jimleestexas

JIM LEE’S TEXAS Volume II, Number 10 EXCUSE #1 I have

2007-08-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

JIM LEE’S TEXAS
Volume II, Number 10

EXCUSE #1 I have neglected this blog for a long two months because I have been busy. Phillip Fry and I were finishing our book, TEXAS COUNTRY SINGERS.

EXCUSE #2 I read somewhere that the average blog has only two readers, so I wondered if it was worth my time to keep sweating and swinking.

EXCUSE # 3 I am dog lazy, and these are the “dog days of summer.”

ANSWER: Some have asked me who the people pictured in the photo in the last blog (Vol II, Number 9) are. From the left, Phillip Fry, me (with the hair “down long and shaggy like the hippies out in San Francisco”), Barbara Bordelon (who was married to Phillip Fry at the time), the famous yodeler Kenneth Threadgill, and the late Diane Dodson, who was keeping company with me at the time. Fry and I dedicated our famous book as follows; “To Barbara Bordelon and Diane Dodson: We Waltzed Across Texas.”

QUESTION #1. Those ex-disc jockeys who read the news on the local stations always say of fires, “The blaze was tapped out at 9:15.” I know where “tapped out” comes from, but I am sure they do not. Do you?

QUESTION #2. Why do those people who are dispatched to storms always say, “The hurricane was packing winds of 167 miles per hour.” “Packing?” Like “Pistol Packin’ Mama” or like “packing heat” or like packing up to get out of town?

A SNIPPET OF VERSE:

I only know that summer sang in me
A little while that in me sings no more.

A WHOLE POEM:

To make a prairie it takes a clover—and one bee.
One clover and a bee.
And reverie.
The reverie alone will do
If bees are few.

BOOK REPORT:

I should have done this earlier, but I didn’t. Not long ago, I read Shelby Hearon’s new novel, YEAR OF THE DOG. I liked it a lot and should have said so earlier. Shelby, who is about a month older than I am and makes no secret of it, has written about sixteen or seventeen novels. I have read them all and have written about all but the latest. I got started reading her because she was a Texas writer who wrote a lot about Austin—and later New Braunfels and Waco and New York.

The latest is set in her present home, Burlington, Vermont. In it, a young woman from South Carolina has a trifling husband who left her for somebody else, so what could she do? She moved, for her “sabbatical year” to Burlington where her aunt May lives. Her Aunt May is close friends of the famous mystery novelist Bert Greenwood, a figure of mystery himself (or herself, as the case may be). Here comes the dog part—the real maguffin of the book. Janey takes on the job of training a guide dog, a Labrador puppy named Beulah. If the dog has all the traits needed for guiding the blind, it will be taken away after a year. If Beulah does not work out, Janey will get to keep her.

O.K., that is all I am telling about this book. Read the rest yourself. I will say a little about Shelby Hearon’s women characters. All her books center on the lives of women, some very young, some middle aged, a few old. Some of her novels had to do with mothers and daughters, the best of those is HANNAH’S HOUSE. But what I think Shelby does best is to tell the story of young women like Janey or like Jolene in OWNING JOLENE or like Ella in ELLA IN BLOOM or like Avery Krause in A PRINCE OF A FELLOW. All have been mishandled by men, but all are still youthful enough to keep looking for “a prince of a fellow.” As you can see, I like Shelby Hearon’s novels, and I like Shelby Hearon, who has always been friendly and nice to me. That counts for a lot.

MY HERO BILL MERCER

A few years ago, my Number One Son was telling me over the phone all about how much he liked to watch wrestling on tv. He was going on and on and on and I was hardly listening because the whole “rasslin’” world was a bore to me. And he should have had better taste. After all, he was in his thirties at the time and should have been watching “Miss Marple” or “The Rockford File.” Along in this conversation, he mentioned how much he admired a certain announcer and how great the announcer was at interviewing these behemoths of wrestling. He said, “Bill Mercer will go up to Fritz Von Erich’s door and Von Erich will threaten Mercer and Mercer won’t back down. Bill Mercer is really great!” I said, “I know, I like Mercer. We work together some.” “WHAT? WHAT? You KNOW Bill Mercer?” I said I did, and he kept repeating, “You really KNOW Bill Mercer?” “You actually KNOW Bill Mercer personally.”

Time passed, and UNT held the Governor’s Conference on the Literary Arts for the Sesquicentennial, and Mercer and I had done some radio shows and some tv shows for the conference. My son, who had little interest in the literary arts, came up from Austin just to see Bill Mercer. Somewhere, I have a photo of Bill Mercer with Steve Lee in a headlock. I wish I had it to show here. If I ever find it, I will put it on this blog for both of the readers of this blog to see.

Well, in sooth, Bill Mercer is famous as a “rasslin’” announcer. Or used to be when wrestling was a big deal at the Northside Coliseum in Fort Worth and the Sportatorium in Dallas. At one time he was the third most popular American in the Middle East—next to, I guess, Elvis and Jesus. (A short digression: Jesus was probably an American if you can believe the tabloid NEW OF THE WORLD. They say the bodies of Adam and Eve were found in Colorado. They also say the Garden of Eden was down around Colorado Springs. They are the ones who told of the baby born with angel wings. If they are right, it makes sense that Jesus was an American.) They closed the stores in Lebanon when Mercer’s wrestling show came on.

But Bill Mercer should be known for a lot more than the grunting and groaning of the overweight rasslers. He should be known for more than sports announcing, even though he was once the voice of the Dallas Cowboys on radio, the voice of the Texas Rangers on radio, and even did a stint in Chicago with the world’s most boring sportscaster, Harry Carray. He used to broadcast the UNT Mean Green on radio, and in recent years has done the Round Rock Express on a part-time basis.

