiting for us on the side.’

Like to one I read about once, where supposedly inscribed in stone was, “Here lies poor ol Henry Howell, shined his shoes with his wife’s guest towel.”

“Other times, associations formed by the departed are recorded, such as military records from recent skirmishes to the Civil War or earlier. Here in the South, the inscription C.S.A. is common on old markers noting the person had served in the military for the Confederate States of America. Others often honored membership in a brotherhood or a lodge.

Also common on older markers is the deceased’s cause of death. Particularly if it was some sort of plague, pestilence, or territorial dispute that may have robbed families and communities of multiple members.

While all this enlightenment tells us much about the departed person while still among the living, a glance around the local Boot Hill can also offer insight into the living before they became cemetery residents. 

Learning more about ourselves by studying our past.

Or in my case, reading what I wrote a lifetime ago revealing more about who I am today.

—Leon Aldridge

(Original art and photos above by Leon Aldridge, 1975)

. . . . . . . . . . .

Aldridge columns are published in these Texas newspapers: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune,  the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, and The Monitor in Naples.

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

“The same world spins around,
I guess some things never change.”
— Song lyrics by Tim McGraw, American country music artist

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“The newspaper business just isn’t what it used to be,” a good friend called to lament last week. Like me, he’s had that printer’s ink in his veins since the time we learned to write about the world around us.

“Yes, it is,” I disagreed sharply. “Different opportunities and tools with digital and all that stuff, but it’s still the same business.”

“Enlighten me learned one,” he laughed. “I’m not feeling it today.”

I reminded him that it’s first, still all about people and what matters most to them. Keeping readers informed and earning their trust. “Schools, taxes, elections, local issues, the economy, politics, fairs, ribbon cuttings … only the names in the news have changed.”

“It used to be fun, though,” my naysayer retorted.

“It still is,” I touted him. “For instance, anyone tell you lately you need to be tougher. Write about ‘the way things really are’ in this town? Then, the same day, you get a call from a reader who opens up on you, blasting an article you ran last week that ‘was too harsh.’ Tells you, ‘Some things just don’t belong in the paper. It would help if you were a little gentler with the people who live and work here. I’m ready to see some good news for a change.’”

Been told by anyone from the senior population lately, “You should do more articles about our seniors in the community. They really are your biggest readership, you know. They deserve more coverage.” Then told the next day by a parent who is active in parent-teacher organizations that you should publish more school news. “All you ever have is things about the senior citizen’s gatherings and the historical columns about how things used to be. Our future depends on the young people.”

“I think I see where this going,” my friend said.

“Anybody walked into your office lately, picked a paper up off the counter, flipped through it before paying, and say, ‘Is there anything in here worth reading this week?’ You want to tell him, “We only had enough advertising for ten pages, but we ran 14 because we value our dedication to delivering all of the news.”

But you hold your tongue instead, and even manage a smile. Because it’s all about them. The readers. Not us; we merely report it.

“Does your phone still ring with one of your best advertisers saying, ‘Hey, my boy got stopped for DUI last night. You know kids will be kids,’ he laughs. ‘Do me a favor, will you. And keep his name out of the paper.’ We still take a deep breath and say, ‘if a name is on the records, it will be in the paper. If it’s not on the record, it won’t be in the paper. Simple as that and we can’t make exceptions because playing favorites is not fair and balanced journalism, and that’s not an option with us.’”

“That’s not fair,” they still growl.”  You’re going to ruin his life.” We apologize and humbly suggest that, yes, it really is fair. Because we don’t make the news, we simply strive to report it fairly. For everyone.

“You know how much I spend with you, don’t you” he asks? “Well, cancel my advertising. See how fair you think that is.” Click.

We take a deep breath and walk up front to greet the advertiser who is waiting to see us. The one who greets us with a smile and says, “That ad you did for me this week looks great! Can I get a half-dozen copies of the paper? I want to put my up in the store where customers can see it.”

“Sure,” we tell them, and hand him a dozen copies with our thanks. “What do I owe you,” he says, sticking his hand in his pocket. “Nothing,” we wave him off. “We appreciate your business.”

I reminded my friend that we’ve been through this scenario, and more, since we first got into this business, and we’re still going through it today. Because we believe in what we do and we don’t know of anyone else who will do it if we don’t.

“So, you see,” I concluded. “Nothing has really changed.” 

