The clear, waist-deep creek was full of salmon finning nose to tail as I eased up over a low rise. The sun was bright in a fresh new blue bowl overhead, and the mild July day it felt like fall.

We’d been told mosquitoes were the state bird of Alaska, so I smelled like a walking DEET factory. The scent of clothes and skin soaked in insect repellent me of camping when I was a kid. The Old Man was a firm believer in spraying us down until we virtually dripped.

We hadn’t seen a mosquito on the whole nine-day salmon trip, so the stuff must have worked great!

Unfamiliar birds flitted through the spruce trees that made me think of Christmas. Willows and alders lined Montana Creek, making casting difficult. There were other bushes I couldn’t identify, but I gave each of them unmentionable names when my leader tangled up so bad I had to break off the limber branches to free the fly.

That extra issue was irritating, because that day we were casting 9-weight rods with big fat salmon flies that apparently were a favorite treat for those bushes.

The fish ignored my offerings.

Frustrated, I dug in one of the many pockets on my fishing vest to find a box of flies I hadn’t yet tried. It was filled with pink, blue sparkles, yellow, black, and chartreuse morsels all crowded together in the foam holders.

It reminded me of five-year-old girls’ birthday party with dresses and favors.

Clipping off the unmolested fly, I chose a black streamer designed to resemble a leach. It’s kind of a Catch-22. The salmon aren’t hungry, but we throw flies that look tasty.

Strip line, cast, back cast, forward, one more back cast to stretch the line out and lay it in the water. The fly sinks, bumps along the gravel and sand bottom and slides down the back of a big King who is patiently waiting for the one immediately in front to get off her phone and go.

Five casts later, the fish still weren’t interested.

Clamping the rod under my arm, I slipped off the fly and rummaged through another pocket to locate a different box. The other pockets were so packed with equipment I looked as if I were wearing an inflated lifejacket.

Two young men appeared in shorts, ancient hiking boots, and nothing else. Mutt and Jeff looked to be about eighteen. I looked down at my chest waders and wading boots, fully conscious of my vented shirt, polarized glasses, and hat.

The kids had nothing else but lots of hair and salmon rods.

Both broke out in wide grins. The tallest I’d named Jeff chinned toward the creek. “You catching anything?”

“Can’t buy a bite. How about y’all?”

“Caught half a dozen. We threw them back.”

“Figures.” I sighed. “What are you throwing?”

The shorter one I’d named Mutt held out a 7-weight rod and unhooked his lure to show me. It looked like a piece of yarn from his grandmother’s knitting bag.

I adjusted my glasses. “What is that?”

A piece of yarn from my grandmother’s knitting bag.”

“What makes it appealing?”

Jeff shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not a fish, but it works.”

Mutt nodded. “It’s how you twist it on your hook.”

“Give me a bare hook.” Jeff held out his hand.

“The only bare ones I have are trout hooks.”

Mutt looked puzzled. “What do you catch trout for?”

I’d heard most Alaskans considered trout a trash fish. “I like to eat them.”

“Are you as good on trout as you are salmon?”

“Funny.”

Mutt took the streamer on the end of my leader and studied it for a moment before taking out his knife and stripping everything off except for the head. Then he plucked a wad of blue yarn from his wet pocket, untangled a piece, and somehow wove it onto the hook.

He held it out. “There. Did you see how I did that?”

I thought about the diopters in my fly vest, and how I wished I’d attached them to my trifocals to better see what he was doing. “Sure.”

He handed me two more pieces. “Keep these. I have plenty.”

Jeff pointed. “Mind if we play through?”

I shrugged. “Have at it.”

He flipped out a little line, made a cast, and we watched it drift. The line tightened, his rod bowed, and he had a fish on.

I sighed. “All right. Good luck.”

Engrossed in the fight, neither looked up and I made my way upstream to spend the rest of the day without a strike, but the twist of yarn worked the next day telling me I was onto something.

Now, I know this isn’t an outdoor blog, but as I told my girls when they wanted to know if reality and family are included, “Read between the lines.”

Today’s little suggestion relates to the way we write. Some would-be authors complain about how their submissions keep coming back, and I wonder, are they doing the same thing repeatedly without success?

Is their query letter a little off?

Is their elevator pitch wrong?

Is their entire story written from the wrong viewpoint? First person present tense?

Einstein supposedly defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. There’s no evidence he actually said it, however, the idea describes a lack of progress or a futile approach, which was the way I wrote thirty years ago without success.

Bestselling author Craig Johnson of the Longmire series and I were talking a few weeks ago in Amarillo and he mentioned the state of western writing. His series are contemporary westerns with a traditional feel. He suggested new authors abandon the idea of writing like Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour.

“That’s already been done, by Grey and L’Amour. And done very well. With that in mind, writers need to find a different approach.”

It reminded me of the first writing panel I ever attended. A gentleman behind a mounted video camera in the audience raised his hand during the Q&A portion of the presentation. “I’ve submitted a dozen books, over and over to different houses and agents, and not one has ever been accepted. What’s wrong with these people?”

An author leaned forward and spoke into the microphone. “Maybe you aren’t any good.”

It was a harsh thing to say, but maybe true. He’d been trying the same thing over and over again. It was time to adapt.

Which is what I had to do that morning on Montana Creek in Alaska. The next day I brought a 43-pound King salmon to hand, using that bit of twisted yarn. I’d changed my approach.

Think about it.

If and when the apocalypse finally happens and I survive, I’m gonna be the most pissed-off human left on the earth. I can’t stand for my hair to be long, and I have to shave every day. The stubble under my neck drives me crazy, and all the Road Warrior gangs better steer clear.

I finally found a real barbershop. Not a hair salon, stylist center, hair spa, or hair stylist. It’s an old-school barbershop with hair on the floor, slightly uncomfortable chairs, and the smell of Barbicide or Pinaud, with an undertone of cigars and pipe smoke.

A rack of magazines sits beside the door, ranging from shooting sports, hunting, cars, or anything with Texas in the title.

The two barbers who’ve retired from either law enforcement or the military. How do I know? Their own haircuts, tattoos, and the subject matter they discuss. I haven’t asked, though.

Most of the time I simply walk in and one of them is available, scissors in hand and lightly clicking as if waiting for a head.

Today was different. Both chairs were occupied, and I was in a hurry. A lively discussion about wild hogs bounced back and forth between the barbers and one customer who was draped and seated.

A redheaded gentleman sat beside a mom concentrating on her phone, waiting for her son’s fancy haircut to be finished. Beside him, a bent man with hair whiter than my own listened to the exchange, hands on the head of his cane and smiling as if he knew a secret.