But Mercer is my hero for many other reasons. In 1943, he joined the U. S. Navy and served on an LCL, the kind of combat landing vehicle that went in close at Iwo Jima and Okinawa and took fire from shore batteries. I was safe on a destroyer in the Pacific Fleet during the Korean War where the worst thing we had to worry about was cold weather and bad food, and I can only imagine what it must have been like for those sailors in WWII. Mercer saw some “rockets red glare, some bombs bursting” etc., etc.

After the war, he went back to college and graduate school and then wound up in Dallas at KRLD. It was there that he was one of the several radio reporters who broadcast the JFK murder. He, along with Bob Huffaker (once my student), George Phenix, and Wes Wise wrote WHEN THE NEWS WENT LIVE, a story of the radio guys who witnessed the assassination and the hubbub that followed. Mercer’s latest book is PLAY BY PLAY, his life in radio. And more. He gives a lot of sketches about the formation of radio and the beginning of sports broadcasting. Buy the book! He should send me one free after this! Autographed by God!

Now I will get to the part that makes him my hero. In 1991, I was chair of a big blowout at UNT to memorialize Texas’ entry into WWII. My chestnuts were pulled out of the fire by a bunch of good people, chief among them Bill Mercer and Sherry McGuire and Carolyn Barnes and Jane Tanner. Mercer and Sherry put together the best part of the program. Bill used all his connections to get Tom Landry, who was a bomber pilot, to come. He and Sherry lined up the Tuskegee Airmen, the Pearl Harbor survivors, and the veterans of the Japanese POW camps. Then, they managed to get all but one of the Texas Medal of Honor winners from WWII to come (Ensign Gay was summoned to Pearl harbor for their commemoration). Somehow, Mercer and Sherry got a three-star general to come up and award a Medal of Honor to the family of a man who had fought in the Indian Wars. I am vague on how all that come about, but it is roughly that the medal had been given to the dead guy and then taken back because he was only a scout or something. In any case, the medal was re-awarded, and Mercer and Sherry managed to get it done on our campus. I fear we would have had a small and lackluster show if Sherry McGuire and Bill Mercer had not taken a hand in a program that was too much for me.

I mentioned Carolyn Barnes and Jane Tanner. They had a great hand in producing the book we put together for the WWII program. It is called 1941; TEXAS GOES TO WAR and should be on every bookshelf in Texas. It isn’t, but it should be.

Bill Mercer is in the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. And he sure is in mine. He is now 81, and I hope he lives for decades and decades and keeps on teaching at UNT and broadcasting games and writing books.

Volume II, Number 9 A STANZA She has a ring on every finger,

2007-05-31T14:55:00.000-07:00

Volume II, Number 9

A STANZA

She has a ring on every finger,
And on one finger she has full three,
And enough gay gold around her middle,
To buy Northumberland from thee.

A MAJOR QUIZ (This is not open to Judy Alter.)

Name all the people around this table. Not just some—ALL, or no points for
you!!!

IN THE LAND OF COTTON

I am not giving up on the Cotton Collins story, and some distant day, I will maybe write a sketch of him. But not now. However, here are two photos that his grandson, Glen, sent me. One of Cotton alone and one of the Lone Star Playboys, his Waco group that first played his famous “Westphalia Waltz.” The third photo is of Cotton and Kenneth Threadgill, photo courtesy of Phillip Fry.

JOHN OLMSTEAD ROSENBALM: A SKETCH

In fifty years of teaching, I ran across many students smarter than I am. The smartest of all was Jack Rosenbalm. Not only is Rosenbalm the smartest, he is also the best educated—and that was nothing to do with me. He did it all himself. In college, in graduate school, and in a longish career as a professor at Southwest Texas State (now called something grander). Rosenbalm wrote his doctoral dissertation under the direction of Gerald Achille Kirk, a disgruntled fellow, who predeceased Rosenbalm and me. We spoke at Kirk’s memorial service, and Rosenbalm said, “For a long time, I thought my name was Goddam Rosenbalm, for Gerald always started his sentences to me, “‘GODDAM Rosenbalm.…’” (I probably can't say that on a Christian university Web site, can I?) Oh, well.

Rosenbalm in Prague, of all places

Rosenbalm served as managing editor from the beginning of STUDIES IN AMERICAN HUMOR, and, before his retirement, was made editor of the journal. In 1993, he was awarded the highest honor of the American Studies Humor Association for his long service to that organization and for his work in helping to found SAH and then for editing it.

Jack Rosenbalm was a life master in the American Contract Bridge League when still a student, and he was the best bridge player I ever knew personally. He may not have been as good as Oswald Jacoby, but then I didn't know the great O. Jacoby personally, though he did destroy me once in a tournament in Dallas. Rosenbalm has given up bridge, he says, and so have I. I was never going to be any good anyway. It was not only Rosenbalm’s mind that was superior to mine; it was his temperament also. He played the cards dealt to him; I tried to play the hand I wanted dealt me.

I have tried for years to make a literary allusion that would stump Rosenbalm. (By the way, we never use his full name. He is simply Rosenbalm.) I have never succeeded. He even got the little snippet of poetry I used in the last Blog—“All else is relative/This only true/E=mc2”—The poet is the late Martin Staples Shockley, and I was sure nobody would discern that. I got an email from Rosenbalm the next day, crushing my hopes. The best of all his putdowns was once when I was younger (so much younger than today) and I rashly said to Rosenbalm, “If you give me a line from HAMLET, I will give you the next line.” Rosenbalm smiled and said, “Go, bid the soldiers shoot.” I was undone once again.

In his early years at San Marcos, he had a sophomore girl from Cuero, or some such place, say in class, “Dr. Rosenbalm, what is Keats trying to say in this poem?” Rosenbalm, standing across the room looking out the window, never turned around. He just recited the whole of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and said, “That is what Keats is SAYING in this poem.” OK, that was a stunning rejoinder—reciting the whole poem that way—but I am with the girl from Cuero on this one. What the hell is Keats trying to say with all that “Truth is beauty” stuff? Rosenbalm?

Rosenbalm is the only person I know personally who can do one-arm pushups. Maybe the years have taken a toll and he no longer can, but I would not bet against him. I bet he can't sing, though!