That’s supposed to cheer me up”” he asked?”

“Yes, but if not, think about this. The total strangers that still tell us they like the paper because we put out a good product. That we do a good job reporting the news. Aren’t those still the ones you remember the longest?” 

“Like the guy at the gas pump a couple of weeks ago,” I continued. “Didn’t know him from Adam. We made eye contact from opposite sides of the pump. I nodded and said, “Hello.”

He replied, “I enjoy your columns and I enjoy reading the paper every week.”

“Thank you,” I told him. And added how much I appreciated his support.

Then there’s the little lady who came in yesterday to renew her ”prescription,” as she called it. “I just love getting the paper,” she smiled. “I wanted to make sure mine was paid up.'”

I thanked her with a smile and told her how much I appreciated her reading the paper.

“So, you see,” I told my colleague. “It’s still all about people and what matters most to them—keeping readers informed and earning their trust. Only the names in the news have changed.”

And more than ever, appreciating the ones who appreciate what we do.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune,  the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 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.

Style icons always change, and they usually inspire my haircuts more than anything else.

— Maya Hawke – American actress and singer-songwriter.

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A haircut isn’t something I think about a lot these days. Because a small crop is easier to manage, haircuts are a minor thing anymore.

If I look in the morning mirror and the old guy looking back at me has hair over his ears, he’s off to Boyd’s Barber Shop in Center for a trim. Boyd runs an old-fashioned barber shop, he does a good job, and the haircut comes with the latest politics, public opinion, and what’s happening around town.

Sitting in a barber chair is also a reminder of Saturdays spent as a kid reading Popular Mechanics magazine while ‘getting my ears lowered’ at Chris Durant’s shop in Mount Pleasant. Just in time to make the matinee next door at the Martin Theater. No appointment needed. Just go in, take a seat, find something to read, and wait for the barber to call, “Next.”

Hairstyles have trended since then. I see long hair, short hair, hair on top of the head, shaved on the sides. I see artistic designs sculpted in hair. I see green hair, purple hair, blue hair. Sometimes, different colors and cuts on the same head. All attempts at being trendy.

Sometimes, it’s fun to be classified as trendy. But if you’re like my Uncle Bill,  my mother’s baby brother, you simply pick one hairstyle and stick with it. Because what goes around comes around. Uncle Bill is 89 and wears his hair just like he’s always worn it. In a style that was trendy when he adopted it as a youngster. But Uncle Bill didn’t change with new styles coming along. He stuck with the ducktail haircut he’s sported since he was a kid just coming out of the 1940s.

Over the years, the ducktail has been trendy, then faded away only to return a generation or so later. And I hear it’s coming back again.

In case you missed it, the ducktail is a men’s haircut style first popularized during the early 1950s. It was also called the duck’s tail or sometimes simply D.A., which is an abbreviated reference to another name derived from the south end of a northbound duck. And that’s all I’m going to say. You’ll have to figure out the rest on your own.

The hairstyle’s origin is credited to Philadelphia barber Joe Cirello, who said he invented it in 1940. History records that he called the combed-back hair held in place on the back of the head by pomade ‘The Swing,’ after the music style of the day. After becoming a fad with young males in the early 1950s, it was also sometimes associated with those discontented with authority during the era.

Picture James Dean in the movie “Rebel Without a Cause.”

In any case, Uncle Bill adopted the look early in his life and stuck with it. After Elvis Presley, poodle skirts, and custom Mercurys in the 1950s came the British Invasion in music, the Vietnam War, and the “one giant step for mankind” in the 1960s. Through it all, Uncle Bill kept his haircut despite being told he was “out of style” as the 1970s approached.

Did it bother him? Nope. He continued to comb his hair back in a ducktail fashion, just like he always had, like “Kookie” on the 1950s television series “77 Sunset Strip.”

The first revival of ducktails came with the 1950s comeback in the 1980s. Mainstream marketing utilized 1950s cars and music to sell new products, and flat tops and ducktails were back in vogue. Uncle Bill was back in style—again—but oblivious to it all because he never abandoned his original hairstyle.

And now, with hints of another comeback for D.A.s, Uncle Bill will find himself back in style. Again. Even in shades of gray, his hair is combed back on both sides to meet in the back, just like it was in the 1950s.

