I don’t even like writing about it

The late afternoon storm intensified with every word I drafted. It was dry and cozy inside where I was writing, but rain, wind, thunder and lightning filled the skies outside.

“It’s lightning! Get out of that tub now,” my grandmother was quick to announce when storm clouds rolled into East Texas. Baths at her house in Pittsburg were fun as a youngster. Mainly because there was no waiting in line for the old-fashioned tub. Unlike bath time at home where having two sisters meant waiting in line for the only bathtub in the house.

“Aren’t you done yet,” was a common cry through the bathroom door Saturday nights. Except for that night in Seymour, when just about the time I settled in to soak in the bubbles, my mother burst through the door in a panic.

“Get dressed now.”

Gillette commercials on the television touting smooth shaves meant the Friday night fights were coming on. But the constant siren blaring from the fire station downtown signaled something more sinister.

“There’s a tornado coming,” Mom shouted.

“I’m wet,” I pleaded.

“No time,” she said. “Get dressed wet. We have to get to the cellar.”

The first flash of celestial electricity sent my parents and my grandparents into national disaster mode. Mom just made sure everyone was inside, but Granny dashed through her house, issuing orders and unplugging her electrical appliances. Both of them. The Kelvinator refrigerator that stood in the corner of her dining room for more than 50 years, and the small, black, 1940s radio in the living room.

“Don’t touch the faucets,’ she always warned. “Get away from those windows, you’ll get struck.”

I ‘ve known only two people struck by lightning. I attended the small country church service for the first. The second person still laughs today when he relates his encounter with the phenomenon of nature.

Research reveals a 1 in 1,222,000 chance of getting hit by lightning. That computes to 0.0000008%. Your odds of winning a Las Vegas jackpot are better.

The odds of striking a photo of a lightning bolt are good, however, with a flash of knowledge. Back in the ancient days of film photography, I read that lightning storms follow a regular pattern of building in intensity, peaking, then decreasing, all in a measurable cycle between discharges. One summer night, I tested that theory from an upper-story balcony of the Palacio Del Rio Hotel in San Antonio. Timing the flashes and shooting long exposures on that cycle netted a half dozen frames with decent images on a 36-exposure roll of Kodachrome. Still hanging on my wall is a framed photo of a cloud-to-ground lightning bolt heating the night air with the Tower of the Americas in the foreground.

One lightning bolt can scorch anything in its path with 50,000-degree Fahrenheit temperatures and reach more than ten miles to do so. I’ve never experienced it, and don’t won’t to, but intenisfying electrical charges reportedly fill the air in the seconds right before lightning strikes. Metal objects as small as jewelry will sometimes buzz. Hair will stand on end.

If you experience these signs, it goes without warning, don’t wait to seek shelter. Lightning can travel from the clouds, through a human body, and into the ground in about three milliseconds.

Which is what happened to the one person I know who was struck by lightning and lived to tell about it. Motivational speaker and my friend and colleague from Stephen F. Austin State University teaching days, Miles McCall, can put a humorous spin on just about any experience.

I’ve been struck by lightning,” Miles mentioned casually one day. He said it with a smile.

“Some friends and I were sailing on Lake Sam Rayburn that summer day. One of them had brought his dog. And we were having fun when a storm blew up,” he begins. “One of those quick ones.” For Miles, sailboats and Jimmy Buffet songs make for a perfect outing.

“Wisely, we headed for shore arriving just as the storm hit. But unwisely,” he laughs about it now, “We found shelter under a huge tree. Smart, huh? All I remember after that was a brilliant flash and a deafening clap of thunder.”

“Moments later, I looked around, and all of my friends and the dog were lying sprawled on the ground,” Miles said. “I thought, ‘Oh no’ they’re dead. Then one of the guys gets up and takes off running. Then I thought, ‘Oh no, they’re alive and I’m dead!'”

“We were all OK,” Miles concludes with a laugh, “Except the poor dog, he didn’t make it. The soles of our shoes were burned off and our feet were blistered. The earth and the asphalt under the tree spreading from the base outward in all directions was cracked and split open.”

According to Miles, the group surmised their saving grace was the charge hitting the tree and traveling out in the root system before connecting with them through their feet.

As I finished writing this missive, the rain, lightning, and thunder was moving out of Center. And that was my saving grace. Because I don’t like lightning.

Not even writing about it.

—Leon Aldridge

– – – – – – –

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

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

May good fortune outlast our resolutions

 “We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.”
— Robert Burns, “Auld Lang Syne”

– – – – – –

That 1700s Scots poem set to familiar music is often used to mark the end of something. In our culture, usually another year “for (the sake of) old times.”