I told the Reverend Carol Rosenbalm, pastor of St. Paul United Church of Christ in Lockhart, that I wanted to preach her husband’s funeral. I would have someone read out all of Rosenbalm’s bridge championships and honors, and then I would mount the pulpit and say, “Rosenbalm passes.” If she won't go for that, I want to say these words at the gravesite, “Rosenbalm bids a spade.” I hope it does not come to any of that. His three daughters would not like the kind of humor that Rosenbalm and I enjoy. Besides, I don’t want to be around when Rosenbalm dies. I hope to predecease him—to belabor the legal term that I used earlier. But I don't plan to go anytime in this century. And neither does he.

Volume II, Number 8 A SNIPPET OF VERSE All else is relative,

2007-05-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

Volume II, Number 8

A SNIPPET OF VERSE

All else is relative,
This only true:
E=mc2.

Since the other little verses are by famous poets like Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, Sheets and Kelley, and William Jennings Byron, I always assume everyone recognizes the author. This triplet is from a less well-known poet. I will award 50 Gold Points to the person correctly identifying the author.

AN ANSWER TO AN EARLIER QUESTION

The photo of Henry VIII with the caption "William Jennings Byron, Author of 'Thanatopsis'" was stolen from a book called FROM BEOWULF TO VIRGINIA WOOLF Robert Manson (no kin, I hope to the infamous Manson). Manson's book is a fractured history of English literature taken from student essays. Among the other illustrations are a bucolic scene labeled "Pepys Dairy," and one of an empty sea titled "The Invisible Spanish Armada."

CHUCK REDUX

Here is a road trip that did not go wrong.

Two weeks ago, I went to Austin to meet Chuck Joyce, he of "Hootenanny Hoots" fame. The man someone suggested I made up. Remember in an earlier Blog, some doubter averred that my question, IDENTIFY CHUCK AND JULIE JOYCE, was fake and that Chuck and Julie were what he called "ringers." Time passed, and a man in New York wrote to the Blog to say that Chuck lived in Babylon, New York, and was an elder in the Baptist church there. I called the church and talked to the preacher. He told me Chuck was indeed an elder and played bass in the Rejoice Band. That afternoon, I was getting a haircut and my cellular telephone sang "Ode to Joy" to me. It was Chuck Joyce calling from New York. He told me he was coming to Austin to visit his mother and agreed to meet with me and Phillip Fry.

I drove to Austin and Phillip Fry and I met Chuck at Threadgill's—the Eddie Wilson cafe in the same building as the old filling station that Threadgill once ran out on North Lamar. Threadgill's is famous in Austin because Kenneth Threadgill used to have aspiring singers show up at the filling station/beer joint and sing the afternoons away. The whole story can be found in Jan Reid's THE IMPROBABLE RISE OF REDNECK ROCK. The most famous Threadgill alumna was Janis Joplin, who was discovered by Julie Joyce. (I said earlier that Janis was found by the Hootenanny Hoots, but Chuck said Julie was the person who brought her to sing at Threadgill's.)

O.K., we met. Chuck had the chicken fried steak, I had the four-vegetable plate, and if I could remember what Fry had, I could die a happy man. Chuck told us the whole story. Beginning with the formation of the Hoots and ending with his present life in New York. Here are the Hoots as they were in days of yore:

From left to right they are Julie Joyce, Threadgill, Chuck, and Burt Maguire. The fourth member of the band varied (sometimes Bill Neely, sometimes Cotton Collins, and sometimes others), but Chuck and Julie were regulars with Threadgill for several years. In 1968, Kenneth Threadgill bought a new Chevy station wagon and the Hootenanny Hoots were off to the Newport Folk Festival to appear with the likes of Roy Acuff and B.B. King.

Fry and I used to go hear them at the Split Rail in Austin and once we went to Mother Blues in Dallas just to hear Chuck, Julie, Bill Neely, Cotton Collins, and Threadgill. Somewhere, Fry has a photo of that event. We are sitting around the table with some of them, and I have hair down to my shoulders. By that time Threadgill's group may have metamorphosed into The Velvet Cowpasture.

Enough of history. Back to biography. Chuck, whose picture appears below, is one of those men who improves with age. He turned out to be more handsome in retirement than he was in "the glory days." Eldership agrees with him.

Chuck Joyce was born in Temple, but grew up in Austin and played quarterback for McCallum High School. He and Julie were married when we used to see them play, but he and Julie were divorced in 1973, and, sad to say, Julie was killed in a car wreck in the eighties out on Lake Austin. Chuck persevered as a musician in Austin, in California, and in Colorado, but for most of his working life, he worked on newspapers in what reporters call "the back shop." He was a typesetter and pressman for the AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN, THE HOUSTON POST, THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE, and, in New York, with NEWSDAY. Now retired, he is married and has a fifteen-year-old daughter. And he plays in the First Baptist Church of Babylon, New York.

I don't know what he thought of Fry and me, two ageing fans, but we found him a delightful man. Charming, I suppose you might say. His cheerful stories brought back the days of Cotton and Threadgill, and the days when Fry and I were in our salad days. Ou sont les neiges?

A LITTLE QUESTION TO END ON

I stole the phrase "if I could remember what Fry had, I could die a happy man." Does anybody know what movie I lifted it from?

Volume II, Number 7 A QUOTE What men call gallantry, and the

2007-05-09T17:02:00.000-07:00

Volume II, Number 7

A QUOTE

What men call gallantry, and the gods adultery,
Is much more common where the climate’s sultry.

A QUESTION

What song contains these lines? Hint—Bob Wills recorded a version.

I love you and you love me,
Hurry through the alley
So the neighbors won’t see….

ANOTHER QUESTION

What in Heaven’s name did I mean by putting that photo of Henry VIII in with the caption “William Jennings Byron, Author of “Thanatopsis”? Did I steal that somewhere?