Uncle Bill has always been my hero. But I’ve never gotten caught up in being trendy and I’ve never styled my hair in a ducktail cut. The flat top was my style from grade school and halfway through my senior year of high school when I let it grow to a late 60s length. After helping the ag major cowboys at East Texas State University defend the flagpole from which a group of hippies tried to remove the flag.

The only change in the years since has been color.  And I didn’t make that change; time and raising kids did it for me. “My hair is turning gray,” I bemoaned to my barber one day in my late 40s. Comb and scissors still clicking away, he replied, “Just be glad it’s not turning loose.”

Today, I’m still blessed with hair to comb, although gray. But I’ve been wondering, should I try being trendy. Like Uncle Bill?

Who knows, I may have enough hair to cover that place on the back where it’s getting thin.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune,  the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

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

“I’m going to finish my book of columns this year.”

— I said that. Which means I really have to do it now.

Reviewing columns you’ve written for almost half a century will jog memories. Floods of them. A few that stand out more than others.

For me, those are pieces about people I’ve met along the journey. Ordinary people with extraordinary stories. Like one I penned about a Naples resident back when I was a much younger journalist working at The Monitor.

In fact, that stint in Morris County was my first newspaper job. The date at the top of the page that week was May 13, 1976. Reading it last week for the first time in decades was a flashback.

Somewhere among the collections of good advice and old sayings, that one begins, there is one admonition that Andrew J. Young of Naples has apparently followed throughout his life.

“Keep a song in your heart.”

When I visited him recently, he showed me songbooks stacked beside his bed marked with page numbers on the front. Selected pages revealed their significance. The ones with credits that read “Copyright 1953 by Stamps Quartet Music Co., Inc. Words and Music by Andrew J. Young.”

A yellowed piece of letterhead stationery tucked in a scrapbook page announced “Andrew J. Young — teacher, scoring for orchestra, arranging, songs, anthems, and choral pieces, composer and editor.”

Born in Marietta, Texas, 82 years ago, Young said he was a farm boy until he was nearly 23. “I was raised on the farm,” he said. “But when I left it—I left it. I have no desire to plant flowers, put out peach trees, or anything like that.”

Young said music has been his life’s work. “Been playin’ the piano since I was five years old. My mother sat me down in her lap and started me out just like she did my sister. Made me play five days a week, all the time I was at home.”

Then leaning closer, Young added with a gleam in his eye, “I hated it. Thought it was something for girls only, you know, kind of sissy.”

“In 1917, I went off to the war. Wasn’t quite 23 years old,” Young remembered. “They gathered up several thousand of us and sent us to England. We were sent to perform all kinds of trades. I had signed up for the air corps, so they put me in a group that trained under the British Air Force, which the United States didn’t recognize at the time … they trained us in the basics of flyin’ an airplane.

“They flew ‘Jenny’s’ back in those days,” he recalled thoughtfully. “Didn’t even have parachutes. Came home after Armistice Day and haven’t been in one since.”

Young’s thoughts drifted. He gazed, pointing toward the sky with his cane. “Looked out the other day and saw one of those jets goin’ across the sky. Watched it until it went clear out of sight.” Bringing  his thoughts closer to earth, he continued, “I’m gonna fly in one of them someday, just to see what it’s like.”

While his love has been music, his labor has been a brick and plaster mason. Young said he’s done quite a bit of work in the area, including the David Granbury Memorial Hospital at Naples and the school building and rock fence at the James Bowie School at Simms.

“I’m going to try to talk them into lettin’ me lay just a few of the brick on the new hospital addition,” he grinned. “If they’ll let me.”

‘Mr. Andrew,’ as he is known by almost everyone, is probably best remembered for conducting the old singing schools that used to be a way of life in northeast Texas. Three-week affairs. Eighteen days, eight hours a day of the science of music.

“I started teaching singing schools before the war,” Young said. “Taught them all through the years. Taught 57 in Cass County alone. More than anyone living or dead.”

“You know, there’s joy in takin’ someone who can’t even sing … never even thought about carryin’ a tune and teachin’ them about music,” he said.

“Day before yesterday, I was in Wyninegar’s (drug store in Naples),” Young laughed. “This fellow came up to me and said, ‘I think l know who I’m talkin’ to. You taught me in a singing school at Rocky Branch in 1915.’ And I told him he was right, except it was l916. l remembered it because I taught the one at Rocky Branch right before I went into the war.”

