A Story Worth Telling

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

— Eleanor Roosevelt

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Looking back is part of the fun of having writen a weekly column for decades.

It’s something I’m trying to do more of at the beginning of every new year. Revisiting dreams. Laughing at resolutions. Reflecting on what was worthy of writing about, both now and back then.

“What is a resolution,” she asked. The young visiting family member was barely taller than the table where my laptop rested as I sat writing. She quietly watched me working at the 1950s chrome dinette that occupies my breakfast room. A seat offering the most incredible view of the sunrise, my neighborhood, and that stop sign across the street at which no one ever stops. 

“It’s making plans for a new year as the old year fades away,” I offered my young visitor as small talk. “So, have you made a plan for living the story of your life next year?”

She smiled politely. But she didn’t have a clue. I could tell by the look on her face. It was the same look I often see in the mirror while finalizing plans that include little more flash than enjoying the fireworks. 

New Year’s Day, for me, always comes with the prospect of celebrating another birthday in January. I count that as a blessing. And, regardless of one’s personal reaction to birthdays, I’m still holding to the opinion that continuing to have them is the best blessing.

I used to note specific birthdays as “landmarks.” You know, ones that end with a zero. This is not one of those years for me. These days, however, I regard every birthday as a landmark. Deserving of particular contemplation. Plus, I’m also trying to look beyond the rudimentary resolutions list. Lose weight. Save more money. Learn something new. Be a nicer person. Return all my overdue library books. 

But in recent years, something that has dominated my mind is the fear of not using my imagination like I used to. Failing to be creative. Not making time to dream. Forgetting to play more.

“Can I go out and play,” my young observer asked. 

“Ask your mother,” I encouraged her. “Personally, I think it’s a great idea. But I don’t want to create a family tiff while y’all are here visiting for the holidays.” 

We all played as children, using imagination to become cowboys rounding up the bad guys. Movie stars in the Hollywood spotlight. Airplane pilots flying high above the earth. But there’s just something about this adulting thing gig makes us think growing up is mandatory. Stop acting like a kid. Take on more responsibility. 

And what happens with that? We forget how to play.

Playing is important. Truthfully, a fine line exists between a child’s play and an adult’s imagination. Both require using the mind to discover what’s hidden in the heart. Spending life going, doing, looking, documenting, and collecting is one thing. And to be sure, a modicum of that activity motivates us to figure out what our life story is about. 

But it’s occurred to me lately that the real story of life lies in the journey. A curiosity about the world we’re passing through. A daydream about the way we want the story to go. Scripting the life we desire instead of just existing long enough to file one more tax return.

We should, you know. After all, it’s our life, and the best part is we get to write the story ourselves.  

Going confidently in the direction of our dreams, like we did as a child, without fearing mistakes. Perfection comes not by avoiding mistakes but by learning from them. Playing as a child meant sometimes falling off our stick horse. But we wiped away the tears and got back on it. Because if we didn’t, the bad guys would have escaped.

The best thing about our life story is that it is never too late to start. Or to kindle a restart. Best sellers are not written in chronological order. Look behind the scenes of any “overnight success,” and there is usually years of hard work and failure.

“A resolution,” I told my inquisitive young visitor, “is a plan. And my plan for this year is getting back to playing more. Using my imagination to live out the stories of life we all dream of as kids. So once again, I’m resolving to play during the journey. Dream every day. Be the person I want the people around me to be. And let that adulting stuff magically take care of itself.”

She looked at me with that same look. She smiled, but didn’t she have a clue. I could tell by the look on her face. 

“Come on,” I said, taking her hand. “Let’s go outside and play. Maybe even set off some fireworks. Then we’ll both in trouble. But it will be soooo much fun!”

Happy New Year! Watch a sunrise. Dream more often. Ignore some of those “pretending to be an adult” stop signs. Go out and play in 2024.

—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.

“Families are like branches on a tree. We grow in different directions, yet our roots remain as one.”

– Unknown

Dear Sarah and Luke,

Congratulations! Your December 23 wedding was beautiful! I wish you two the best of God’s blessings in life.

With this letter, Sarah, I’m finally doing something your mother suggested I do when you and Haven graduated from high school. To write each of you a letter. I never got around to doing that for a number of reasons, all pitiful excuses honestly. And I’m sorry that I didn’t. Apparently, the muse must have been on vacation.

But when I learned you were getting married, the idea of the letter came to mind. This time, a specific thought filled my heart. Writers can be a little quirky like that. So, we can now tell your mother that I am finally doing what she once suggested. Kind of. Just a little later. She will probably smile. Because she knows her father is a little quirky like that.

With a bit of luck, perhaps I can mark future occasions in the lives of your brothers and sisters with a letter from Grandpa Leon.

As I told you at the wedding, I have a letter to my mother written to her by her father on the occasion of her marriage .

Your father, being the good man and loving parent I know him to be, has likely offered you similar advice. From a family historical perspective, I simply want to share a letter of advice offered almost 80 years ago by another father in your family. Plus, it will make your mother smile. Again. Because she knows how I am about family history.

When I remember where I filed it, which I pray will happen before your first anniversary, I will give you a copy of that letter.

The letter was written by Arthur G. Johnson, your great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side. He was born and reared in Kentucky and lived most of his life in Winchester. He was a schoolteacher and principal. His daughter, who became my mother and your great-grandmother, was born Indianola Johnson in 1923 in Winchester. She was the oldest sibling in her family. She had three sisters and one brother who lived to adulthood and one brother who passed away at a young age.

