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A Joshaway Story, or, How I Became a Pearl Diver at the Local Greasy Spoon-My Mechanical Ineptitude Damages Property and Endangers Lives, or Why Auto Insurance Rates Were Much Higher for Boys than Girls Back in the Day, Though Now They Are About the Same

   I was never much with machinery. I could see how things worked for other people but they did not start for me, or soon broke, or sometimes spontaneously combusted, though it was hard to figure out how they could do that because some of the things I burned to the ground were not actually made of flammable materials.

   "How exactly did this happen?" the Chief of the Joshaway, Texas Volunteer Fire Department and Masonic Lodge #134 asked me. "I mean, it was a cast iron safe. Those do not burn. They just do not burn. Yet, there is nothing left of this one but ashes."

   The way the Joshaway, Texas Volunteer Fire Department became one with the local Masonic Lodge was brought about decades before when the Masonic Lodge's prior building burned down to the ground. I had not yet been born and could not be blamed, though I did later ignite a fire storm in a trailer park during a tornado warning in my haste to get out of the trailer park since anyone who watches the Weather Channel knows that tornadoes hate trailer parks and will find one, will turn out, mass up, drop down and find one, will find it if there is not one in seven counties as yet undisturbed by a funnel cloud, so great is their hatred of modular construction. There was only one lane in and the same lane out of the trailer park, this due to the major lack of zoning in Joshaway in those days, when the Old Man Prattwhiler, Eleanora's grandfather, ran the City  Council, served as Post Master, drew a pension as City Marshall, though he never arrested anything but the pension check, and cut hair on the side.

   It looked funny, his haircuts, only cut on the side like that, but he was a short man, a very short man and miserly, very, very cheap, so he never invested in a barber chair that would go up and down according to the length of the customer. He cut the sides and your mom or wife finished the top at home, so you looked funny only for awhile, but it seemed to jar people passing through town.

   "What is wrong with all the men in this town?" vacationers would ask.

   "The war was hard on them," a lot of the women would answer.

   That was the standard answer you gave in those days to all outsiders who asked anything about your townsfolk. The war was just hard on the men, really hard, though no one ever said which war or why it was so hard the men had lop-sided heads ten years later. We were a patriotic bunch and an appeal to the war effort was meant to silence any questioning or criticism.

   "Remember our boys in the war," Old Man Prattwhiler was still saying in 1956, although we were  between wars at that time.

   Old Man Prattwhiler never had a boy go off to war. He had himself served briefly in the War to End All Wars but he did not see actual fighting except one night in a bar in Boston when he got his jaw broken by a Red Sox fan who mistook him for Joe Jackson. This was a fortuitous punch, for his broken jaw kept him out of combat long enough for the war to end. He never forgot his hitch in the National Guard, though, and wanted all others to remember his service as well.

   "Remember the boys in the war," he would say when things grew unquiet in town, or when someone complained about their hair cut. "Remember the boys in the war."

   So, I had no part in the burning of the Masonic Lodge #134 building. Fire started in the upstairs portion of the old house, where the sacred rituals were performed and, some say, where the still was kept, this happening during the days of the Volstead Act, which the citizenry had all heard about but took no more seriously than they took the repeal of the Act of Seccession.

   The entire building was eventually engulged in flames.  "Engulfed" is the standard term for what happens to a building on fire, like "disgruntled" goes with "postal employee."

   The Joshaway, Texas Volunteer Fire Department arrived late, which was  not unusual in those days, what with their motto being, "We Have Never Lost a Slab."

   This showed the boy's ability to laugh at themselves with airy good humor, which was good, since no one could actually remember a fire they had extinguished. In fact, the town of Joshaway came into being because the old town three miles to the West, Caddo Mills, had  burned to the ground, lock, stock and Masonic Lodge #133 one night when the railroad announced it was coming through, after all, but locating its tracks three and one-half miles to the East, near Old Old Man Prattwhiler's homestead, which he had sold for a cotton gin that failed due to the  Boll Weevil Infestation of '89.

   "Wisht I had helt onta the old home place now," Old Old Man Prattwhiler said, and spat tobacco juice down the front of his bib overalls. He was a bad businessman and an ever worse spitter. Some of the locals called him "Old Spittoon," because he never actually cleared his pot belly with a chaw.

   They did not lose this slab, either, the Joshaway, Texas Volunteer Fire Department,  but the rest of the structure was engulfed, sure enough, and a powerful explosion occured when flames reached the ritual site in the attic and ignited the still.

   "Kabooom," went the still and, with it, the site of Masonic Ritual.