YET ANOTHER QUESTION

What do these people have in common?
Jerry Flemmons
Mike Cochran
Preston McGraw

COMING ATTRACTIONS

Jim Reeves’s Wardrobe
More Cotton Collins
A Visit with Chuck Joyce

BETSY FEAGAN COLQUITT

If I made a list of the three or four smartest people I have ever known, Betsy Colquitt would be on it. But I probably won’t make such a list, for I am sure to leave somebody off, or start puzzling over number five. But no matter the number, Betsy would be on my list—long or short. I have not known her long, but I have known her work for a couple of decades. I first met her about 1998 when we were both retired, and I was helping TCU Press assemble her book, EVE: FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND OTHER POEMS.

Judy Alter asked me to write the introduction to Betsy’s book, and from that time on, Betsy and I have spent a lot of time together. I got to know her well, and have become friends with her two daughters, one a physician in Fort Worth and one a professor of English at San Diego State University. (Her daughter Kate is my doctor and has seen me through illnesses real and imaginary; daughter Clare is working on a book in a series I edit for TCU Press).

I always liked Betsy Colquitt’s poetry from afar, but once I had to write about the poems and pay close attention to then, I became convinced that she was the finest poet I knew personally. Her poems are both intellectual and passionate, and her use of the language is skilled. Since EVE came out, she has enjoyed a wide audience. Now her poems are being anthologized—a sure sign of high quality.

Betsy Feagan was born within sight and sound of Texas Christian University—near the corner of James and Berry Street. She attended Paschal High and TCU before going to Vanderbilt University to study with some of the famous Fugitives there. Vandy had become famous in the 1930s for faculty members like John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and Donald Davidson. Some had left by the time Betsy got there in the 1940s, but the aura of the Fugitive Group (aka the Agrarians) lingered for more than a decade. Writers like Betsy and James Dickey and others passed through the poetry halls of Vandy and went across the country teaching close readings of poetry and prose and writing in both genres.

Betsy Feagan taught at Alabama College (now University of Montevallo) and then went on to the University of Kansas, where she met and married Landon Colquitt. They returned to TCU, where Landon became famous as chair of mathematics and Betsy as editor of DESCANT and teacher of several generations of poets and scholars. Despite not having a Ph.D., Betsy became a full professor and was honored with the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Betsy has become a legend in Fort Worth. I am not sure that everyone in the city knows her, but I wouldn’t bet against it. She and I go to lunch often, and it always seems to me that half the people in the restaurant know her—and come over to speak. Those admirers must think as highly as I do of her.

Not only is she smart and a fine poet, but I think she knows more about art and literature and western culture than anyone I have ever met. Before Landon’s death several years ago, the family traveled widely, and Betsy’s tours of the world were not wasted on resorts and trinkets. She immersed herself in the cultures of the places she visited. She knows music and art, she knows politics—and agrees with me—and she knows the ways of the world. J. Frank Dobie would say she is a person “to ride the fence with,” but I won’t get so western. She is a person to spend hours reading poetry with. I have and I recommend it for everyone else. She is a marvel.

Volume II, Number 6 A LITTLE VERSE Nature and Nature's laws

2007-04-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

Volume II, Number 6

A LITTLE VERSE

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said: Let Newton be! and all was light

OLD BUSINESS

Ruth the Republican was right about who lived next door to Colonel E. M. House in Austin. I was amazed that she knew, but she detected right off that it was "the Great Commoner" hisownself, a man who ran thrice for the presidency and was rewarded for supporting Wilson in 1912 by being made Secretary of State.

Here is his picture.

William Jennings Byron, Author of Thanatopsis

MORE OLD BUSINESS

Ruth the R was right in saying that Johnson grass was an import. It came from the Middle East and may have done more damage to the U. S. than Al Qaeda. It came to Texas in the mid-19c and got here later than the Baptists.

ANOTHER "SOMEBODY DONE SOMEBODY WRONG SONG"

Nobody cares, but I am the one who done somebody wrong. I done me wrong. Last week, I drove to San Antonio to attend the Texas Folklore Society. I got to the hotel, unpacked, and found that I had left all my heart and blood pressure medicine back in Fort Worth. I went to dinner with Sarah Greene (she paid!), and then I packed up and drove back to Fort Worth. I took all five of my pills at 1:15 a.m. I missed the whole Folklore Society. Nobody cares but me, but, hey, this is my BLOG!

A LITTLE SKETCH OF JOYCE GIBSON ROACH

If you want all the hard, cold facts about her life, go to joycegibsonroach.com. I am only interested in talking about the person I know. I have read all her works, but I am not about to list them here. It would fill up the page. Why have I read them? She is my friend and has been for many years. I met her when the Texas Folklore Society met at Wimberley way back when she was just a girl. She had a husband and two little children in tow. Now the children have children and Joyce is a widder woman. I can't remember the year, but it was way way way back.

I am sorry my picture appears here with Joyce Roach. I wanted to use the glamour shot she had on her Web site, but it has disappeared. She wanted this picture of the two of us, and I am an egomaniac and agreed. Well, reluctantly.

Joyce Roach is a woman of parts. She can sing, play the fiddle, write music and plays, follow the track of the horned lizard (aka horny toad, horned frog, TCU mascot), deliver humorous papers and speeches, research and write history, and collect folklore about many things. Her book, THE COWGIRLS, won a Spur award, as did a couple of her stories. Her EATS: A FOLK HISTORY OF TEXAS FOODS (with Ernestine Sewell Linck) won the Texas Institute of Letters Award as the best non-fiction book of whatever year that was. (Egomaniac that I am, I would like to announce that I wrote the Foreword and gave the book its name.) Joyce wrote a book entitled WILD ROSE; A FOLK HISTORY OF A NORTH TEXAS TOWN, and she asked me to write an introduction. I agreed, knowing that I would have weeks to read the manuscript and say some inane things. She called on a Tuesday. I said, "When do you need it?" She said, "Friday." It often works that way with her. She is quick off the mark and expects others to be as quick. I made the deadline.