Barber One stepped back to judge the length of his young project’s sideburns. “Well, I believe we can’t kill enough hogs. I hear there are nearly three million of them in the state.”

Feral hogs are so destructive to crops and land, it’s estimated they cost Texans between $400 to $500 million dollars each year. They’re dangerous to humans and animals, destroy habitat, and carry communicative diseases that can be passed on to livestock.

Redhead chuckled. “About half of them are rooting up my pasture.”

“I heard Constable Rick killed one off his porch the other morning,” I said.

Barber One shook his head. “Well, that leaves two million, nine hundred ninety-nine more.”

Barber Two paused, thinking. “How many piglets can a feral sow have at a time?”

“Six to twelve,” I recalled. “Usually six, I’ve heard, but I don’t know anyone who goes out and counts them.”

“Well, then we’re back up to three million and five by now, as fast as those things reproduce.”

The discussion continued until it was my time in the chair. He shook out the drape and clipped it around my neck.

“What are we doing for you today?”

“Short. No skin showing.”

“Got it.”

The youngster stepped down from Barber One’s chair, to be replaced by the white-haired man who creaked his way to the chair and settled in. I met the elderly gentleman’s eyes and he nodded a hello.

The barber wrapped his neck. “How are we cutting today, sir?”

“Make it look good, like it’s not a fresh cut.”

“Trying to make an impression?”

“I have a lot of people coming to visit.”

“Birthday. Anniversary?”

“Funeral.”

“Sorry to hear. Hope it wasn’t someone close.”

“About as close as it can be. It’s me.”

I raised an eyebrow, waiting for the punchline.

The elderly man smiled. “I’m dying.”

Barber Two chuckled. “Aren’t we all.”

I closed my eyes, listening.

“No. Really. The doctors released me a few days ago after I was in the hospital for several weeks. Said my kidneys are failing and there’s nothing else they can do. Sent me home with hospice.” He sighed. “I have a kidney infection now, and they figure I won’t see Monday.”

My barber paused. “Well, doctors don’t know everything.”

“They don’t, but I know how I feel.” He chuckled and I cracked an eye open again. He was honestly cheerful, and I still thought he was setting us up.

“But it’s okay. I’ve done it all. I was married to a wonderful woman who’s already up there waiting for me. My daughters are successful businesswomen and moms, and my son’ll come to his senses one of these days. Maybe this’ll straighten him out.

“I’ve traveled the world, vacationed in every state. Hunting and fished here in the U.S., shot big game in Africa, caught marlin from blue water and sailed on a big three-masted schooner.”

The shop was silent. Even their scissors weren’t clicking.

“I’ve driven good cars, eaten fine food, though I still think home fried chicken is best, and watched good people do great things.”

Barber One started to speak, but had to stop and clear his throat. “So you figure you needed a haircut.”

“Wanted to take one last thing off my list.” The gentleman’s smile was as wide as a four-lane highway. “I have most everything else taken care of. Gave my guns away to son-in-laws and good friends who’re still young enough to use them.

“I just wish I could hunt quail one more time. I miss that most, following dogs on a chilly morning. I wonder if quail and dogs will be in heaven.” He paused, veering off again. “No matter. You know, I’m looking forward to seeing my mama again.”

A few minutes later, Barber Two gave my shoulder a pat and spun me around to face the big mirror on the wall. “All finished.”

Apparently, my instructions weren’t clear enough. My hair looked as if I’d just joined the military. “Well, thanks.”

I stepped outside to consider my new head and what I’d heard. It was a lot to absorb, and I was still standing there when the old gentleman came outside.

He gave me that same wide grin and I couldn’t help but smile, too. “I know you.”

“You do?”

“Yep, I’ve been reading your newspaper columns for years, and most of your books, though that spooky one was a little much. Reading this last few years has been all I can do, so your stories have help passed the time.”

We stood there for a second before I held out my hand. “Thanks for reading my work.”

He nodded. “Not much to say, is there?” He shifted his cane and paused. “I’d rather have a hug, if it’s all the same to you.”

There in front of the barbershop, we hugged, and I let him be the one to step back. He winked. “Good luck.”

I patted his shoulder. “At least you got a better haircut than this one.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” he said and walked slowly away.

On the way home, other similar conversations came to mind, and that’s the purpose of this discussion. As writers, we’re entertainers, and our work is impactful in more ways than we expect. More than once I’ve heard my brother from another mother, John Gilstrap, say we’re entertainers, and that’s the God’s honest truth.

During a signing at the Barnes and Noble in Garland, Texas, about five years ago, a woman asked me to sign a stack of books bearing my name. “I have your new one here, but these others belonged to my husband.”

For once I knew when to keep my mouth shut, so I waited.

“He died a month ago from cancer, and your books helped him get through the chemo and these last months. He made me promise to buy everything you write, because he was such a big fan.”

Eyes stinging, I stepped around the signing table, and we stood there with our arms around each other long enough for a couple of other fans to tear up. My allergies must have been acting up, because my eyes watered for a long time after that.

Not getting too deep into a friend’s life, but a woman I’ve known for several years also gave my earlier books to her son who was suffering from cancer. He had a rough time of it, and at the end, she and his young wife read aloud to him when he could no longer focus. I had the honor of talking with him on the phone from across the country and had to clear my voice several times. We visited until his strength went that day and he was gone not long after that.

Don’t underestimate your work. It will impact others, and you probably won’t even know about it.

One of my oldest friends, Steve Knagg (a former newspaper columnist), is a guitar-picking son of a gun. In the late 1980s and 90s, he and I traveled across the country to our state and national conferences and events, and played in hospitality rooms to mostly entertain ourselves, and hopefully, others.

That was back in the days when Southwest Arlines flew with only a few dozen passengers, even at peak times. Once, he and I boarded with our guitars and found there were only six other seats filled. We’d been in the bar earlier, so we went to the back, and after the plane took off, took out our guitars and started playing.

The flight attendant came by. “Y’all can’t be doing that. You’re disturbing the other passengers.”

I glanced down the aisle. “We’re providing entertainment.”

“I’d like for you to provide silence.”

Steve spoke up. “We’ll quit playing if you’ll give us free drinks.”

She came back with a dozen bottles of Wild Turkey and we put away our instruments. I think that was the most we were ever paid for our performances.