     The Joshaway, Texas Vounteer Fire Department, with their usual good humor, and feeling somewhat guilty about the loss of the still, offered to have the Masonic Lodge #134 move into their building with them, which many townsfolk thought was a good idea, since the Joshaway, Texas Volunteer Fire Department had now lost two lodges and a still owned by the Masons. The idea seemed so natural the Lodge agreed to  move in with the Joshaway, Texas Volunteer Fire Department temporarily, and then stayed on to keep a watchful eye on them for years.

   I had never been asked to join either group. If I had, perhaps I would have been otherwise occupied the night I wrecked two cars in Burleson, Texas, and I might never have become a Pearl Diver at the Local Greasy Spoon.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone. 

This is a fiction story. Any similarity to any persons, living or dead, in this story, is purely coincidental.

 

A Joshaway Story, or, How I Became a Pearl Diver at the Local Greasy Spoon-Youth Camp, or Love in the Bible Belt

   Long time readers will remember I often stop whatever I am writing in the autumn to write stories. Many of my stories have to do with the fictional town, Joshaway, Texas, which would be south of Fort Worth on Highway 174, if it actually existed at all, which it does not, that space being occupied by the very real town of Joshua, Texas, where I did grow up, or, at least, got older. A good portion of the populace insists I never have grown up. The preponderance of evidence on their side is so great I am compelled to return to my story, begun yesterday, of how I became a Pearl Diver at a Local Greasy Spoon in Joshaway, Texas, in order to divert the attention of mental health professionals who might use me for some study, if allowed.

   Let me say, in all actuality, which is near reality, but not in the same spot, I have four grown children, only they are really, actually grown, not like me, just older but in my accustomed mental state, which is primarily the state of agitation. All of them met their future spouses at Baptist Youth Camp, which is, apparently, a good place to pick up chicks. I did not marry the girl I met at Baptist Youth Camp, like my kids did, but I did marry the girl I met in the registration line at a Baptist University, which is much like Baptist Youth Camp, only without all the bad music.

   The girl I met at Baptist Youth Camp is the reason I became a Pearl Diver at the Local Greasy Spoon in Joshaway, Texas. It was not her fault, she just lived in Burleson, not Joshaway, and wanted me to come see her, which I tried to do, illegally, being underage and mechanically shaky, in my father's Dodge Dart, one Saturday night. I wrecked that car and another car at one of the three stop signs in Burleson, while listening to Rod Stewart sing his new song, "Maggie Mae," on the AM radio, the station being 1190 KLIF, which is now a Spanish station featuring Mexican Pentecostal Revival preachers, all of whom actually sing better than Rod Stewart.

   But that is another story for another day.

   You must remember, in those days, Joshaway was completely Baptist, except for the part that was Church of Christ, who were baptists who did not like the name and thought we might as well call ourselves the Prune-Juice Church if we were not going to have God in our name, only we thought they were more like prunes, with their a cappella singing, which is how they assurred us is how Jesus sang in the New Testament and it made them more righteous, so I always wanted to know why they used air conditioning and padded pews and microphones if they were so set on being like Jesus and I did not like their snobby prune juice comment, anyway.

   The other part of the town was slightly Methodist. I would have gone to the Methodist Church, since they were closer to my house and sang to instruments, which covered up some of the bad voices, like the really bad voices of Eleanora Prattwhiler and her sisters, Mona and Lorna. They had a girl's trio when they were younger, when they were at least cute, which turned into a Ladie's Trio when they got older and were not cute, not cute at all, nor able to sing, so naturally, they had to sing in church because their singing hurt the business in the honky-tonks and you had to let people sing in church so long as they made a joyful noise.

   I would have been a Methodist, the Prattwhiler Sisters notwithstanding, but while I was still deciding with what form of the Reformation I would cast my eternal lot the horse I rode to church suddenly began to refuse to stop at the Methodist Church. He ran all the way from our corral, past the Methodist Church, past the Church of Christ and their Prune Juice, stopping only when he came to the Baptist Church, withstanding my greatest efforts to rein him in or turn him around. 

   You could imagine the ghost of old John Wesley, standing, arms crossed, in front of the Methodist church-house as my horse and I approached. Visible, one supposes, only to my horse, you can just imagine Wesley shaking his head, waving his arms and yelling, "My people have suffered enough! To the baptists with you! Be gone!"

   I suppose it is just as likely my horse could not swallow the Methodist exposition of Hebrews 6, with their odd explanation of apostasy. He might have been a Calvinist, my horse, though we never actually discussed Armininisim or Total Depravity. I was still slugging through the Institutes of Christianity when my horse had been made into Alpo, he having run away with my father one time too many. 

   Who really knows? Maybe he just did not like the Methodist hitching post. Regardless, he would not stop at the Methodist Church-house. He bolted right past the Church Of Christ, as well, and, my Pentecostal friends and snuffy Presbyterians notwithstanding, that left the baptist church as the only respectable choice. I became Free Church by default. 

   So, there it is. If my horse had been a Methodist, I would never have been immersed.