Joyce Roach is a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association and a Fellow of the Texas Folklore Society. What we call "a twofer." Over a moderate-length career, she has taught in the public schools and at TCU. Her course at TCU, LIFE AND LITERATURE OF THE SOUTHWEST, is just one of her many specialties. She edits a magazine for the Westlake Historical Society and is compiling a book for them. I always ask her to lead a discussion in my reading group at the Fort Worth Public Library (Hulen Branch), and she is one of the two or three most popular leaders.

For several seasons, I have ridden to the Texas Folklore Society meeting with her and her mother, Ann Gipson. This year, Ann fell and hit her head and was unable to go. Joyce hated to leave her for long and flew down to San Antonio for one day to do her part of the program. That was lucky for me, since I was so stupid as to forget my medicine. I had my own car and could rush back. But I know Joyce. If she had driven, she would have either brought me back or let me have her car. She is a true friend, and I could go on and on about her. I won't. Everybody knows her anyway. Or should.

Volume II, Number 5 OLD BUSINESS Well, finally, I stumped Ruth

2007-04-03T10:52:00.000-07:00

Volume II, Number 5

OLD BUSINESS
Well, finally, I stumped Ruth the Republican--or should she be Ruth the Researcher?
Colonel E. M. House called President Woodrow Wilson "Governor" even after WW reached the White House in 1913. Wilson had been Governor of New Jersey, so I suppose House didn't want to find a new name for him. House did indeed write the Phillip Dru book about Wilson, but he would never have called Wilson by that name.

TWO NEW QUESTIONS
1. When I came to Texas half a century ago, someone said, "The Baptists and the Johnson grass are taking over Texas." Which came first, the Baptists or the Johnson grass?
2. Who rented the house next door to Colonel House, who lived at 1704 West Avenue in Austin?

THE KING IS ALIVE AND STILL A REPUBLICAN
Everyone remembers when Richard Milhous Nixon was president and entertained Elvis Aaron Presley in the White House. If you don't, the photo below will refresh your memory.

But everyone also knows that "the King" didn't really die and is often seen at Dairy Queens and 7-11s. Elvis just disappeared in order to give himself some peace. However, Elvis did show up for a quick visit with George W. Bush just after the forty-third president was elected. Elvis has picked up a few pounds and has grown a beard, but the King still lives!

LITTLE SKETCH: SARAH GREENE
Last year, the Texas Folklore Society honored Joyce Roach and me by making us Fellows of the Texas Folklore Society. Joyce was honored because of her wonderful works. I was honored because only four members of this society (founded 1909) have been in longer than I have. At the induction in Galveston, Sarah Greene very graciously read my "obituary of induction." She volunteered because she and I have been in on many folklore and semi-folklore events for years and years. In fact, she and I preached the funeral for James W. Byrd of East Texas State University (now A&M-Commerce) a few years ago.* Sarah and I were always invited to East Texas to speak at Byrd's annual summer seminar, and he always had us on the same day. (The Great Byrd always brought in friends to speak so that he would not have to teach the class very much. He had people like Paul Patterson, Martha Emmons, F. E. Abernethy, Ben K. Green, and Elmer Kelton to do the work. After J. Mason Brewer joined the ET faculty, Byrd renamed the summer seminar the J. Mason Brewer Seminar.)

That was a rambling introduction. Sarah Greene is the voice of Northeast Texas. For years, she was owner/operator/publisher/editor of The Gilmer Mirror, which covers Upshur County like the dew. She has turned over the operation of the Mirror to her son, Russ, but she still writes "Sideglances in the Mirror" and is always either folksy or learned or informative. (Her most recent column was on bird watching in East Texas, but she often tells of the many trips she makes around the world.
Sarah has been everywhere. China, Europe, Egypt—even probably "far-flung Cambodia."** Some of her travel is for pleasure, and some of it is in her various capacities as a newswoman. She has been president of every press organization you can imagine—even the Texas Press Association. She loves to travel, and now that Russ and her daughter Sally are grown and Sarah is a widow, she is free to roam the world. Every time I see her or she emails me, she is "just back from XXXXXX." I used to be startled at her wide range, but now I take it for granted.
*Actually, it wasn't a funeral; it was a memorial service held at Texas A&M at Commerce after Byrd was buried. I just like the idea of saying I preached a funeral. I have done a lot of those in recent years, and I am weary of such work.
** I often use the phrase "far-flung Cambodia." I heard it in an old play once. It could have been Charley's Aunt. The aunt, who, as everyone knows, came from "Brazil, where the nuts come from." I think the aunt—the real one and the imagined one—visited "far-flung Cambodia." I am sure Ruth the Republican can set me straight if she will take the trouble to read Charley's Aunt.)
End of that particular digression and back to Sarah. I first met Sarah when she attended her first Texas Folklore Society meeting in "far-flung Alpine" in 1962. She became a regular, and I have missed very few meetings over these many years. So we manage to see each other a couple of times a year. Then I taught Sally when she was a student at UNT (I won't say when in case Sally sees this). If I remember, I directed Sally's MA thesis on the British novelist Colin Wilson. Sally went on to get two doctorates—one in jurisprudence and one in literature. She is married to Paul Jones, the well-known North Carolina poet and is the mother of Tucker Jones, who must be ten or twelve by now. Sarah burns up the airlines between Gilmer and NC to see her "far-flung family." Actually, Sarah does not fly out of Gilmer proper, but has to drive a ways to hear "the big jet engines whine." (Ruth the Republican, where does that line appear?)
Sarah grew up in a newspaper family. She must be the third generation at the Mirror. Sarah went to Stephens College in Missouri, where all debs went to "finish" back in the day. And then she went to the University of Texas. She worked on The Daily Texan, and then moved to Dallas to work on the Dallas Morning News. That is when she married Ray Greene, whom she had known at UT. After a time, Sarah moved to Fort Worth and worked at Convair writing and editing material on the B-36. Ray was at the Star-Telegram then. When her parents decided to retire, Ray and Sarah moved back to Gilmer and The Mirror.
Sarah knows more about Texas fiction than most college professors who teach the subject. She has over 700 books in her Texas collection, and she is always telling me about writers I have not read and whose work she knows entire.
I am sorry to include this picture of me with Sarah Greene. She deserves better, but I don't have a photo of her standing alone, and I won't see her to take one until next week when the Texas Folklore Society meets in San Antonio. I hope Sarah outlives me, for I don't think I can bear to preach her funeral. But we both plan to hang on for most of the rest of this century.