I haven’t played in over twenty-five years, but he still picks a little, and a couple of weeks ago, we started talking about how we learned. My limited abilities came from lessons when I was in junior high school. To a kid who loved The Monkees, the idea of being a famous musician was appealing, but after learning the basic chords, I abandoned the classes because I didn’t like to practice.

After that, I tinkered with my old Stella, and like other kids of our era, my friends and I formed a garage band that was…terrible. We had three songs, and I’m sure they were like fingernails on a blackboard to anyone over eighteen. One of my female cousins asked us to play at her fifteenth birthday, and we went through our repertoire five times before my uncle came into the living room, unplugged the microphone, and took it with him.

We weren’t surprised. The year before, we played In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida on the record player so many times he took the LP off the spindle, opened the door, and flung it like a frisbee into the yard. He was very clear on what he liked, or disliked.

Steve, on the other hand. learned to play in a different way. One day his dad bought a cheap guitar and without saying a word to his three sons, leaned it up in the corner of the living room where it gathered dust for a year or two. Then one day, after listening to Bob Dylan albums, Steve wiped the dust off and asked a friend to teach him some chords.

He showed considerable aptitude and eventually taught his younger brother to play. That brother became an engineer at Skunkworks, but could have made a career out of playing in professional bands. He’s one of the best pickers I’ve ever known.

I asked Steve once what he would have done if his dad came in with the guitar and said, “Here, learn to play this.”

“I wouldn’t have done it.”

Typical kid reaction, and I should have learned from it, since I took child psychology classes as part of my degree in education. Which leads me to today’s post. Our oldest daughter, Chelsea (AKA the Redhead in my newspaper columns), is now a high school librarian and suffers the same stubbornness. If I tell her to read a book that caught my attention, she won’t do it. She loves me, but there’s some unconscious quirk that kicks in and she can’t help but dig in her heels.

Her twelve-year-old daughter, Riley, inherited the same stubbornness, but I didn’t know it until a couple of weeks ago when the Bride and I took the whole crew down to the Texas coast. Riley suffers from the same affliction I’ve carried all my life, the need to have books close by. It makes my heart happy to see she brings a backpack full of books everywhere she goes.

Interestingly, she prefers not to read on electronic devices, stating that she likes the feel and smell of books.

Ahhhhh.

Now that she’s graduated to chapter books, I really want her to read one that I discovered when I was in the seventh grade. Let’s pause here to understand The Spooky Thing was hysterical to a boy in 1967. William O. Steele was a favorite back then, and I have most of those books on my nostalgia shelf. Sorry about the blurry image, but it was the best I could find online.

So I made the mistake of telling Riley I wanted her to read the book, and described the plot and how funny I thought it was. The Redhead cut her eyes at me and gave her head a small warning shake. It was too late. The sixth-grader shut me down and left the untouched book in the kitchen table.

When she went outside to swim with her brother and cousins, the Redhead caught me. “She won’t read it now. You should have just put it somewhere she could see it and maybe she’d pick it up.”

“This isn’t like when I was a kid and adults were the enemy. It’s a good book.”

“Never trust anyone over twenty-one. I know, Dad, you’ve told us those stories, but she’s like I am, and you’re her granddad. Remember what you say when you’re teaching a writing class. Show, don’t tell.”

“So what should I have done?”

“Put it somewhere where she’d see it and maybe she would have picked it up and thumbed through the pages. But it looks old, the protagonists are boys, and she likes girl heroes the most.” She shrugged. “And besides, I don’t think the cover would ever catch her interest.”

“I like the artwork.”

“Of course you do, but she reads graphic novels. She’s used to Calvin and Hobbs artwork, too, as well as Garfield. Now she reads things like School for Good and Evil, and Big Nate, and The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Her new favorite is the Sherlock Society.”

“Never heard of those.”

“She just read The Thief of Always.”

“Okay, I see where the graphics are better, but she reads Clive Barker and not my own stuff?”

“She doesn’t know him, but she’ll get there with your books, because she sees them on the shelf behind your desk all the time. She asked me the other day if she would like The Rock Hole, but don’t suggest it. Let her find the books in her own time.”

I sighed, realizing I should have remembered Steve’s dad and the guitar, and left The Spooky Thing out with all the other kid books in what we call “the kid’s room,” and crossed my fingers.

So with that knowledge, my next project is to collect all my old childhood favorites and put them on a shelf where the grandcritters can see them. Maybe our future readers will find something of interest, and they can enjoy the books that led me to become a dedicated reader, and eventually a writer.

I should have listened harder in Child Psych 101, but then again, that was a long time ago and I didn’t want anyone, especially professions, to tell me what to do.

“Time is on my side, yes it is.” Mick Jagger

Old Mick might have been wrong about that one.

I love writing for Killzone.com, and most of the time I’m a week or so ahead of these posts, but the past few weeks have been a firehose of deadlines and family obligations, along with day-to-day duties such as yardwork, household maintenance, and writer duties.

This week caught up to me. I finished a newspaper column only ten minutes before deadline, because the summer schedule with our grandcritters absorbed my time. We just got back from a week at the beach, which completely threw as far as dates are concerned. Not complaining here, because we’re fortunate to have them all close by.

New or budding authors don’t realize this business isn’t just sitting before the keyboard and tapping out words. There’s a lot more to being an author that meets the eye.

For example, in addition to the aforementioned newspaper column due today, I had this blog post (due Saturday) which needed to be finished before getting on the road tomorrow morning (Friday) to attend the Western Writers of America conference this weekend of June 20-22, and (Today, Thursday, June 19 at 7:00) I am author Craig Johnson’s in-conversation partner for his Return to Sender book tour here in the DFW area.

Wait. There’s more. I also have a magazine deadline for Texas Fish and Game, and am the editor for an upcoming short story anthology entitled Rough Country (2026 release). I’d reached out to a number of bestselling and talented authors to join in this Roan and Weatherford publication benefitting the U.S. Marshal’s Survivor Fund, and it’s my duty to spearhead this project.

“Against the wind, I’m still running against the wind, I’m older now, but still running against the wind.” Bob Seger.

That’s how I feel right now. Line edits for Comancheria just went in after dedicating several days to that project, and the publisher at R&W is allowing me to have more than the usual amount of input in the cover, which we still haven’t nailed down and publication is in October. Together with the editor and the artist, we’ve discarded half a dozen options.

Wait, again. There’s still more. I’m working with my publishers at Sourcebooks to find the right talent to record the audio version of my most recent Red River novel, The Texas Job. We almost have the right voice for this novel, which I just learned, is in the running for the Will Rogers Gold Medallion in the Western Modern Fiction category. At the same time, The Journey South is in the running for the gold in the Will Rogers Medallion Traditional Western Fiction category.