In 1944, she married Leon Aldridge, my father and your great-grandfather “to be.” He was born in Doyle, La., the last of 13 children. His mother died giving birth to him, and he was raised in Pittsburg, Texas, by his biological uncle and wife, Sylvester and Hattie Aldridge. He never knew them as anything other than “mom and dad.” Likewise, they were Grandmother and Granddaddy to my sisters and me, and she was Gran Gran to your mother.

My mother was the first of her siblings to marry. She did that at the age of 21 by traveling to Texas, where they were married at the Pittsburg Methodist Church parsonage just a few days before he shipped out for combat duty in Europe with the U.S. Army 276th Combat Engineers during World War II. She lived in Pittsburg with my father’s parents until he returned the following year.

They were married for 62 years until he passed away in April of 2007. I have photos of them holding you and Haven as newborns.

Family was important to Arthur Johnson, who, with his wife Bernice, raised their children in a large white two-story home that still stands today at 382 South Main in Winchester, Kentucky.

When I first read the letter, I tried to fathom the emotion with which my mother’s father penned it knowing his oldest child was following her husband-to-be 800 miles from home to Texas to marry. And that within days of their marriage, her new husband would leave for how long, she had no idea. To fight in a war. One from which many husbands and fathers did not return.

In the letter, he wished his daughter love and happiness, encouraging her to do four things:
• Stay true to God.
• Stay true to your husband.
• Stay true to yourself.
• Stay close to your family and get together often.

Arthur Johnson’s children took the advice of staying close to family to heart. Although they settled from Ohio to Texas to California, they had family reunions every summer in Kentucky. Really — every summer. Without fail. Some driving days to attend.

Those reunions are precious childhood memories for me. And because of them, my generation of cousins are more like brothers and sisters than cousins.

Today, two of Mom’s siblings remain. Uncle Bill, the youngest, turned 88 this year. Aunt Jo is 93. My generation continues the tradition with some degree of success. We meet in Kentucky every five years or so and in Abilene for other years. Because that is where Uncle Bill and Aunt Jo live, and they are not able to travel.

Your mom and dad have created a beautiful family with values and a bond like none I have ever known. I suspect there may be a bit of Arthur Johnson’s heritage there somewhere. I once asked your mom, an incredible woman in so many ways, “Robin, how did you do that? You sure didn’t learn it from me?”

She just smiled. Like she always has. Because she knows her father.

I know that’s a boatload of family history in one heap, some you may have already heard from your mother. But the thought of that letter Mom kept in her cedar chest her whole life, both of you marrying at the same age, both of you the oldest sibling, and both coming from homes with strong family values was on my heart at the wedding. And the muse, fickle as she can be at times, would not let me pass on the opportunity to share it with you.

So, I wanted to write the letter to you, Sarah. Hopefully, it will make everyone smile. Especially your Mom. Because I like to see her smile.

Many smiles and much love to you and Luke. And Happy New Year!

Grandpa Leon

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(Photo credit — The perfect wedding photo taken by the father of of the bride, Jonathan Osteen.)

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 2023. 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.

“A sister is someone who knows everything about you and loves you anyway.“

— Author unknown 

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It was just a few days ago.

November 14. 11:04 p.m. “Ding.” A late night text.

My bedtime routine is … well, routine. With the best of intentions, I plan to be sound asleep by 10:00. When around 11:00, I’m reading, cleaning house, or sometimes simply struggling to improve my guitar skills, I know I will be midnight getting in bed. Again.

Only one person texts me that late. My baby sister, Sylvia. 

“What are you doing,” her message inquired. That’s her cue for me to call. Sylvia already knows I’m reading, cleaning house, or struggling to improve my guitar skills. If I’m awake.

“Hello,” she always said with that melodic tone of voice. Her clocks were chiming in the background. She had a wall of them. Some on tables. Some on shelves. They made her happy. Most days, Sylvia was a happy camper any time of the day. Especially if she’d been working on crossword puzzles or making something good to eat. “Made some of mom’s pimento cheese today. You should be here.”

Thinking about eating anything my youngest sister prepared in her kitchen made me wish I were there. Mom’s pimento cheese. Kentucky Snappy Cheese. A cheese sandwich. Anything. 

November 16. 3:26 p.m. “Ding.”

“I had a Reuban at the Anvil.” 

“I’m jealous,” I replied. “So, you went to Pittsburg today? Are you moved in at Mount Pleasant?”

Sylvia was in the middle of a move from Longview, her home for the last 30 years or so. She was moving to Mount Pleasant where my sisters and I grew up and graduated from high school. I’m the oldest, Sylvia; the youngest. Leslie fits somewhere there in the middle. 

Mom always said she didn’t feel old until all of her children were in their 40s. When Sylvia turned 70 earlier this year, I wondered how Mom might have felt when all of her children were in their 70s. We lost Mom on December 10, thirteen years ago.

“Not yet,” Sylvia responded about the move. “It will be a slow process.” 

My sisters and I talked frequently at times, infrequently at others. Sometimes about nothing in particular, others about specific problems. I was lucky. I could confide in both of them, confessing my fears and concerns. They knew everything about me and loved me anyway.

And they were always compassionate. Leslie is typically quick to offer, “It will be OK. Everything will work out.” Sylvia was equally encouraging with words like, “Well, that was dumb, Bubba. So, how’s that working for you?” But she said it with love.

Anytime Sylvia and I weren’t solving a crisis, we talked about food.

November 25. 4:34 p.m. “Ding.” 