Volume II, Number 4 GENTLEMAN JIM IN HOLLAND You may never

2007-03-23T14:28:00.000-07:00

Volume II, Number 4

GENTLEMAN JIM IN HOLLAND

You may never have had a phone call from Holland. I have. Last week. In the never-ending search that Phillip Fry and I are conducting for Texas country singers, I looked up the Jim Reeves fan club. As all of you know, Gentleman Jim Reeves was born in Panola County, Texas, so naturally his fan club is in Holland. I emailed Ari den Dulk, the secretary, one Sunday, and he called me on the phone an hour later. I was amazed, for the longest distance I have ever talked was to Texarkana. Ari sent me all the newsletters of the club, which was started in 1975 by Ari and Bert Bossink. There had been a British version of the Jim Reeves Fan Club until 1977, but it folded. Ari and Bert started doing their club in Dutch, but after the British club folded, they went to English. Good thing, too, I could never have managed the language, but Ari was an ace in English. He sent me this photo, which Fry and I will use in our celebrated book. In case you want to write a letter to the JR Fan Club, here is the address:

Jim Reeves Fan Club
Postbus 66
2280 AB Ryswyk
The Netherlands
Phone 0031613844105

FINISH THIS LINE

"Buck wheat cakes and Injun batter. . . ."

SKETCH NUMBER TWO: GEORGE ELLIS FORTENBERRY

When George Fortenberry was born, Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States. It was Wilson's last year in office, but by that time he was--like Shakespeare's Old Norway--"impotent and bedrid." And the country was being run by Edith, his wife. George was born in Childress or somewhere up close to the Red River, but his hometown of memory was Mineral Wells. He had gone to eight different schools by the time he was in the eighth grade, but he did high school in Mineral Wells. He was a soda jerk in the drugstore on the first floor of the famous Baker Hotel. This was back in the heyday of the Baker and the Crazy. In George's days, big name bands and singers came to the roof garden of the Crazy. The rest of a thirsty nation got the radio broadcasts and could order the Crazy Water Crystals by mail--just add tap water. (By the way, you can go to Mineral Wells today and buy Crazy Water from the spring just off the square. Don't!)

Somebody talked George into joining the National Guard in 1938 or 39, and he wound up serving with the 112th Cavalry all through WWII, the one Dobie Gillis's father called "the big 'un." George trained at Fort Bliss and Fort Clark down at Bracketville, and then he rode horses for 1,500 miles during the full-scale maneuvers the Army conducted out of Fort Polk, Louisiana, just before the war. George is the only person I have ever met who actually served in the horse cavalry. When war broke out, George and the 112th went to the South Pacific--not Mary Martin's "South Pacific," with all that "Bali Hi" stuff--but the one where people shot other people. George was at New Caledonia, Woodlark Island, Goodenough Island (which was famous for wild dogs), and finally New Britain. George was a medic, and when the enemy blew people up, George, like Kipling's Gunga Din, had "to tend the wounded under fire." The horses that were sent to the 112th from Australia were subject to malaria, a fact unknown the Army way back then. So the horses were sent off to India, and one shipload of horses went down when the Japanese sank the transport.

After the war, George came to Fort Worth and took a bachelor's and master's from TCU. One day he saw the horse he had trained with at Fort Clark and in Louisiana tied to a watermelon wagon on University Drive. The little horse was tied behind the wagon that was being pulled by two mules. George could tell by the horse's gait that it was "his" horse. Sure enough, it was. He stopped the man with the wagon and read the brand--S417--that the Army had put on it five or six years before.

While at TCU, George worked as a union carpenter--a trade he had learned from his father--and built his own house from scrap lumber. After graduation he taught for a year at Santo, and then at Azle, Riverside Junior High, and Paschal. Finally, he got a job at a two-year school called Arlington State College and stayed with it until it became the University of Texas at Arlington. He retired in 1982. I met him in 1957--Lordy, that was fifty years ago!--when we were graduate students at the University of Arkansas. We took Old English together and were no good at it. I had had it before and was so bad that I was auditing to get ready for BEOWULF. George faded out, but I managed a B in Beowulf. George took Old English again and managed to pass BEOWULF at the University of Arkansas, where he got his Ph.D. He and I commiserated over German for several years, and oftentimes when we were struggling with it, George would say, "You know, there are little kids not more than five-years-old who talk this stuff." Well, maybe. I am not sure of that.

George was married to a woman named Ruth, and they had two children. Then Ruth died, and George married another woman named Ruth. He says it keep him from ever calling Ruth 2 by the name of his first wife. It seems that George has achieved wisdom in his 86 years on earth. Look at the photo of George Fortenberry. He could pass for 60 in the dark and 65 in the bright light of day. I hope to outlive him, but I can't count on it. George was a war hero, though he will probably deny it. Or would if he knew how to reply to this blog.

SPEAKING OF WOODROW

What did Colonel House call Wilson after WW became president? House was Wilson's Karl Rove. Sort of.

Volume II, Number 3 I HAVE A PLAN Jack Rosenbalm, in a futile

2007-03-06T12:20:00.000-08:00

Volume II, Number 3

I HAVE A PLAN

Jack Rosenbalm, in a futile attempt to refine my bridge playing, once told me, “A bad plan, one ill-conceived and ill-executed, is better than no plan at all.” I never learned that; consequently, I never got any better at bridge and finally gave it up. Now I have a plan.