Copy edits are almost ready for A Dead Man’s Laugh, and that will take precedence over other projects. As many of you know, these edits come in out of the blue and there’s usually (for me, anyway) a two-week deadline, so all momentum on anything else has to stop.

And finally, this summer in a writer’s life will climax in the completion of my manuscript titled, What We Owe the Dead, which I hope to send to my agent by the middle of July (my own deadline).

This all needs to be wrapped before we head out to Bouchercon, in New Orleans. After that, I’ll finish the edits for the anthology so I can attend the Will Rogers Medallion Award ceremony in Tulsa, OK, at the end of October.

I still need to finish my own short story for the Rough Country anthology, and on the horizon is a new Red River novel, which will be set in 1979, the end of the Strange Seventies. While drinking lots of local wine a thousand-year-old house in Italy last October, Gilstrap and I hammered out the plot basics for this tenth book in my original series. Note: It still sounded good the next morning.

This is all a Magic Carpet Ride (Steppenwolf), and I’m glad to be here. It’s been a long road to this place in time, and starting out, I had no idea what would be required to reach this level of (for me) literary success.

When I post this one on the Killzone dashboard, I can get to work on a few specific questions to ask Craig about Return to Sender. He and I have known each other for so long, most of our discussion will be organic and we’ll follow the free-wheeling conversation to wherever it goes, but I’ll need a couple of specific questions that I might forget.

Now it’s time to post this discussion and check at least one item off my list. Wait! Dang it! I need to post tonight’s event one more time on my social media accounts, so there goes another bite of time.

With all that, how’s your writing world, and is there a song that pops into your head that might relate?

I have a world of stories filed away that may never get used in my novels. Some are significant recollections waiting to be used, based on coincidences, while others are the seeds of ideas planted for future use.

My folks are from the country, survivors of the Great Depression, who lived in Red River bottoms, the border between Texas and Oklahoma. Chicota was a community of farmers who raised most of their own food, cows, and kids, along with the crops that fed the rest of this country.

When those old men (who were younger than I am today) took time off, it was for church, town on Saturdays, and to fish on Sunday afternoons. That meant throwing a line in the Red, or pools which were often full of crappie, the best eating.

Thinking about those fish reminds me of a natural spring pool about four miles from my maternal grandparents’ farmhouse. It was one of the few remaining springs in the area that once boasted dozens, if not more than a couple of hundred seeps, bubblers, and gushers.

When I mentioned the word pool above, I meant what some might call a pond, or tank (in West Texas). It was large enough to launch the Old Man’s vee-hull boat and motor, so it was of some significant size. He took me there several times, to fish, and to see the underwater beauty of such a natural wonder.

When the Old Man wasn’t around with the boat, my younger Cousin and I rode up on our bikes to enjoy something highly unusual in our part of Northeast Texas, clear, running water.

The gin-clear water in that pool, the fish of all sizes, and its shady banks still call to me, because most pools, creeks, streams, rivers and lakes in our part of the world are muddy. Which brings us back to my original discussion, clear water.

Several years ago, Cousin (who was much rounder in his later years) and I went looking for that unnamed spring lake. The years degraded our memories, and the land was different. The pastures were gone, and houses hunkered in the woods like ugly weeds.

“Posted” signs warned us away from the original trail we’d used over fifty years ago, so we followed blacktop roads to our estimated destination. A gray-haired gentleman was outside his house, working on a truck when we pulled up in his drive and waited for his dog to stop barking.

He rose, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. “Howdy boys. What can I do for you?”

I took the lead. “We’re looking for a spring lake that used to be around here.”

“Well, I’ve only lived here about ten years. Haven’t heard of a lake.”

Cousin was interested. “Where’d you move from?”

“Prosper, Texas.”

I shook my head in wonder at such a small world. “That’s where my wife grew up. Did you know the Reynolds family?”

His smile became genuine. “Sure enough. Robert and Robbie were good friends.”

Such a strange coincidence created an immediate bond and we visited for half an hour before getting back around to the reason we were there. Our new friend pointed. “The only pool around here is that little muddy puddle over yonder on someone else’s land that stays wet year-round.”

We looked where he pointed, and my recollections of the area superimposed themselves on the “muddy puddle.”

“Good Lord.” My spirits fell, and Cousin’s face mirrored my own.

He rubbed his bald head. “They’ve killed the spring with all this construction around here.”

The sweet water that once flowed fast enough to fill a small, three-acre-pool struggled to survive as a mud hole. Disappointed and saddened, we left, thinking about such a strange coincidence that I would meet friends of the War Department’s dad and brother in my ancestors’ community, and how “progress” was killing such wonderful, natural resources.

Here’s another. A few years ago, when I drove a dually pickup–––Let’s pause here, because I had to explain duallys to one of my city-dwelling editors who’d never heard of a six-wheeled truck. After explaining the concept, that individual still misunderstood, thinking there were three in a line on each side. I wrote back again, sending a link so that person could see there were four on the back and two in the front.

Because a dually is hippy, it won’t fit into most garages, especially the one at our old house, so I parked it on the street the entire time we lived there. Unfortunately, someone broke in one night and stole whatever wasn’t nailed down, (including my Juicy Fruit gum) and that included a pair of prescription Oakley sunglasses. I sincerely hoped they wore them while driving into a bridge abutment one night, but it didn’t happen.

They took tools, OTC drugs (antacids and allergy pills I kept in the cab because my former son-in-law was dangerously allergic to stings), and the Bride’s little pocket camera she used for work with the Frisco ISD, but forgot to take out that night.

Figuring all was lost, we filed a police report and went on about our lives. Somewhere around six weeks later, she got a call from the local PD.

“Mrs. Wortham, we have a report here about a burglary of a motor vehicle.”

“It was my husband’s truck. He filed the report. I’m surprised you called me.”

“Well, it’s an interesting story. We busted a vehicle burglary ring and found a digital camera in a house full of stolen items. There was a photo of the front of a school, and when we went to that location, they remembered you came by with your camera. We have the couple who broke into his truck. The guy is cooperating, but the female is a war horse, so I’d like to know if you’d like to press charges.”

She laughed. “I’m sure my husband will.”

I did.

Now here’s one last story I can draw from, but haven’t yet found the place. When we were still in that same house, the Bride came home for lunch and called me a few minutes after she left. “Hey, there’s a car in the alley right behind the house. It’s running, but no one is in it. I wonder if they have some kind of trouble. You might want to go look.”