“Eating at Nicky’s in Bossier City.” A picture of the sign followed.

“Great place,” I replied. The food is still just as good as when we ate there many years ago with Joe and Mary Greene.”

November 19. 10:36 p.m. “Ding.”

“Can you call me when you get a minute?”

“What’s up,” I asked. 

“Are you still coming for Thanksgiving?

“Yes. What do you need me to bring?”

“Just a dessert.”

Thanksgiving at her house this year was small. Just me, Sylvia, her daughter Diana, and grandson Aiden. Aldridge gatherings that once numbered a dozen, 15, or 20 are smaller now. Kids grow up and move away. Older generations might not be able to attend. Sometimes, it’s another family member’s name in the family Bible with that second date added after the dash.

We all talked and ate. Diana and Aiden left for another round of Thanksgiving at someone else’s house, and we talked some more. Just Sylvia and me. Settling on the couch and talking is usually all I’m suitable for after Thanksgiving dinner. 

Her clocks had struck two when we started. I left just before they chimed six. “That’s as long as we’ve talked in a long time,” she said. “It was nice,” I agreed. “Let’s do it again. Soon.”

December 13. 4:04 p.m. “Ding.” It wasn’t late. There was no small talk. No questions. One message. “In the ER.” We exchanged short messages until she wrote, “They are keeping me overnight,” adding that tests found nothing other than “abnormal bloodwork.” Whatever that means. 

“Keep us updated,” I responded. “Let me know if there is anything I can come up there and do. I’m not that far away. Love you!!!”

“Thanks,” she replied.

The phone call came early the next morning. One of those you know when it rings — you just know. Good news seldom comes that early.

Sylvia Anne Aldridge Crooks’ life spanned 70 years, six months, and 23 days before she became the most recent name in the family Bible with that second date added after the dash.

It was just a few days ago. My phone has fallen silent after 10. No clocks chiming. And we will have to wait for that next talk we were going to have.  

Sisters are the best. I love how they’ve always known everything about me. And how they’ve loved me anyway.

— Epilogue —

Christmas columns are often random recollections of the joys of Christmas, past and present. Like everything in life, however, periods of joy and grief intersecting show no respect for time or circumstance. However, those who believe in God accept all seasons of life knowing He is in control. Because we also believe that time here on earth is little more than a period of preparation.  And because we are truly thankful for the many Christmases we were blessed to share with Sylvia.

My sincere wish for each of you is a Merry Christmas with family, friends, and loved ones. Cherish every moment.

—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 2023. 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.

“Your big-time writer is a person with incredibly poignant things to say about life and the profundity of the human condition … a columnist’s highest aspiration is for someone to cut his or her column out of the paper and hang it on the refrigerator.”

— Sean Dietrich, columnist, novelist, instrumentalist, singer, and stand-up storyteller.

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“Sean of the South,” the program flyer proclaimed. “After the show, stick around to meet Sean, hug his neck, and maybe share a story of your own.”

As someone who has written a weekly column off and on for some 40 years, I also read a lot of columns. Especially the storytelling kind. Hence, the tagline on my weekly word offering; “A Story Worth Telling.”

Sean Dietrich also tells stories in columns. He’s famous. I’m not. Yet. And he writes a column every day while I struggle to string stories together once a week.

I remember Paul Crume’s “Big D” column on the front page of the Dallas Morning News every Sunday through Friday for 24 years. I read Crume’s column in high school and college durin the 60s and 70s.

Reading columns was something I relished long before the thought ever crossed my mind that I might one day grow up and pretend to be a column writer.

In addition to writing a daily column and having authored 15 books, Dietrich’s work has appeared in Newsweek, Southern Living, Reader’s Digest, Garden and Gun, The Tallahassee Democrat, the Birmingham News, and The Mobile Press-Register. And his column appears in newspapers throughout the U.S.

Not just an overachiever in writing; he entertains with his stand up story telling, plays multiple instruments, sings, and appears on the Grand OIe Opry, too.

Sunday afternoon a week ago, Dietrich was in Mineola, Texas, of all places. A stretch for someone famous who lives in Birmingham, Alabama. He was there not just as an entertainer, but also as a fundraiser for the Flint and Steel Foundation. According to the same program flyer in each seat at the civic center, “the Wood County non-profit foundation’s aim is to advance educational, recreational, and artistic opportunities for people of all ages in the area, especially older youth and young adults.”

Dietrich entertained for some 90 minutes, intertwining singing, playing several instruments, and relating humorous anecdotes about Southern lifestyles. Said and done, all the proceeds went to the Flint and Steel Foundation. He is just that kind of guy. Something you quickly learn about him if you’re a regular reader of his columns.

Having been one of those regular readers for a few years, I waited after the show to see him. Not for a hug so much as for the unique opportunity to see him in person and simply to shake his hand. Maybe get him to autograph his book I bought before the performance. And I even had a story to tell him. If he had time to listen.

Waiting in line, I thought about the meager feeling of accomplishment I had enjoyed seeing my column audience grow, now published in a handful of Texas newspapers plus a blog for the last eight years. And how that was underscored recently when an automotive magazine contacted me. They wanted to include my column in their publication.

That was the beginning of the story I wanted to share with Sean of the South. If he had time to hear it.

Turns out he had time to hear my story and lots of others. He spent as much time visiting and hugging after the show as he did performing. Taking all the time needed, listening to what anyone who had waited in line had to say.