 

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone. This is a fiction story. Any resemblance to any persons or places referenced in this story to any persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

 

 

 

A Joshaway Story, or, How I Became a Pearl Diver at the Local Greasy Spoon

   Long time readers will remember in the autumn I often turn to story telling. Many of my stories are about a semi-fictional little town called Joshaway, which in no way except complete reality mirrors my boyhood in the tiny hamlet of Joshua, Texas. There were less than 1,000 people in Joshua in those days. We were a bit, how shall I say, rural.

   When we moved from the old high school to the new high school,  a story in itself because the new high school bond package came about when a huge chunk of  plaster from the rotting ceiling of our old high school auditorium/cafeteria/practice gym fell on the head of Eleanora Prattwhiler, local demagogue, during her latest impassioned speech to the School Board on the safety of our school facilities and the soundness of our structures, which would all be fine, just fine, if only a few people would bring their paint brushes to the school during the summer and spruce things up a bit, which she would do, if only she could, but her lumbago would not allow it, nor could she find time, what with her leadership of the local Bowling Team, but it sounded like a good job for the teachers to do, since they were off in the summer anyway, but wanted to be paid for the whole year, which set her off on one more brief parenthetical thought, how her great-granny Prattwhiler taught in a one room school house for thirty years and was paid in chickens, them being hard times, one supposed particularly for the chickens, which paid a terrible price for education, and she was about to go off on the price of chickens at the Holmes Store when the plaster fell, striking her in the head and killing her instantly.

   Nothing was ever proven about the absence of Mr. Lunk, the High School Principal, at that deciding moment. He always claimed he had gone to the restroom during the screed, but there are those who have always believed he may have had something to do with that plaster fall at that moment. Those of us who ate in the old auditorium/cafeteria/practice gym every day knew to watch out for falling chunks of plaster, which grew larger and larger with the passing years, like the giant icebergs you see on the Discovery Channel, separating from the Antarctic due to global warming, which none of us believe Mr. Lunk did anything to cause, either, but there are those who will tell you he put Enos, the custodian up to the plaster fall that day, and they point to the suspicious X marked on the floor of the auditorium/cafeteria/practice gym in duct tape, duct tape being good for anything,  just for that School Board meeting that day.

   The Warring Commission, set up by Superintendent Oral Warring, cleared Mr. Lunk and Enos from any culpability in the matter, saying God had acted alone in the Falling Plaster Death of Mizz Prattwhiler. She was gone, long lamented, and the school district sent a nice spray to her funeral, which was held down at the Greater Holiness Church of the Illuminating Spirit (Dispensational, Pre-Millenial, Non-Missionary, King James Only, Closed Fellowship) Church, the one with the  big sign that almost blotted out the sun, so you could know what to believe before you ever walked in the door.

   Anyway, with Eleanora Prattwhiler gone to her reward (or ours, we could never say aloud, it was kind of like that Twilight Zone episode where the little boy could read your mind and turn you into things you did not want to be and put you in the corn field if you did not kow-tow to him, sort of like Congress) the effective opposition to the School Bond Issue for the new high school ended. We got our new high school by a vote of 675 to 654, which was thought odd, because there were less than 1,000 registered voters in town. Mr. Warring and Mr. Lunk, it was said, held out enough votes in a secret ballot box to overcome any vote the anti-bond forces could muster this time, so it was several weeks before we knew the outcome. During this time Mr. Warring carried a large piece of plaster around with him, so people could remember the great tragedy and perhaps to warn them of more to come.

   During the recount of the secret ballot box, Number 13, thought particularly lucky because there were only twelve wards in town, it was discovered Mizz Prattwhiler had actually voted for the bond issue, several days after her death, just going to show a woman can change her mind at any moment.

   Well, anyway, like I started to say, when we moved from the old school to the new school,  our principal just told us to pick up our desks, put them in the back of our pickup trucks and take them out to the new school. He cautioned us to put our books in the cab of the truck, so as not to damage them in the half mile journey out to Highway 174, the vital link to Cleburne in the South, nine miles away, where our only hospital rose, four majestic stories high, towering over the only Dairy Queen in Johnson County, which made it the only fast food in Johnson County (the Dairy Queeen, not the hospital, though the hospital had a very nice cafeteria and delicious Salisbury Steak), unless you counted the Vienna Sausages (pork snout packed in little round cans of congealed fat) and saltines you could buy fast and eat the same way at Holmes Grocery. Cleburne was nine miles to the south and Burleson, to the north, was also nine miles away, the perfect symmetry to make Joshaway people believe we were the center of all things good and right.

   Cleburne and Burleson were sort of our satellite republics, like Mongolia and Outer Mongolia were to the USSR, this being the time of the Cold War. We would descend to Cleburne for food and medical care, then ascend to the North for recreation with the girls of Burleson, they being so starved for male companionship.