I walked out to find an old car idling a few feet from our drive. No one was behind the wheel, and when I glanced inside, the back of my neck tingled. A screwdriver protruded from the steering column.

“911. What’s your emergency?”

I told dispatch where I lived. “There’s a running car behind our house and no one is in it. I think it’s stolen.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because there’s a screwdriver in the ignition, for one thing.”

Her voice changed. “What kind of car is it, and can you see the license tag?”

I told her.

“Sir, get away from the car and go in the house now. Officers are on the way.”

Following such direct orders, I did as she said and waited. Two minutes later every cop in the city was at our location, looking for the bank robbers who’d used that vehicle as a getaway car, dumped it in the alley, ran through the yard between our house and the neighbor, and drove away in another vehicle parked on our street.

But one lighter moment was when several young officers showed up to search the area, they insisted on checking our back yard, only to find my nineteen-year-old daughter sunning beside the pool. They checked the backyard several times until I asked her to come inside, even though our premises was the safest place in town.

So with those in mind, (and I confess none of these images are real by the way),how many of you writers draw from old memories and or unlikely events to use in your manuscripts? Do you have stories of police work you can weave into a future work, but haven’t done it yet? Do you have real life adventures or coincidences, or pet peeves and disappointments that can enrich your works?

I still have more, but these will have to do at this writing.

While thinking about the topic of today’s discussion, I checked my Facebook page (where we all get out writing ideas, right?) and came across a post from Cowboys and Indians Magazine on the 50^th anniversary of Willie Nelson’s The Redhead Stranger album.

Good Lord, I’m getting old.

If you haven’t heard this LP, just think Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.

back in 1975, This concept in country music was a departure from Nashville’s unnecessary symphony orchestration, and Willie wasn’t interested in continuing this new wave of music. He wanted to return to his roots. To do so, he came to Garland, Texas, (where I worked as an educator for 35 years) and recorded this “concept” album in a tiny one-room state of the art recording studio only a block from Garland High School (where I taught from 1985-86, and discovered I had no interest in becoming a vice principal at that level).

This album was based on an entire story revolving around the Red Headed Stranger who lost the love of his life. Conceptionally, the entire soundtrack is about Parson Shay, a flawed man who murders his wife and her lover. Consumed by grief and anger, he becomes a fugitive traveling the west, struggling with the guilt of his actions. Full of rage, he also shoots a saloon girl who he thinks is trying to steal his horse.

The following lyric, “You can’t hang a man for killing a woman, who tries to steal his horse,” is a novel unto itself.

Willie stripped down so much of the instrumentation that it sounds like an old-school band playing in a garage. When he sent the tapes to his record company, they thought it was a bare demo and wanted to add all that crap he hated.

Because he had full creative control, Willie insisted on keeping it simple, and that album is now ranked number 183 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and number one on CMT’s 40 Greatest Albums in Country Music.

Not bad for doing what he wanted without interference from others who tend to follow the current trend.

Bill Witliff wrote that wonderful screenplay for a movie based on the album, but you’ll likely recognize one of his more famous movies, Lonesome Dove. Based on the book by Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove features two tortured souls, August McCrae and Woodrow F. Call. Gus seeks a lost love, while Woodrow refuses to acknowledge that he loved a prostitute and fathered a child he refuses to recognize.

Many authors explore characters grappling with emotional or psychological trauma that manifests in many ways. This turmoil often stems from loss, or a deep sense of inner conflict, either intentionally revealed by the author, or hinted at through the protagonists’ actions and vague references.

My most recent series featuring Tucker Snow examines a Texas Brand Inspector’s life after his wife and baby are killed by an addict, leaving him to raise a teenage daughter alone. He’s far too impulsive and uses his own brother to step over any imaginary line, laying waste to criminals who, in his opinion, just need killing.

An author doesn’t have to tell readers exactly what drives their characters. The story might, and often does, reveal the emotional issues that drive a protagonist with information revealed throughout the novel.

Mickey Spillane created Mike Hammer, who is driven to seek justice, but he’s a pessimistic creature who survived the Japanese Theater in World War II and struggles to find goodness in the country he fought for.

My good friend John Gilstrap’s Jonathan Grave is another character who seeks justice for all, and his ruthless methods fall outside the law to save hostages most agencies can’t, or won’t save. How do we know what drives Jonathan? Read No Mercy where his backstory is revealed. Is Jonathan flawed? You bet he is.

Aren’t we all?

One reviewer said she particularly enjoyed the “subtle flaws in Grave’s character – flaws he understands and even admits to, but doesn’t necessarily try to correct.”

Other authors have created flawed characters.

Lee Child created Jack Reacher. His major flaw is that he won’t walk off from injustice or a fight. He lays waste to criminals, then moves on to do it again. He prefers isolation, has few social skills, and has an impulsive, extremely aggressive nature.

The Searchers, a novel by Alan LeMay became a John Wayne movie. Amos Edwards (Ethan in the movie) is the most troubled and morally complex character I’ve ever read. Due to a warped sense of honor, Amos is obsessed with finding and killing his captive niece because he believes she’s has been corrupted by her Comanche captors.

Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl has more than one. “Nick is not the charming hero we’re accustomed to in thrillers; he’s a deeply flawed and morally ambiguous figure whose actions leave us oscillating between sympathy and suspicion,” writes fan Riya Bhorkar. “Amy, on the other hand, is a master manipulator, crafting her own narrative with surgical precision and leaving a trail of devastation in her wake.”

In Shane, Jack Schaefer’s protagonist by the same name is a mysterious drifting gunfighter who hangs up his guns and falls in love with his employer’s wife. He returns to his old ways when her husband is provoked into a gunfight. He kills rancher Luke Fletcher, (Ryker in the movie), reverting to his old self. LeMay skillfully leaves enough crumbs for readers to see he has a number of faults before he rides off, wounded and possibly dying.

So who is your favorite flawed character, and/or have you created such fictional protagonists? And let’s go one step further. Are these these character flaws cut from whole cloth, or do they come from within?

It was still dark when Larry and I left his house, heading out in his truck for a lake some distance away. Spring is crappie time, and it’s my favorite freshwater fish to catch and eat.

By sunup we still had a good long way to go and I was hungry. The problem was the boat hitched up behind us. “There’s an overrated fast-food restaurant up ahead. Let’s get a breakfast sandwich with one of those stupid names they want me to use.”

Behind the wheel, my old fishing buddy cut his eyes across the cab. “If we go to Great Gary’s to get something to go, you won’t say Great GarMuffin, will you? Because I know for a fact you won’t pronounce Horsey Sauce at Arby’s.”