A prelim before I reveal my plan. A. C. Greene, sometime after he died, wrote a book called Chance Encounters. Actually, he may have written it before he died, but it didn’t come out until he was in his grave out in Shackleford County. In the book, A. C., who loved a celebrity better than anyone I have ever known personally, wrote squibs about all the famous people he had ever “encountered,” and A. C. would run his head into the fire to get a glimpse at the great and the near- great. A.C. had closed in on the likes of Artie Shaw, Van Cliburn, Ann Sothern, FDR, Lee Harvey Oswald, Harry Truman, and on and on and on. In one instance, he encounters someone who wasn’t there. As he tells it, he was walking Joan Didion through the Baker Hotel when he saw someone who looked like Hermes Nye. It wasn’t, but A. C. puts a photo of Hermes in the book anyway. Actually, I just re-read a bunch of the book, and I have to admit that my late friend and colleague was a very good writer—better than some he “encountered.”

NOW TO MY SORRY LITTLE PLAN.

I don’t know any famous people like Artie Shaw or Van Cliburn, but I did once see Chubby Checker getting off an airplane. Nevertheless, I know a lot of Texans who are famous to me. So I plan to write little sketches of some of them in this celebrated blog. If they are not famous to the world already, JIM LEE’S TEXAS will rocket them to stardom.
I am not going to do these sketches alphabetically because I get confused about halfway down the alphabet—down around “r” and “q”—but I am going to start out with an A.

FRANCIS EDWARD ABERNETHY

I have only known Ab for about forty years, so I don’t imagine for a minute that I can speak with any authority about him. And I don’t mean to get into what Holden Caulfield calls “all that David Copperfield crap” about his life. I have no idea where he was born and don’t want anybody to tell me. All I care about Ab is what I have observed and ruminated over in these forty short years.Francis Edward is accomplished. Like the character in the old campfire song, he can “sing like Caruso both tenor and bass and play on the Spanish guitar.” (I love that line and say it a lot.) Ab is one of the legendary folklorists in the state. For years and years and years, he ran the Texas Folklore Society. He took up the mantle dropped by J. Frank Dobie, Moady C. Boatright, and Wilson Hudson as secretary-editor of the TFS and creator of the annual volume. He was the best of the lot, and if a person takes a careful look at all the fifty-some volumes of the Society’s publications, it will be obvious that the ones Ab edited were the best. My favorite is Texas Folk Art, but I have admired all of them. Ab then wrote a history of the TFS that put the whole organization—the largest regional folklore society in America—in perspective.
I don’t know what Ab does best. Maybe everything. He is a hunter and fisher and Big Thicket pioneer. He served in the U.S. Navy in World War II. He is a writer of sterling prose. He plays the guitar, the bull fiddle, the harmonica, and could probably play the accordion if he weren’t a gentleman. (A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion but won’t.) I have conned Francis into many things over the years. I got him to write the first pamphlet in a series on southwestern writers that I was editing back in the 1960s. He wrote on J. Frank Dobie, and that work has not been superseded. Once, when I was engaged with Don Graham and Tom Pilkington in making a video on Texas literature, I got Ab to be the on-screen narrator—off-screen too. We could have found some voice-of-God speaker with a horrible radio announcer’s voice to do the narration, but I wanted Ab because he spoke in the idiom of the people of East Texas. He even found a black man from Nacogdoches who plowed with a mule for the video. Then he got his musicians on the East Texas String Ensemble to make our music. I should say, right here, that the Ensemble (pronounced “Insimble”) is my favorite acoustic group in the world. Ab, Stan Alexander, Tom Nall, and Charles Gardner started it. There have been a few changes in it, but Ab and Stan, my two favorite singers in the world next to Ernest Tubb and Willie, are still picking and singing. Ab has sung in Texas and Washington and Communist China—probably not in Chinese, but he could have if he had wanted to.
Ab is now retired from Stephen F. Austin State University and the Texas Folklore Society, but he is still everywhere I ever go. Singing, reading the best papers, picking his guitar, and telling tales. Like the time he and I “found” a Cadillac out in Monahans back in the early sixties and toured all the meanest honky-tonks in Ward County while the other TFS members were sleeping. We went into a Latino cantina and escaped with our lives. It was called “The Bloody Bucket” by the locals. Then we danced the night away at the Green Lantern in Monahans with some of the prettiest young women in the whole Trans-Pecos. (Well, hell, they looked pretty to us about 1:15 A.M.) As some dead poet said, “Bliss it was in those days to be alive, but to be young was very Heaven.” Ab’s daddy lived to be a hundred, and I hope Ab does too.

MAYBE MY LAST QUIZ

If Pasquin and Ruth the Republican get this, I may give up asking questions. What do these men have in common?
Link Davis
Earl Driver
Joe Holley
Lauren Mitchell
Morris Deason
J.B. Brinkley
Jimmy Makado
Homer Kiniard

Volume II, Number 2 OLD BUSINESS It seems that my blog has

2007-02-22T10:03:00.000-08:00

Volume II, Number 2

OLD BUSINESS

It seems that my blog has been taken away from me by Ruth the Republican and Pasquin, whose running commentary about life in general, about Pasquin's real identity, and my ineptitude as a bridge player fill columns. I encourage anyone who reads JIM LEE'S TEXAS to click on all the responses and see some of the interesting stuff that comes in. Pasquin knows almost everything, but since I have known him for years, I already knew that. He correctly notes some singers who used pseudonyms--most recently Harold Jenkins, who sang as Conway Twitty. But how about Freddy Fender (aka Baldemar Huerta) or Joe King Carrasco (what is his real name, and why did he choose the pseudonym?) Then there is the interesting comment posted recently by the man who knew a horse cavalry vet from WWII. Read it and then think about my friend George Fortenberry, who was in the horse cavalry in WWII. George says, the problem with horses and the reason they had to be destroyed was that horses caught malaria, a fact not known when the Army took horses to the South Pacific. I hope George will add his own comment to the blog. It is getting out of my hands anyway. Okay, back to what used to be my blog.

