Tag: memories

She isn’t going anywhere

“Early morning sunlight cascaded from lofty windows in the old downtown Center icehouse. They bounced gracefully off timeless curves outlining an aging body. For an old girl, she was still a beauty in the dim light and in my heart.”
— Leon Aldridge, 1993

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I wrote those words 31 years ago last September. “Liz,” my grandparents’ 1957 Ford, will have been a member of the Aldridge family for 69 years come this November. She’s lived 44 of those years with me, and I have no intentions of her going anywhere so long as I’m still drawing a breath.  

My father’s mother dubbed her two-tone green ’57 Ford “Liz.” The two-door sedan became the beginning of my sporadic dabbling in old cars. Others followed. A couple of vintage Thunderbirds and a 1965 Malibu SS to start. Then some 60s vintage convertibles. But Liz never objected to being neglected while others were driven.

Tail-finned, rag-topped, white-walled, and chrome-plated glamour queens dazzled. Multi-carburetor, dual-exhaust, tire-smoking muscle cars amazed. But Liz remained. One might have surmised she actually enjoyed the peace and quiet of retirement alongside a variety of garage mates.

I still remember brushing my fingers lightly through her thin coating of dust that morning, sending particles swirling and twinkling in the morning sunlight. I opened the driver’s door and enjoyed the aroma. Old car interiors offer unique smells, often revealing age, make, or background.

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

Liz was born at the Garland, Texas, Ford assembly plant in the fall of 1956 and was titled in my grandfather’s name in November at Travis Battles Ford dealership in Pittsburg, Texas. For a quarter of a century, she lived in a white frame garage at the corner of Cypress and Madison Streets and ran errands to town, to work, to visit. On many of those trips, I was a youngster in the back seat, watching my grandmother drive and listening to my grandfather caution her. “Watch out sister. There’s a stop sign ahead.”

When age and illness confined him to a bed, Liz sat in the garage while my grandmother stayed home to care for the man she loved. When he died just days before Christmas in 1967, Dad and I went to the garage to “awaken” Liz. She had traveled only 17,000 miles in her ten years. A new battery and fresh gas brought her back to life.

Granny and Liz were back on the street, going places neither had dreamed of in a while. The old Ford with the little old lady peeping over the steering wheel was once again a common sight around town.

Granny eventually gave in to the desire for the luxury of power steering, an automatic transmission, and air conditioning. “You still want Liz,” she called one day to ask.

“You know I do,” I replied. Liz was soon headed for a new home in Center. As I drove her south that Saturday in May, late evening Spring breezes smelled of freshly mowed grass through open windows. Memories flowed. Driving lessons with my grandfather on shifting a “three-on-the-tree.” Cruising the Kilgore College campus when Liz subbed for one of my ailing hot rods. Smiles when names came to mind while recalling dates when Liz provided transportation.

Once home, a gentle push on her door brought the usual solid ‘click’ as it closed and latched with ease.

As that early morning remembered a few years ago was ending, I walked a few steps, stopped and looked back at Liz sitting majestically in the corner. Bidding me goodbye with a gleam in her chrome. She knew it would be a while before I came calling again. She also knew I would return to recall secrets the old car and I knew about each other.

Liz comes to mind again now with my decision to thin the herd. Too many to care for at this point in life. But Liz knows she’s family, and when her more glamorous and valuable garage mates have moved on, she will remain.

She also knows she will be the last one to leave the ball when the lights are turned off for the last time.

—Leon Aldridge

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

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 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.

One thought often begets another

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, and beget trust to your pilot.

—Leon Aldridge

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

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

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

Choose friends wisely, they will shape your life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then traveling back to Kilgore that same night.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It really happened.

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

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

Thankful for memories and for friends like Ronnie.

Friends who have definitely shaped my life.

—Leon Aldridge

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

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