My time came. I stepped forward; arm extended for a handshake. Instead, he grabbed me in a bear hug with a slap on the back. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “Where are you from?”

“Center,” I said. Reading the “I don’t know where that is” look on his face, I explained. “Just 17 miles from the Louisiana border; closer to Shreveport than any sizable town in Texas.” After expressing my delight with his show and appreciation for his generosity, I added, “I have a quick story to share with you.”

“And I want to hear it,” he said. I told him I was just an old newspaper guy who enjoyed telling stories in columns. One who, after some years, had built an audience in a few newspapers and a weekly blog.

“But the pinnacle of my pursuit,” I continued, “was when Motorsports Magazine wanted to start publishing my work recently. I was super excited when I received my first issue and saw my column in it. Then I turned the page and there was yours. Imagine that,” I said. “My column; published in the same magazine with Sean Dietrich!

“I’ve shown it to everyone,” I added.

The gracious Southern gentleman, writer, storyteller, and musician listened intently without interruption. When I finished, he said with a smile, “Well, if I’m going to be in the same magazine with you, I’m going to have to up my standards.”

“Wow,” I thought while driving home that night. “Maybe someone will cut my column out of a newspaper and hang it on their refrigerator. Someday.”

—Leon Aldridge

(Photo above: Meeting Sean Dietrich, hugging his neck, and sharing a story with Andi Foster, my friend who turned me on to reading the Southern author’s columns. If you don’t already read Sean of the South’s columns, I encourage you to start as soon as possible at https://seandietrich.com/. He famous. I’m not. Yet.)

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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 2023. 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.

“The greatest lesson in life is realizing I still have a lot to learn.”

— Author unknown

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The view from my office window is thought-provoking.

From where I sit on the southeast corner of the downtown Center square, I have a front-row seat for many things. Chief among them is the number of people operating cars who don’t know how to drive. Or how to read traffic signs.

I also see a lot of wreckers. Towing services. “Why would I notice that,” some may ask? It could be related to my first observation about people driving on the square. Or it could be related to personal experience. And memories. My college “self funded scholarship” was working for Sandlin Chevrolet and Olds and Surratt and Heimer body shops in Mount Pleasant.

Johnny Garner at Sandlin’s took a chance on me based on experience gained working the previous summer at Ogner Volkswagen body shop in Canoga Park, California. A memorable summer gig for a 19-year-old, working for the shop manager, my mother’s baby brother, and my Uncle Bill.

Body shops introduced me to the world of wrecker driving. Experience that afforded me many more stories worth telling than painting cars.

In the late ’60s, wreckers were on 24-hour call for one week at a time. As the newbie at Sandlins, I was tagged “the wrecker driver.” Because no one looked forward to sleeping close to the phone for middle-of-the-night calls from the police department.

Every time I bailed out of bed in the middle of the night and hit the road, I came home with a different story.

Some like the family I rescued from the old roadside park on Highway 67 toward Omaha. Where their big Olds VistaCruiser station wagon’s transmission had given up the ghost and left them stranded. With the crippled cruiser ready to two, I set out to engineer a man, his wife, their child, and the family dog into the wrecker’s cab. Miraculously, there was still room for me to drive. Never mind that we were all close friends by the time I dropped them off at the Holiday Inn. Almost too close.

Other memories still haunt me. It was before the invention of “The Jaws of Life.” A time when wrecker drivers were called on to pull mangled doors open or raise crushed car tops. Hopefully, to free injured occupants. Not to aid in the removal of bodies.

And there were rewards sometimes. Like the time I worked a truck wreck on I-30. An overturned semi with a full load. Of bananas. Green bananas. The job took more than one wrecker service. When the rig was righted and ready to tow, the truck driver announced, “Take some of these bananas with you. We can’t sell them since they’ve been involved in an accident. So, take a case. Or two. Or three.”

I stacked my bounty in the kitchen that night, relishing the thought of fresh bananas. In doing so, however, I failed to factor in one thing. The bananas would get ripe. Every one of them at the same time. Mom made banana pudding and banana bread. We ate bananas on cereal. On ice cream. On toast. On things I never thought of eating. We shared bananas with family, friends, neighbors, perfect strangers.

Then there are those unusual stories. The bizarre stories. Warped humor in some cases. But they became stories because laughing is better than crying.

The phone rings, and in minutes, I’m on my way out Highway 67 again. No details, just that DPS needs a wrecker. In the wee hours of the morning and really foggy. I pull up behind the ’69 Dodge black-and-white parked beside the road. Lights flashing. No other vehicles in sight. Just the officer waving his red baton flashlight and a visibly shaken driver sitting in the car.

The trooper pointed down an embankment to the local funeral home’s hearse. Front front end in a creek bottom. Barely visible from the road. I make my way, sliding down to the hearse and pulling the cable. After slithering in the damp darkness under the wrecked vehicle and securing the line on the rear axle, I opened the driver’s door to ensure the transmission was in neutral.

In the dim glow of my flashlight, the first thing I saw was the last thing one wants to encounter in the middle of a foggy night. Another occupant. The impact had broken the casket from its mount in the back, propelling it forward, allowing the dearly departed therein to partially depart the damaged coffin.

I jumped back, fell down, dropped my flashlight. Said things I would have been embarrassed for my sweet Momma to hear her baby boy say.

While gathering my wits and attempting to get up, I heard hee-hawing from up the hill. “I forgot to tell you the funeral home is dispatching another hearse to transfer the body,” the officer shouted through his uncontrolled laughter. “As soon as you get that one back up to the highway.”