HILL COUNTRY CRIME

Pictured here is just one of Ben Rehder's novels about crime in Blanco County, The main character is not a cop but a game warden named John Marlin. Ben Rehder claims that his father-in-law hit him in the head with a Carl Hiaasen novel and set him to writing about funny crime in the Hill Country. I hope you will rush out and read either or all of the Ben Rehder novels. They are BONE DRY. FLAT CRAZY, BUCK FEVER, and GUILT TRIP. There may already be others in the works. Since these have been nominated for big awards, I am sure he is not giving up the genre. He was at the famous Mystery Evening put on by the Friends of the Fort Worth Public Library last year and is as funny in person as his books are. He doesn't scant the reader on the crimes that infect the quiet reaches of the Hill Country, but he enlivens them with a bunch of loonies and some comic gangsters. John Marlin is not supposed to get into worse crime than poachers who "spotlight" deer or hunt other game out of season, but it always turns out that Marlin gets into deeper woods and waters and even murder most fowl (or is it foul?) I wonder if Marlin is named after the rifle? I have a Marlin .22 lever-action my ownself. I should have asked him that when he was in FTW. Maybe I need to take a road trip to Blanco and ask. I have eaten pie at the Blanco bowling alley (which appears in the books) and could stand to go there again. They make pies with "calf slobber" rising up two inches at the bowling alley.

JOHN GRAVES BY DIVERS HANDS

Here is the cover of a new book of essays on John Graves. Mark Busby and Terrell Dixon edited this work, which grew out of a panel held at a conference in Fort Worth a couple of years ago. There were only three or four participants on the panel, including John Graves himself, so the editors had to round up a bunch of the usual suspects to flesh out the book, which just came out from UTexas Press. I was not on the panel, but since I showed up just as it was ending, they had no choice but to ask me to write something. Since I am not short of ego, I agreed, as did lots of other people. The result is a series of both good and bad essays on Graves. I won't say which are which, but if you buy the book, you can decide. Here is a self-serving footnote: Not long after the panel, TCU Press got John Graves to come to the annual autograph extravaganza and sit on stage with me while I asked him inane questions. The Star-Telegram took a photo of Graves and me and ran it in their "Click" section. In the picture, I am leaning over Graves and we are both looking intense. I thought it might be fun to run that photo as a part of this blog with a caption that said, "Jim Lee Explains Country Life to John Graves." I had bought a copy of the photo from the Star-Telegram and hoped to use it. I wrote somebody at the S-T and asked if I could have permission--free of course--to run the photo. I got an answer saying I could if I would pay $250. So you will have to just imagine me leaning over John Graves and lecturing him on the intricacies of goat raising.

A SIMPLE QUESTION

What Texas band made "The Cotton -Eyed Joe" popular? Bob Wills recorded it, but somebody else made it famous before him.

Volume II, Number 1 ANOTHER ROAD TRIP GONE WRONG SONG I am

2007-01-30T14:57:00.000-08:00

Volume II, Number 1

ANOTHER ROAD TRIP GONE WRONG SONG

I am not giving up on tracking down Cotton Collins, I don’t care what anybody says. Last week, I went to Austin because Cotton’s grandson, Glen, wrote that he would talk to me about Cotton. I called and called his house and got a busy signal for two days; then I sent him an email and told him to call me at Phillip Fry’s house. Then, Fry and I went to the Broken Spoke to see what we could find out from James White, the famous prop, of the Spoke. He told us that Glen was a fine songwriter and that Cotton had played a lot at the Spoke in days gone by. I had already read an obit in the Austin paper about the death of Cotton’s brother, Walter, last month. He and Cotton used to play dueling fiddles or some such. Jack Rosenbalm dug up the census records for China Spring and we got the ages of Cotton and Walter, but still don’t know all I want to about the author of “Westphalia Waltz.” Glen Collins told me that somebody is making a documentary about “Westphalia Waltz.” He said he would get me a copy. I can hardly wait.

THE REST OF THE ROAD TRIP STORY

I went to Austin on Friday and planned to come back on Monday. As the old folk song used to say, “Hit rained and mist.” Well, hit did. Hit rained and hit mist and hit snowed and hit iced, and I imposed myself on Fry for six nights. Couldn’t stir. One good thing: We wrote a bunch of our little essays on Texas country singers. Watch for the book some day.

SPEAKING OF BOOKS

Dallasite Harry Hunsicker has a series of novels with a private eye named Lee Henry Oswald. O.K., I didn’t name this guy, so don’t blog back at me about it. Anyway, Hunsicker has two novels so far. The first is STILL RIVER and the second one is pictured here, THE NEXT TIME YOU DIE. I like his character even if he is an Oswald. The main character is of the private eye school of hard knocks and mean streets. Hunsicker does a good job with his local Dallas color, and he is not above spilling a lot of blood. Read Hunsicker if you like John D. McDonald or Brett Halliday or Dashiell Hammett. Tough guys and voluptuous gals. (I just made that up, but it is true.)

QUIZ

How many of these stalwarts can you identify?

ANOTHER QUIZ

In 1952, two native Texans ran for president. Name them. And don’t be looking in THE WORLD ALMANAC for an answer.

I asked which country musicians were nicknamed Bashful. Somebody got Bashful Brother Oswald, Roy Acuff’s dobro player. His real name was Pete Kirby. The other bashful one was Ernest Tubb’s pedal steel player Bashful Billy Byrd. ET would give him a solo and say, “Aw, now, Bashful Billy Byrd.” ET also had “Butterball” and Little Pete Mitchell on steel.

A HINT

I asked readers to name some famous country singers who used pseudonyms. Here is one: Vernon Dalhart, whose real name was Marion Tye Slaughter. Keep on!!! Name more.