“Spent some time in California doing some plaster work,” the musician turned brick mason continued. “Came back to Naples and heard that there was a lot of work goin’ on in Texarkana. So I moved over there and wound up stayin’ several years.

“The seventh day of August last year, I was brought to Naples and put in the hospital with pneumonia,” he said. “Didn’t know anyone or anything for 27 days. I was brought from the hospital to here at Redbud (nursing home) and have been here ever since.

“With the help of the folks here … and above,” Young added, pointing his cane upward, “I have gained my strength back, and can play the piano again … and walk to town every day.”

Still active in piano playing, ‘Mr. Andrew’ plays for many activities at Redbud. He maintains the pianos and keeps them in tune. In addition, he advertises actively for piano repairs and tuning work.

If we were all were charged with one sentence to describe our life, Andrew J. Young could have done no better when he said, “Singing and playin’ the piano … it’s been my life.”

—Leon Aldridge

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(Photo at top of the page: Andrew Young at the piano at Redbud Nursing Home in Naples, Texas taken by Leon Aldridge in May of 1976.)

Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune,  the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 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.

“Grandmas hold our hands for just a little while but hold our hearts forever.”

— Unknown

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It was a simple principle. And it worked.

The little red plastic car had a magnet in it. Another magnet was molded in the hand-held piece shaped to fit two fingers. Two tiny fingers.

“Remember how I showed you,” I recall her telling me. “Do it the way you’re supposed to, and it will work.”

I sighed and tried it again. The way she had told me to do it in the beginning. And just like magic, when I waved my finers over the toy car, it rolled across the tabletop. Propelled by the scientific principle of opposing magnetic fields.

My dad’s mom spent a lot of time with children. Her grandchildren, the neighbor’s children, anybody’s children who came to her house.

She had lots of practice. She did it most of her life. Born in 1905 and married at age fifteen, she was raising my father by the time she was 18.

My father was adopted by his brother and his wife in 1924 when he was not yet a year old.

The couple my dad knew only as mother and dad were biologically his aunt and uncle. My sisters and I knew them as grandmother and granddaddy. However, the family relationship would not have been any different by any other names. Nor could the love have ever been any stronger.

Raising kids and running a household was all that Granny ever knew. In her 88 years, she never had an employer and never drew a paycheck. But she worked seven days a week, loving her family, raising her child, and (to hear her tell it) helping raise other children—hers, her neighbors, her friends.

Nobody knows to what degree she actually “raised” them. But if she ever wiped their noses, fixed them a meal, refereed a disagreement, or helped get them back on the “straight and narrow,” she laid claim to some part or parcel of their raising.

She was just that way. She helped where she was needed, giving of herself and what little she and my grandfather had to offer.

And it wasn’t necessarily a question of need. Most of “Granny’s kids” had good homes. They simply enjoyed visiting hers because of the warmth and love they found there.

I was blessed with loving parents. But I was “twice blessed.” I had her for a grandmother.

During visits to her house, she sometimes crafted toys from spools, paper, string, and other improvised household items.

On rare occasions, we frequented the toy store on Main Street next to the post office to splurge for a model kit.

That could be where the toy car I found myself playing with again last week came from. I just remembered it stayed in “my drawer” in her chifforobe. The same bottom drawer where some of my father’s old toys aged with mine.

When I grew from toy cars to real ones, she continued to help “raise me,” offering advice, solicited and otherwise, on navigating the perils of adulthood while enjoying the happiness of a life well lived.

When I decided to buy my first car at age 14, I told her all about a used 1951 Chevy I found, sharing with her my experience of going to the bank with my father to learn about financing. She promptly warned me about the evils of borrowing money. That it was better to “save up to buy what you need.”

“I raised your father better than that,” she added with a scowl.

The she pulled her “pocketbook” from its hiding place in the closet and gave me the money to buy the car. But only after making it plain that she expected to see  me every week when I got paid at my new after-school job at Beall’s Department Store.

“You can just pay me,” she said. That way, “You don’t have to pay any interest.”

The toy car resides in a display case with other automotive memorabilia. And it still works perfectly when I play with it. Employing time-tested principles that have never changed.

I try it every now and then, just to think about her. Recalling her philosophies about the happiness of a life well lived.

All, time-tested principles that still work today.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune,  the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 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.