Looking out my office window, watching traffic on the square last week, I thought about how things have changed and what I’ve learned from change. Wreckers are better and safer. Cars are better and safer. Drivers are …. well, not so much.

I thought about how the most important thing I’ve learned really is that the greatest lesson in life is realizing I still have a lot to learn.

That, and laughing still beats crying.

—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 2023. 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.

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.“

— Yogi Berra

– – – – – – –

There are no coincidences in life. Only the mystery of what might have been had we taken that other fork in the road.

“Hello,” she offered from her car. We had a class together at Kilgore College. Likely English, history, or math. We were both freshman students at KJC in 1966.  

I don’t remember her name. Time does that to me a lot these days. What I remember is the yellow ’65 Mustang she parked next to us at the Dairy Queen. And that she was attractive, and her long blonde hair and cool car fit the image of absolute perfection in my 18-year-old college male mind.

My friend and roommate, Ronnie Lilly, and I were cruising the DQ in his ’57 Chevy. “Hello,” I waved. “What are you up to this evening?”

“You won’t believe it,” the car-to-car conversation continued. “I just got back from seeing a fortune teller in Longview. Unbelievable, the things she knew about me.”

“Really,” I asked? Wondering how well I was disguising my skepticism. Never did put any stock in so-called mystics. Carnival sideshows at best.

While I successfully figured out how carnival sideshow magicians sawed damsels in half as a youngster, I had never been close to a clairvoyant. Therefore, perhaps it was out of curiosity that a couple of days later I paid the Longview lady a visit on my way home for the weekend in Mount Pleasant.

She got no more than “name, rank, and serial number” from me. No facial expressions. No responses to her leading “I see …” statements. Paid and done, I continued my journey home.

More than half a century later, I can honestly say that little of what she “foretold” was anywhere near my life story as it exists today.

She did, however, stumble onto two memorable moments. One, that I lost a gift from a girlfriend, and rather than tell her I lost it, I replaced it. True.

Two, that my stay-at-home mother for all my life had taken a job.

Mom was glad to see me when I arrived later that evening. “Your timing is perfect,” she said. “I just got home from work. I haven’t told you. I started working at the Tribune this week.”

“You did what,” I choked?

Thus, a life-long series of fortunate incidents was set in motion. Now, memories that often cause me to think. Asking, “What if? Wonder what my life might have been like had I taken that other fork in the road? Or if I had missed just one of those people I met on that path?”

Such as meeting Morris Craig because Mom took that job at the Tribune where Craig’s paper was printed every week. The same person who asked what I planned to do after one of my fork-in-the-road choices turned out to be less than fulfilling. “Dunno yet,” I responded.

“You’re a photographer. Come work with me for a while until you decide,” Craig offered. That unplanned intro into the world of communication led to a second newspaper gig in Louisiana at a weekly owned by Lloyd Grissom in Tenaha. Lloyd also owned the Tenaha East Texas Light with an office in Center. A community that, at that time, was still on my “never been there” list.

But it was there, a place I frequented only one early morning a week, that a Shelby County resident came in to place an ad. Someone who, by sheer chance, I had met in Naples while working at the Monitor. That reunion resulted on a move to Shelby County a couple of years later. Right after newspaper entrepreneur Jim Chionsini purchased the East Texas Light from Lloyd.

Do you see where this going?

My path crossed with Jim’s at a Center Lions Club meeting. That started a life-long friendship and partnership connecting me with an incredible number of newspaper professionals from Texas to Alabama.

Meeting Fred Wulf and Rick Campbell while working at the Center newspaper led to them offering me a job some 15 years later. After I had taught journalism at Stephen F. Austin State University and after publishing the newspaper in Boerne for Jim. They hired me to assist in shaping a marketing department for their rapidly growing new company, Portacool. Fourteen years there connected me with marketing professionals and incredible people across the U.S. and abroad.

Coming full circle, Jim bought the Center newspaper a second time in 2013, recruiting me to help in that effort and initiate talks with the Palmer family that resulted in the acquisition of The Mount Pleasant Tribune. The newspaper where Mom worked for 17 years. Where I met Morris Craig.

Almost three years later, the current owners of the local newspaper, individuals with whom I had worked or known professionally during tenures with Jim, called on me to publish the Center newspaper. One more time. Marking my third time at the helm of the publication in 41 years.

Through it all, I still don’t believe in coincidence. And I still don’t believe in phony prognosticators professing to foretell the future.

I remain convinced, however, that everything happens for a reason. And that’s really the reason I took that fork in the road a lifetime ago.

You know … the one Yogi was alluding to.

—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 2023. 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’m thankful for every moment.”—Al Green, singer and songwriter.

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The holiday season is the best. I’ve long contended Thanksgiving preceding Christmas is not by coincidence. It’s a subtle reminder to be thankful for the most joyous season and to end the year on high note.

My blessings are many. And long is the list of things for which I am thankful. Including conversation about Thanksgiving memories with a former business associate a few years ago.

While wrapping up holiday week business with Wachelle at the Dallas PR firm employed by the company for which I worked, she said something that resonated with me the rest of the day.

“We are scheduled for next week! Yay…” she responded to my submissions. I countered with the good news that we also had another couple weeks worth of social media programs in the works.

“My grandmomma would say, ‘Stop showing out,’” she countered.

“I like your grandmomma’s sayings,” I told her. “Mine was a wise woman for someone whose education went only to the 8th grade. She had a huge influence on my life.”

“Don’t you miss her,” Wachelle asked? “I really miss my grandmamma’s cooking.”