“Auld Lang Syne” became a U.S. tradition after Canadian bandleader Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians orchestra played it on New Year’s Eve in 1929 during a radio broadcast at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City.

But a few years before that, on New Year’s Day in 1920, my father’s parents began what would become 47 years of marriage. S.V. Aldridge took as his bride, Hattie Lois Farmer. She became the family wise woman of philosophy and old sayings, for the new year, and all occasions. Prognostication regarding luck and life was almost an art form for my grandmother. Something for which I suspect she relied on a tad of tradition, a smidge of superstition, and a lot on the Lord. She was a devout member of the First Methodist Church in Pittsburg for more than 60 years.

She was born in Aledo, Texas in 1905 and was 15 when she married. He was born in Natchez, Mississippi in 1888 and was 31 when he said, “I do.” By then, he had worked for the railroad since the age of 13 and recently served with the U.S. Army in France during WW I.

Ten years later, my father was seven years old when they moved to Pittsburg in Northeast Texas, where my grandparents lived in the same house for the rest of their lives. For him, that was until 1967. For her, 1993.

Life was different a hundred years ago. Their age difference was not that uncommon then. And their education, for the most part, came more from experience than from schoolbooks.

As each year drew to a close, she shared her philosophies to inform everyone in the family about what was in store for the new year, according to Hattie Aldridge.

Her pivotal piece of providence was eating for prosperity. New Year’s dinner included black-eyed peas, cabbage, and delicacies dedicated to ensuring good luck and financial fortune. Truthfully, I was a fan of peas and cabbage any day at her house if they came with cornbread and iced tea.

Weather forecasts were also part of her New Year’s admonitions. On her Cardui calendar, she noted the weather every day for the first 12 days. These notes became her forecasting tool for each of the next 12 months. If New Year’s Day was stormy, cloudy, or cold, then bad weather was in store for the first month of the New Year. Rain on the third meant March would be wet. It seemed a really fascinating substitute for science until the year snow fell on the eighth. And, no — it did not snow in August that year.

She also swore that the first person entering your home on January 1 would strongly influence your life in the new year. And it was especially good fortune if that first visitor was bearing a gift or something good to eat. Well, yes! I’ve always thought that any day someone came to my house with gifts or food, or both, was a good day.

Another piece of advice was never do laundry on New Year’s Day. No how, no way. She said I it was bad luck. Dirty clothes would wait until January 2. But she also held that it was bad luck to labor with laundry on any Monday. She died having never owned a washing machine. “Doing the laundry” for her meant a couple of number three wash tubs, a scrub board, and a clothesline.

In my book, that would constitute lousy luck for any day I dealt with dirty clothes.

Looking back, our good fortune today is that, in many ways, life is immensely better than it was then. Or, as my good friend Oscar Elliott used to say, “These are the good old days.”

With your New Year’s traditions, I wish you a happy and prosperous 2025. Enjoy your black-eyed peas and cabbage, check the weather, and may that first visitor bring you good cheer and a small gift … and do your laundry.

And “for (the sake of) old times,” I also wish for all of us that our good fortune in the new year lasts longer than our resolutions.

—Leon Aldridge

– – – – – – –

Aldridge columns are featured in The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, and Granite Media Partners publications including the Taylor Press, the Elgin Courier and others. Also in 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.

Wherever you are, Merry Christmas

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

– – – – – – –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wherever you are. Merry Christmas.

—Leon Aldridge

– – – – – – –

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

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

I don’t need another cat

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

– – – – – – –

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

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

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

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

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

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

But big cats? Nope. None in Oklahoma.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Leon Aldridge

– – – – – – –

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

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

Still wishing for that slower time

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

– – – – – – –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Granddaddy was on to something more than lawnmower parts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just ask Him to grant it now … please.

—Leon Aldridge

– – – – – – –

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

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

One thought often begets another

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

– – – – – – –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, and beget trust to your pilot.

—Leon Aldridge

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

– – – – – – –

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

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

We can usually be thankful in the end

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

– – – – – – –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Leon Aldridge

– – – – – – –

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

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

It’s the 1970s, all over again

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

– – – – – – –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Leon Aldridge

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

– – – – – – –

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

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

A return for the championship round …

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

– – – – – – – –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– – – – – – – –

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

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

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

—Leon Aldridge

– – – – – – –

(Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons – Reliant Astrodome)

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

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

Friends we haven’t yet met

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

— William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) Irish poet

– – – – – –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Leon Aldridge

– – – – – – –

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

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