     So was our epic journey undertaken.

   Burleson, not Cleburne, was how I ended up, for a time, as a Pearl Diver at the Local Greasy Spoon.

   I put my desk in the trunk of the Dodge Dart I drove illegally, being under age and unsteady with machinery. The last part had nothing to do with the law but everything to do with how I became a Pearl Diver at the Local Greasy Spoon. 

   I have decided to tell this story over the next day or two. I have not told a story for awhile but it is the time of year when I think of stories that might have happened and tell them just as they might have occurred, if they had happened one way and not the other. Some people come here for profound thinking, that being rare in our day, so rare what I do passes for it. Others come here for outrage, which is less rare, seemingly, because there is such demand. For that there are many, many sites. I could name a few but I think you know them. You will have to go elsewhere for your outrage this week, and that suits you well enough.

   I am going to tell a Joshaway story.

   Joshaway, Texas, less than a thousand souls, but soooo many characters. We were a little bit of Camelot, with a huge dollop of Mayberry dropped in the pot.  L'morte de Arthur meets Andy and Barney, if you will.

   Soooo many characters. We had a little constable who raided the kids' beer busts whenever he ran low on beer at the house. He sent the minors home, mostly sober, empty handed, with a stern warning on the evils of Demon Rum. He took their confiscated Lone Star away just to teach them a good lesson. 

   Then, there was my mother, a character in herself, sweet as the day was long, but flying high in a balloon that never landed; six feet tall, a giant woman in a world of men five inches shorter than her, on average. She married one of them, my little father. Told repeatedly, authoritatively, by confident medical authorities she could never have children, she had my brother and me, instead, and raised us mostly like children, regardless of how we acted. 

   My dad used to pile us in one of the big Ford cars he favored, a giant monstrosity, made out of real, American steel forged in Bethlehem and powered by light sweet Texas crude oil. He would motor us proudly down to the only Dairy Queen in Johnson County, down in Cleburne, where he would let my mother lie to us.

   My brother would not partake of anything vanilla and I would not have chocolate. My mother would buy one malt for us to share. She told us my side was vanilla and my brother's side was chocolate and we must drink the malt quickly, so the two flavors did not run together and use only our straws on only our side. I discovered her mendacity one day, when I caught the waitress, Daisy, (or so it said on her name-plate, though I called all things into question that went on in that Dairy Queen after that day) winking at my mother when the Magic Vanilla/Chocolate Malt was ordered. I watched closely then and proved to myself there was no such thing as a non-mixing, two-flavor malt, causing me to lose all regard for Daisy and all trust in my mother, so that the Santa Claus revelation of three years later was no great shock to me.

   My gullible brother cried for days. I comforted him with small bits of chocolate, which I did not want anyway.

Tomorrow: Episode Two-Youth Camp and Romance

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

 

 

The Next Director of the BGCT, Part Six-Lincoln on Leadership

   He must be Lincolnian in his leadership preferences. Our sixteenth president was not above appointing persons to office for political reasons. He clearly understood the use of patronage to build consensus. He was an astute politician. 

  Unlike others, however, Lincoln did not keep a man in high office when he proved himself either corrupt or incompetent. Lincoln's first Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, was almost certainly both. Lincoln put up with this well positioned fellow for as long as it took to find Edwin Stanton to replace him Stanton was, of all things, a Quaker, who eagerly "cried havoc and let loose the hounds of war." Stanton was the progenitor of total warfare in the Lincoln administration. He had a hand in every aspect of procurement, appointment and promotion from the day he took office.

   Stanton hated Lincoln early on. He considered Lincoln "a long-armed ape." Only after Stanton came to work under Lincoln did Stanton see his genius for handling people and managing circumstances. Lincoln, then, was a leader who could convert the feelings of his best workers and eliminate the presence of his poorer, more corrupt ones. Since Lincoln had no corruption in himself, he had no difficulty recognizing corruption in others. He did not expect his subordinates to think as deeply as he thought, as evidenced by his anecdotal style of communication with them. 

   After Gettysburg, Lincoln told General George Gordon Meade that his failure to get his army up and chasing Robert E. Lee as he tried to recross into Virginian made him think mostly "of an old woman trying to shoo her chickens in front of her in the yard." Imagine talking so to a decorated war veteran who had just managed the most celebrated victory  of a long war. Lincoln was so deeeply thoughtful and intelligent, he chose parables to communicate with his subordinates because they could not have readily followed his rationale.

   So, your next next leader must be one without corruption in himself so he can clearly see it (but neither admire, fear nor embrace it) in others. He must be a fellow who can clean the incompetent job holders from the temple. He must be someone who can convert his staff to his way. He must be a deep thinker who can yet communicate powerfully with others who must serve with him.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.