I agreed, remembering the meals at granny’s house. Then for the rest of the day, all I could think about was those holiday and Sunday dinners.

Truthfully, any Sunday dinner prepared by my father’s mother was the equivalent of a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. She stopped preparing festive meals when my grandfather died in 1967, but I remember her cooking like it was yesterday.

It was a yesterday time when families ate more meals at home. The fast food boom was a few happy meals down the road, and eating out at a “real” restaurant was a treat for rare occasions. It was also a yesterday when a meal at our home in Mount Pleasant was on the table precisely coordinated with dad’s arrival from work. Not being at the table at that time was not an option. That is, unless you were so badly incapacitated that walking was out of the question.

Also not an option was deciding whether mom’s menu coincided with your taste buds. You ate what was on the table without criticism or comment—unless it was a favorable comment about how good it was.

Although it was the age of “eat what your momma put on the table,” there was no way even the pickiest eater was going to leave granny’s table hungry on any day. The table that occupied my grandmother’s dining room and now resides in mine, was filled to capacity with choices. Fried chicken or ham, usually both. Every imaginable vegetable, salad and casserole was there. And hot rolls. If that wasn’t enough, the aroma of a fresh baked pie wafted from the kitchen as a reminder to save a little room.

The cooking was a labor of love, and meals were always on the table on time. No small feat for a Sunday dinner considering everyone at the Pittsburg Methodist Church knew my grandmother was critically ill if she was not in “her pew” for worship service. It was a feat she accomplished only by hours spent in the kitchen Saturday night and early Sunday morning before church. Something that never dawned on me as a child. I thought the meals were just another form of “grandmother’s magic.”

It was hard to notice behind the scenes work that our parents and grandparents put into family get togethers as kids. We were running through fall leaves in the yard. Looking for pecans under huge trees that lined the yard.

Smell is purported to be one of the strongest sensory preceptors linked to memory. I know that it’s true. Even today in an age of eating most meals out, a whiff of home cooking reminds me of family gatherings and of food at granny’s house that I haven’t tasted in almost 60 years.

“Don’t you miss her,” Wachelle’s words echoed in my mind last week? I do miss her and I’m thankful for the memories of many Thanksgiving pasts she gave me. I’m also thankful for the values my grandparents and parents gave me regarding family traditions that have fashioned my Thanksgivings for a lifetime. And every moment of the memories I’m still making.

Best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving and all of the memories that go with the season.

—Leon Aldridge

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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, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2023. 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.

“We cuss Congress, and we joke about ’em, but they are all good fellows at heart. And if they wasn’t in Congress, why, they would be doing something else against us that might be even worse.” 

— Will Rogers (1879-1935), vaudeville performer, actor, and humorous social commentator.

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Face the unexpected with humor and optimism, and you always come out on top.

That attitude works with politics and just about everything else in life. It’s one that served me well last week at the newspaper office, where the unexpected last Monday pretty well derailed the rest of the week. Changes that cut into my column writing time.

So, this week, I relied on a tool often employed by those who have penned weekly pieces for as long as I have. Dust off one of your old columns that is still apropos. Update it a little, and hope the train is back on track next week.

Finding one I published several years ago following a week with an election day and a Veterans Day, I deemed it appropriate. Last week’s special election on constitutional amendments in Texas was tame compared to what we’ll be ramping up for nationally with next year’s presidential election. No doubt, another election that will remind us of the fate of a legendary mule. His name was Horace.

The story of Horace the mule is said to have originated in the small, north Georgia town of Greensboro at the local newspaper, the Herald-Journal. I first read it in the Naples Monitor when I worked there in the mid-1970s.

Fact or fiction, it’s a timeless election story likely to be told as long as there are politicians to cuss about. Something I see no shortage of anytime soon.

That said, there’s no political intent beyond this old yarn other than some humor—something sadly lacking not only in politics today but also in everyday life.

Horace was a widow’s farm animal, and both were getting on in years. Just before an upcoming local election, Horace was feeling droopy, and the widow was worried about him. “Doc,” she pleaded on the phone, “Horace is sick. Can you come look at him?”

“It’s after six,” the doc retorted. “I’m settled in for the evening. It’s likely nothing that administering a dose of mineral oil won’t cure. Try that, and I’ll drop by tomorrow when I’m over that way.”

She inquired about how one gives a mule mineral oil, at which point the doc informed her on the technique of using a funnel.

“But, he might bite me,” she objected.

“You’re a farm woman,” he reasoned. “You know about these things—administer it through the other end.” She pondered this advice, then headed for the barn where poor Horace was in misery.

She searched for a funnel, but the closest thing she found was Uncle Jake’s old fox hunting horn hanging on the wall. A beautiful instrument with tattered gold tassels. Nervously, she took it down and cautiously attached it to Horace’s southernmost end as the mule lay nose pointing due north. Keeping her eyes on Horace, she reached behind her for the mineral oil but mistakenly picked up the turpentine bottle and dosed ol’ Horace liberally through the bugle.

Horace’s recovery was instantaneous. His head jerked upright, and his eyes widened as large tears developed in the corners. He screamed like a panther, kicked down the barn door, and galloped off down the road with Uncle Jake’s horn still attached. Pausing every so often to kick his hind legs in the air—an action that caused the horn to blow.

As Horace ran through the valley, hound’s ears perked up everywhere. The sound of Uncle Jake’s horn meant a hunt was on. Horace gained a following of baying hounds as he continued to kick and run.