“We’re too old to pronounce dumb names like that, but my daughters have spent most of their lives trying to make me slip up and say that name at Arby’s. When the cashier asks me which one I want through that cheap crackling low-bid microphone, I tell them I want both sauces.”

“You’re getting to be a curmudgeon. You make things hard on yourself, you know.”

“Nah. I’ve aleays been a curmudgeon, but when we order in a few minutes, I’ll just use the meal’s number.”

He steered into the parking lot. “My son uses an app when he eats here.”

“No apps for me. I hate how technology has taken over our lives. People should just talk to each other without nonsensical jargon, and without using the word ‘amazing’ or ‘like’ in conversation. Besides, something would mess up, and I don’t want to struggle with it when I’m hungry.

“A man can starve to death if there’s no phone or screen nearby. I can’t even order a pizza anymore, because they won’t take calls. You have to click through their website. I just want to walk in, order, hand someone the cash, and leave.”

Because of the boat, the drive-thru was out. We parked some distance away and walked inside a video arcade instead of the overrated eatery I was expecting.

Giant touch screens flashed with colorful photos of the food and drinks on their menu. Like something from a science fiction movie, frowning people stood before the order screens with a finger poised, occasionally punching an item which vanished only to be replaced by myriad options.

Appearing to be frozen in time, folks our age were held hostage, overwhelmed with the new-fangled order process and likely wishing they’d gone through the drive-thru to be misunderstood through a cheap microphone.

In addition, most wore glasses and were trying to see through the magnification of tri-focals, their noses pointed toward the ceiling. Because we spend most of our time staring down at the phones in our hands, the sounds of grinding neck vertebrae tilting upward was deafening.

“Minimal contact,” Willie surmised. “I wonder how often they clean those screens people keep touching.”

Bypassing the zombies staring into cold white oblivion, we walked up to one of the two registers, intending to use real cash. Both devices appeared to be unplugged.

We waited for several minutes while the employees went about their business behind the counter. Customers in cars appeared and disappeared on the other side of the drive-thru window.

“Number two sixty-six!” A woman behind the counter shouted. Apparently, fast food technology hasn’t evolved enough to bypass the raspy, screeching human voice carbonized by forty years of cigarettes.

She finally saw us. “We don’t take orders there anymore. You have to use the kiosks like those folks.”

I turned toward the spellbound people staring at the screens. I wondered if they’d still be there next year, starved skeletal beings with one finger held aloft. “No. I don’t have to do anything.”

We left, and that brings us in a curiously roundabout way to how technology helped me write my first novel.

Bear with me, this is a writer’s illogical mind.

Back in the olden days, I used a typewriter, or as Mark Twain called it, an “infernal machine.” It was also slow and required much backspacing, carbon paper, gallons of Wite-Out, and lots of twisting and adjusting.

I pounded those keys for decades, first on a manual machine in high school, then a portable version in college, which kept me in beer money by typing term papers for a dollar a page.

Ah, then came the IBM Selectric, powered by electricity and not the tips of my fingers. Novels almost formed. Many of them, and they all withered by page fifty or so. I spent hours, no, days, wait, even months, pecking out those pages destined for File 13.

When I read that Micky Spillane typed with two fingers and never edited his manuscripts, I wondered what was wrong with me. He wrote I, The Jury in 19 days, and as a rookie writer, I couldn’t figure out how he did it.

Honestly, I still don’t.

Then came the 286 computer, and my writing world changed. It set me free! Fingers flew and words appeared. The process was no longer linear, and I wrote entire chapters out of order, \ and days or weeks later, plugged them into the flow of work and they fit perfectly.

The world of active electrons became my friend, allowing me to pound out two, three, or four thousand words a day to build the structural foundation of a novel.

So with those successes, why won’t I assimilate into this world of apps and self-service ordering screens? Because there’s an evil side to all this. An entire manuscript vanished into thin air one day about twenty-five years ago, and even in the last eighteen months several days’ worth of work was lost when my laptop took issue with The Cloud and refused to “shake hands,” as a technologically adept friend explained.

In my personal experience, there is always an issue waiting to arise. The one time I tried to order off a screen in McDonald’s, I wound up with two extra Happy Meals (see how they sucker us into using those ridiculous terms?), cheese on a burger I didn’t want, no coffee for the four creams I received, and the Skynet’s refusal to take the gift card that sparked the whole visit.

I finally had to get someone to boot up the register and take the entire order while standing face to face.

The final contrasting conflict is my Macbook Air, which is such a mystery that I often hides what I’ve written only to flash it on the screen when I’m checking emails.

This new world of ours is always changing, but sometimes I need a personal technical support team, for the computer and to assist with ordering food in these new updated, high-tech restaurants.

Or maybe someone about ten years old.

I’m feeling that all of these new-fangled engineering marvels, apps, and human-free self-service businesses leaves me outside in the drive-thru lane, looking in through the order window.

An email came in the other day. “Where do you get your ideas for books and columns?”

Dear Reader,

Thanks for reading my work, and I’m honored that you took the time to reach out. My work oftentimes comes from Reality.

For example, I’m sure I speak for us all when I tell you that a bite from turtles, tortoises, and maybe terrapins will lock that moment in our memories forever. It’s much like we remember where we were when some life-changing event occurred in our lives.

Here I’m talking about those women who were shot into the air in a tin can a few days ago to squeal and float around for a moment while they looked at the moon that I can clearly see several times a month from my own backyard, and with less capital outlay. Really, I don’t care that they went up and came down, because I really want to talk about dinosaurs and reptiles. The idea for today’s discussion came to mind when I saw a Reel the other day concerning an emergency room visit by a man with a live and apparently contented snapping turtle attached to his face.

We all know turtles are distant relatives of the dinosaur infestation that occurred 66 to 245 million years ago, as determined by dust-covered men covered who pause in sweeping rocks with small brushes to explain the past.

Personally, I like terrapins and tortoises, especially when they’re not attached to someone’s body parts. Case in point, we recently took the grand-critters to a miserably hot and windy event often called a Renaissance Festival, where fully grown adults dress up in period clothing (or mythical clothing they wish those people wore, including spiked shoulders, fairy wings, and elf ears) and walk around talking to each other in horribly bad medieval accents.

In the midst of all this wishful history that also involved the sale of modern pretzels on a stick, magic wands, padded swords people used to whack at each other in pretend stables, and stir-fry bowls, we came across a traditional Renaissance petting zoo.