Eyewitnesses said it was a sight to behold: ol’ Horace running, pausing to kick his heels, mellow notes issuing from the gold appendage, tassels flying in the breeze, and every foxhound within twenty miles barking joyously and giving chase.

Old man Johnson, who hadn’t drawn a sober breath in 20 years, was sitting on his porch when the spectacle passed him. The following week’s local newspaper reported that he gave up drinking that very same day and joined a temperance movement.

It was dark when Horace reached the river. The bridge tender, running for public office and considered an easy winner, heard the horn. Thinking it was a boat, he raised the drawbridge. Horace bounded up the bridge and off into the water with dogs still trailing. The hounds swam to safety, but poor old Horace drowned. And Uncle Jake’s fox horn was never recovered.

Come election day, the bridge tender lost, garnering only seven votes. His and six others from three close relatives. The assumption was that voters figured anyone who didn’t know the difference between a boat horn and a mule with a bugle in his behind wasn’t fit to hold public office.

So, regardless of what next year’s election brings, maintain your humor and your optimism. And remember Horace.

Above all, never cease expressing support for our veterans and members of the armed services on Veteran’s Day and every day for keeping us a strong and free nation … through our humorous history of election outcomes.

—Leon Aldridge

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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, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2023. 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.

—Contact Leon Aldridge at leonaldridge@gmail.com. Aldridge columns are archived at leonaldridge.com

“Don’t you wish you could take a single childhood memory and blow it up into a bubble and live inside it forever?”

― Sarah Addison Allen, author of Lost Lake.

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“I get sleepy riding in cars,” a friend admitted as we embarked on a road trip a couple of weeks ago.

“I loved sleeping on road trips as a child,” I responded.” Especially at night. Stretched out on the back seat. Or in the back of the big ’58 Ford station wagon my parents had.”

But I never sleep while traveling in a car anymore.

Which is different than sleeping while driving in a car. I mention that only because researching “sleeping in cars” for possible background on this piece turned up Googles brilliant top choice: “Is it safe to sleep in a car while driving?” Let that sink in for a moment. Considering the hype we hear about artificial intelligence when common sense intelligence seems to have gone to sleep at the wheel.

Abandoning the lack of intelligence on the internet, I turned to childhood memories. Recalling when sleeping in cars was commonplace as a kid for vacations and for going to my grandparent’s house. Put the kids in the back seat, toss ’em a blanket, a pillow, and a “License Plate Bingo” game. Dad at the wheel and Mom unfolding the Texaco road map. Done. Hit the highway. 

But that was before seat belts. Before child’s car seats built like the cockpit of a Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor fighter jet. Before increasing numbers of smart cars and drivers who are anything but smart.

Daughter Robin and I agreed a few weeks ago that regardless of how smart cars get, we are not relinquishing control of the steering wheel. “Jon’s got it figured out,” she said, referencing her hubby. “He says they have to make cars smarter now because drivers don’t know how to drive anymore.”  

Both of my children, Robin and Lee, are veterans of back seat sleeping as kids. Great memories for generations.

Even experts agree. One sleep study suggests the gentle rocking movement of a vehicle can make anyone sleepy at any age. Just like parents rocking children to sleep. Or, as in some cases, “drove us to sleep.”

According to my parents, a 15-minute drive around town was sweeter music than a lullaby when I was an infant. “You’d be sound asleep before your father got back to the house,” Mom always said.

I don’t remember that far back, but I remember my best backseat sleeping memories. In the family’s 1950 Studebaker Starlight Coupe that featured a wraparound rear window surrounding half the back seat. The package tray, as the area behind the seat is known in automotive vernacular, was recessed about four or five inches. Perhaps Studebaker considered that a safety feature. Hoping to keep everything tossed there from taking flight when sudden braking was needed. Likely not in the Studebaker sales brochure, however, was how that drop down area also provided a sleeper berth of sorts for a small child.

Short excursions or a family reunion road trip to Kentucky, memories of lying in the big back window and drifting off to sleep remain. Moon and the stars above and the highway’s hum below.

Almost as memorable are trips from my grandparents’ East Texas home out west to ours in Seymour. A couple of weeks with my Dad’s parents was a summer ritual then. The journey to get me home usually fell to my grandparents which meant an early trip. Unscriptural early.

“Come on, Sister,” my grandfather would say to my grandmother. “It’s almost three. We need to be on the road.” He always called her Sister. Never by her real name of Hattie Lois. Why? I don’t know. I did know, however, that the back seat of their green ’57 Ford was where I finished my night’s sleep. Still in my PJs. Slumbering from Pittsburg to Greenville, always his first stop.

The Ford didn’t offer a panoramic rear view as did the Studebaker. Lingering sensory sensations from those snoozes were A&P coffee poured from S.V. Aldridge’s metal thermos and Prince Albert tobacco smoke from his pipe.

Why was Greenville his first stop? Because he enjoyed breakfast at a small roadside cafe on Highway 67. Back before the interstate came through. Floyd’s, I think it was called. Had a plate hanging on the wall inscribed with, “Elvis ate here 3-14-58.”

Scrambled eggs, biscuits, and coffee were the attraction for my grandfather, not the King of Rock and Roll. I’m wagering a waffle breakfast tab at Denny’s he would have looked at that plate and asked, “Elvis who?”

Up at three and breakfast at Floyd’s put us in Seymour early in the day. Visiting with my parents for one night. Up long before daylight the next morning. “Let’s go Sister, it’s almost three.”

Grandaddy didn’t linger long with his visits.

I told my friend last week not to linger long trying to stay awake. Car naps are good. And not to worry because sleeping while driving was something I had not had time to practice yet.

Today, on the rare occasions I might get tired of counting sheep while trying to fall asleep in my bed at home, one sure cure for insomnia is easy. I just close my eyes and recall the childhood memory that still sends me off to slumber.

The moon and stars through the back window of a 1950 Studebaker Starlight Coupe and the highway’s hum below me.

—Leon Aldridge

(Author’s note for photo above: A die cast model of the insomnia curing 1950 Studebaker Starlight Coupe in the same green color as the one in which I used to snooze on road trips. To the right is a photo of me and my younger sister, Leslie, with Dad’s Studebaker in the far background. The photo is dated on the back in my mother’s handwriting, March 26, 1950. According to the paperwork in the foreground, Dad bought the car December 20, 1949 at Dillinger Motor Company in Ballinger, Texas for $2,095.71 that included tax, title and license.)

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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, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2023. 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.

Phases and stages, circles and cycles,
Scenes that we’ve all seen before.
Let me tell you some more …

— Lyrics from the intro to Willie Nelson’s 17th album, “Phases and Stages,” recorded in March 1974.

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It’s an incurable addiction that defies description.

Best expressed, in my opinion, by a small sign I saw on a pristine 1955 Chevrolet at a swap meet some years ago. The car left me breathless. Not the first cool old car to do that, nor was it the last. This one, probably because it was just like the one I drove in high school. Turquoise and white. Fast and loud.

I laughed at the minuscule message. “Warning: Cool old cars — an expensive and highly contagious addiction. Approach with caution. There is no known cure.”

My addiction was diagnosed at an early age. Attended my first swap somewhere around the time Ronald Reagan might have been thinking about becoming president. The most recent ones, I admit, have been cause for reflection of the phases and stages of many long years afflicted with automotive addiction. And loving every minute of it.

Feeling blessed to have grown up in the last golden age of automotive awakening. Earning a driver’s license during the birth of American muscle cars. A time when dealership showrooms and drive-in parking lots were packed with high-performance, inexpensive (by today’s standards), street-legal rocket ships. Also, a time when many of us were driving, hopped-up versions of 1950s “used cars” bought for a couple hundred dollars. A time when searching wrecking yards for parts preceded swap meets and the Internet.

“What is a swap meet,” some have asked? Think “flea market,” one that is all cars, car parts, and car stuff. Tools. Memorabilia. Art. Clothing. People. Attitudes. Swapping memories. All automotive.

“Why,” others have asked?” To those, I humbly suggest, “Start reading at the top again.”

Sixties muscle cars were still used cars in the early days of the grandaddy of Texas swap meets, the Pate Swap Meet. Or as it was originally known, the South Central Swap Meet. Today, it is the largest in the Southwest and the second largest in the country. Even then, however, covering the event meant two days of walking acres of cow pastures, creek beds, and a few rows of shade trees south of Fort Worth near the community of Cresson. Annual quests for parts to keep a couple of rescued aging muscle cars in my garage running. Cars like those I dreamed of owning in my youth. Combing through parts on tables, in boxes, and spread all over the ground. Purchasing what I knew I needed. And what I thought I might need. Just in case I did need it.

In 1998, Pate moved “up north” to the Texas Motor Speedway facility where everything now fits on pavement the size of a small East Texas city. One without a dollar store.

My most recent event was not Pate. That’s in the Spring. This was a newer event. Farther south, down toward Houston. At Conroe. As good as Pate, just smaller. But smaller means doable in one day. What can be two days of walking, sunup to sundown, I’ve narrowed that one down to about four hours. Walk, look, rest, repeat. And still home by dark.

These days, it doesn’t take much to keep the trio of mid-fifties Fords in my garage running. Mostly because I don’t get to drive them much. And because I probably have a part stashed away. In a box. Somewhere. If I need it.

Swap meets for me today are a stage of spending time looking, seeing things that remind me of cars I drooled over when I was much younger. Or cars I was once lucky enough to own and enjoy. Like the ’61 Corvette diecast model I scored at Conroe. Still in the box. Just like the one I used to have. Even the same color as the one I had. Just one of several on that lengthy list of, “Wish I’d never sold it.”

We all have a list like that. But, we also admit the reality. We had to sell the car we were driving to buy the next one we wanted.

Swap meets today are also a stage of breath-taking prices. Cars and parts. A set of unused, never on a car, 1956 Texas license plates priced at $275. Exactly what I paid for my turquoise and white ’55 in high school. The whole car. With license plates. Made me think, “Where are those things I bought eons ago, thinking I might need someday but never did. All that stuff I’ve moved three or four times over the years.”

Including a box of new, original FoMoCo 1950s Ford heater control valves I bought in 1985. I only needed one back then, but the whole box was a bargain. I still have ’em. I know I do. In a box. In the garage. Question is, which box?

As the day wore on, the walking made me think maybe my swap meet days were ending. I noticed the number of still eager parts hunters, “young guys” … about my age. Like me, straining with glasses to read part numbers. Taking the longest time to get down on a good knee to examine parts or pieces on the ground. And like me, taking a lot longer to get up.

Then I saw it. A flyer for the next Conroe Winter Meet in February of 2024. Just in time to get pumped about Pate in May.

I smiled.

“Why,” some will ask?

“One more time” I would suggest. “Start reading at the top again. And read slowly this time.”

—Leon Aldridge

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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, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.