But before that, there were several signs posted outside warning that no “weapons” were allowed. This included knives, and the pocket variety as well. However, once inside, if you carried in enough money, you could purchase a ten inch, razor sharp handmake knife in more than one location.

Anyway, once inside, we came to a petting zoo. After paying a small ransom for five kids to pet the kinfolk of animals they could have rubbed on when we had the Oklahoma ranch, they took up paper cups full of sliced apples (for an extra ducat, of course) and rushed around the artificial medieval pens made from T-posts zip-tied with cedar fence planks, feeding potbellied pigs, lambs, colts, calves, one miniature horse a couple of inches higher than said potbellied pig, and a tortoise the size of a number 5 washtub.

Having little experience with tortoises, their parents (my own offspring) neglected to explain how to the feed those reptiles and grandcritter Number 4 yelped. “It bit me!!!”

Sure enough, the black-eyed reptile’s beak (made of keratin) cracked Number 4’s fingernail (also made of keratin), resulting in some minor blood loss equivalent to one drop. But this kid has a rigor when he gets a splinter, and the sight of a mere speck of blood sends him into a full half hour of crying and terrified shrieking.

As we stanched the medieval wound, I told him about seeing the aforementioned Reel. For those who don’t have Facebook accounts, a Reel is a few seconds of video crack to which people have become addicted and spend hours watching one piece of idiocy after another, even though some of these little videos end before the “story” or “event” is completed, leaving the addict craving more.

In the one I related to my tearful grandson, there was a clip of an emergency room and a man seated in a wheelchair, who in turn clutched the body of an extremely large snapping turtle that had chomped down on his face and apparently wouldn’t let go.

Remembering the best advice I ever got from the Old Folks, “Snapping turtles latch on and won’t turn loose until it thunders,” I’ve always distanced myself from those things.

So these guys in the Reel, who took their friend to the ER, didn’t think of any way to remove the large reptile from said victim’s face before loading him into their vehicle and making the drive to get help.

I’m confident any relative or mine, or the Hunting Club members, would have known how to remove a turtle waiting for thunder.

However, these folks who enjoyed hugging, petting, or kissing them, likely had no experience with wild animals

I’ve seen people kiss snakes, too.

No.

What they also didn’t know, apparently, is that snapping turtles have extremely long and flexible necks. I have it on good authority, Wikipedia, that a snapper’s neck can be up to two-thirds the length of its shell and it has the jaw power to clip off a stray finger or two.

According to intense research which took up nearly 90 seconds of my life, I found that a study done in 2023 used some specific but undisclosed device that registered numbers showing the bite of a common, and not especially gifted snapper, registers between 62 and 564 Newtons of force in jaw strength. I don’t know who this Newton guy is, but he apparently has a strong bite.

As a public service, I did more research and learned the way to pick up a snapping turtle is to grasp the back end of its shell, as we now know two-thirds of the way back from its biting part, thereby ensuring your digits are beyond its reach.

Better yet, don’t pick it up.

So let’s review. Inexperienced people shouldn’t feed a dinosaur’s distant kin, don’t kiss, hug, or snuggle them, because they are reptiles and don’t get the same fuzzies from cuddling, and avoid Renaissance Festivals at all costs.

Oh, and if a turtle latches on to you and there’s no possibility of thunder in the near future, call me. I can tell you how to get it off before you head to the ER.

So thanks for your correspondence, and I hope you enjoy the snakes and reptiles in my upcoming novel, Comancheria. But they’re not based on any real truth or family lore, and I have to admit, I don’t know if horny toads (Texan for horned lizards) stutter or not.

And as one more public service, reptiles, to my knowledge, don’t communicate with bad medieval accents, either. I hope this helps those writers to seek assurance, inspiration, and advice from this blog post as well. You’re welcome.

Rev.

I’ve written a few short stories. A couple were included in small anthologies, and in creating them, I realized they required a different technique.

I recently finished one that will be included in the Rough Country anthology I’m editing for Roand and Weatherford publishing. After I wrapped up Where the Road Forks, I remembered talking to Joe Lansdale about that idea and others a few years ago.

Joe is the accomplished and successful author of the Hap and Leonard books that eventually became a television series. Talking over sushi in Nacogdoches, Texas, I asked him about short fiction.

“I really don’t have that many ideas for short stories.”

“You’re surrounded by them.” He waved his chopsticks in the air, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d snapped a fly from the air like Mr. Miagi. The slender bamboo utensils seemed to fit his hand, because Joe is an International Martial Arts Hall of Famer and even created his own style of fighting. Those experiences often show up in his work. “I can prove it. Tell me something that happened when you were a kid.”

I thought about it as a chunk of wasabi burned its way through my sinuses, making my eyes water. The shock that went through my frontal lobes gave me time to think. When I could breathe, I told him of something that happened to my older cousins way back in the late 1950s.

Sporting flattops and one slicked-back duck tail haircut, they were three of the coolest and toughest guys in their little rural community, riding motorcycles and rolling cigarettes in their T shirt sleeves. When they heard Elvis was coming to town, Tom announced to the others they were going to meet the famous singer.

Dick and Harry allowed it was something to do, and they rode their Indians to the Grand Theater where the future king of rock and roll was waiting to go on upstairs in the “green” room at the top of a second floor exterior fire escape.

The boys parked their bikes in a nearby alley and came up to the theater opposite the bright entrance. Stomping up the metal steps in their square-toed boots as if they had backstage passes, they were met at the top of the stairs by the Memphis Mafia who heard them coming up.

One of Elvis’ buddies told them they weren’t welcome.

Harry said they didn’t care and intended to say howdy to Elvis, and they tried to push past the obstacles between them and their hero.

As Tom told me. “We thought we were tough, but those boys were tougher and more experienced. They handed us our asses, and threw us back down the stairs. When we rolled to the bottom, and we dusted off, got up, and went home.”

Joe laughed and took a sip of iced tea. “There’s your short story.”

I came home thinking about it, but haven’t yet written it down. But it’s there, perking along until the day I write the first sentence, “The boys finished their Schlitz beers and decided they were going to meet Elvis Presley, come hell or high water,” or something like that.

Those stories come easier than I expected. Maybe it’s because I write mini-stories every week for my newspaper columns in The Paris News, Country World, and now for Saddlebag Disptatches magazine. They come to mind as a single sentence, and then I watched as my fingers tuype out 950 words in one sitting that will “go to press” the next day. They’re mini-short stories, a snippit of time or experience, in which I give readers a quick glimpse into the view from my own hill.

When we’re working on novels, authors create whole new fictional worlds and can revel in taking their time to describe these worlds and establish character backgrounds and settings. In a short story, we create a can of condensed soup in a sense that, if we wanted to, could sometimes expand into a novel.

I think of them as that tiny world inside a globe, those glass spheres containing a tiny piece of a mythical world. In this case, these miniature scenes don’t always have snow, unless it’s essential to the plot.

Essential to the plot. In short stories, every element, word, character, and bit of dialogue has to be informative, moving the story forward, and must relate to everything else. The logic of the narrative has to be short and concise.

To me, it’s like flipping through the pages of a novel and picking out the necessary bits and pieces to write a book report. A quick read of what could be more, but isn’t.

There’s no room for sweeping descriptions and extensive development. In my view, the author has to know the character’s entire backstory at the outset, and the setting’s history that’s revealed by bits of information dropped in a sentence or two, or as action dialogue tags.

Readers must be swept into these juicy stories with the right words, phrases, and pacing. I suppose it’s like satisfying our need for immediate satisfaction these days. In other words you have about 6,000 words to set up the story arc, very short Acts 1 and 2, before that last couple of pages in which the bombshell drops. In fact, some authors set off that climax bomb in a couple of paragraphs, or even one breathtaking sentence.

Writing short stories is an excellent way to warm up, to refill the creative basket between novels, and to achieve the personal satisfaction of a job well done.

Growing up, I lived in the Urbandale neighborhood of Old East Dallas, a post-war collection of neat little white frame houses that could have stood in for a television neighborhood like Leave It To Beaver, only with a different title.

Folks think I went to school in rural Lamar County, Texas, but I graduated from W.W. Samuell in Dallas’ Pleasant Grove, which is much different today. This misconception about my roots is because I tell everyone I lived on my grandparent’s farm in Chicota. We’re talking semantics here, but I mean this little scrawny, asthmatic kid existed in the city, but bloomed and experienced life in the country.

That doesn’t mean my experiences on the concrete streets weren’t valuable. I fought against the monicker of City Boy, and believe me, it wasn’t an easy thing to accomplish. We only lived there because the Old Man left the farm during the war and never returned after getting an assembly line job at Ford. He never wanted the gambling life of a farmer, always watching the market for cattle prices, or worried that enough rain would fall to sustain the cotton and corn crops they raised in those river bottoms in the 1960s.

So after school during the work/school week, I roamed the neighborhood with the other bike-riding outlaws who lived in our area. We did the usual, hung out in backyards, prowled the tame woods on the other side of the railroad tracks half a mile from our house, and organized pickup ball games at the school a block away (without adult interference and rules).

We kept the sidewalks hot running and riding back and forth between houses, and in the summer, they stayed that way all night from the heat of the sun. Summer in those days without air conditioning kept us outside, much to our parent’s delight. In the Texas heat, our bare feet toughened up to defy sizzling sidewalks, gravel, and even the street spiderweb patchwork of black, gooey hot tar in the concrete cracks that bubbled up and popped when we stepped on them.

Most folks in the neighborhood ignored us, as long as we stayed outside where we only came in after the streetlights came on. On Friday and Saturday nights we roamed even later, playing a made-up game of Run and Hide, our version of Hike and Seek, which involved hiding around every house, shrub, flowerbed, and driveway on our block.

We only had two old soreheads on our long block. One was Mrs. Grubbs, who lived in a on the corner up by the school and often stood on her tiny concrete porch to shout at us not to step on her grass when we made the 45-dgree turn on the sidewalk.

I think nothing grows today on that corner packed hard as concrete, where every kid in the neighborhood made sure to plant their foot just for spite.

The other sorehead was a case of mistaken identity, and I still regret it.

Sunbaked Mr. Pennington, who somehow misplaced his two front teeth at some point in his long life, talked with a soft whistling lisp through thin, loose lips that seemed to flap in the wind. He lived with his wife on the opposite end of our block. Each day he made his glacial, creaky walk down the sidewalk, using a heavy black cane to steady shaky knees.

I’d see him talking to the Old Man on occasion out under the big pecan tree in our front yard. I think Mr. Pennington like to stand there and blow for a minute, the old man’s euphonism for resting. It was an ancient reference to the days when Dad used mules to plow, and they’d rest in the shade for them to cool down and…blow.

When I was younger, I was always afraid of Mr. Pennington, mostly because his grizzled old wife who had a better mustache than mine, and only wore house dresses. She once scolded me when I rode my bike down the sidewalk and across the water hose she’d stretched to soak the parkway strip.

“Hey boy! Don’t run over that hose. Ride out in the street where you belong.”

Brother, that little outburst resulted in my mother-bear Mom roaring down there to “straighten that old $%@! out.” After that, Mom and Mrs. Pennington never spoke again, though they bared their teeth at each other when they passed on the street.

I didn’t pay the old man much attention when I was a kid. He was simply a fixture in our neighborhood, wearing work pants and shirts faded to a soft blue from thousands of washings and exposure to the sun on the clothesline in back.

As the years passed, more of his teeth disappeared and his hair turned snow white, what you could see under the John Deere cap he’d received somewhere around the time Eisenhauer was elected president.

The cap should have given me a clue.

I was home from college one day and sitting alone in the Old Man’s metal glider when Mr. Pennington crept by.

“Mind if I sit and blow a minute?” he asked.

I perked up at that comment and slid against the opposite arm. “Sure.”

“I always admired this shade.” He settled heavily onto the seat and leaned back, smelling of cigarettes and Old Spice. “It reminds me of one down in the Chicota bottoms when I was farming. I cooled off and took my dinner there when I could, and watered my mules of course.”

Shocked at the news, I probably gaped like a fish out of water. “You’re from Chicota?”

“Sure ‘nuff. Spent a lot of years walking behind them old mules, just like your daddy and grandaddy. I ain’t from around here.”

I couldn’t my ears. Here I was sitting next to still another fountain of information and stories, but in my mind growing up, he was just an old man walking past our house. I still wonder today how two men from that tiny little community would wind up on the same residential block 120 miles away.

For the next couple of years I got to know Mr. Pennington, and grew fond of the old farmer. I even forgave his wife for the water hose incident. Then one day he didn’t walk by and I learned he was walking a different, brighter trail where he didn’t need that cane, or his teeth, anymore.

I wish I’d sat at his knee a little earlier, and listened to what a quiet man had to say. His character, and those stories I missed would have inevitably found their way into my work. We spend too much time in our lives overlooking the world around us, while searching for unrecognizable opportunities we think we need.