Innocence Lost...

I may have mentioned before that I loved baseball when I was a kid. I played baseball, watched baseball and even dreamed about baseball. I slept with my ball glove securely squeezed against my chest like and odd-looking teddy bear. Every spring brought another season of baseball my way.

When I was eleven I was about at my peak as a ball player. It's a shame the major leagues don't scout the sandlot games going on all over the nation every spring and summer. They could pick up some real talent if they would. I would gladly have dropped out of the fifth grade to play with the Yankees.

This particular year I was blissfully ignorant of everything going on around me except baseball. On a particularly beautiful spring Saturday, a bunch of us gathered at West Hurst Elementary for the game of the century. This was one season before my talent for first base was recognized so I was stuck in right field. I did not care. I was in the game. During the first inning the losers we were playing scored three runs before we got them out. Our turn to bat was going by quickly as out number one came on a first base line drive and the next a pop up to the pitcher. Then a couple of guys managed to get on base and it was my turn to bat.

My turn at bat wasn't one for the record books for two reasons. First if all, I was not a powerhouse hitter. I might get a piece of the ball but typically I didn't cause the outfield to work up much of a sweat. There were two outs, two on base, and I needed to bring somebody home. The pressure was, or maybe I should say, could have been immense. It wasn't though because of the second reason my turn at bat wasn't good. While waiting for my turn at bat I made the mistake of listening to my friend Kelly tell me the facts of life. I did not know where babies came from before the second half of the first inning. Amazingly, I didn't know where they came from after Kelly's facts were told either. He evidently had the procedure of conception confused with something he saw on Twilight Zone and my mind was still trying to get a grasp of the whole thing as I walked to the plate.

I slowly walked to home plate and got ready. The first ball came sizzling at me as I wondered, "Why would a man and woman even want to do that?" I was brought out of my daze by the loud yell, "STEEERIKE"! I thought I better pay attention and forget about that story Kelly told....but.."STEEERIKE TWO"! Oh man, I was in serious trouble....but not as much trouble as that baby is in when he tries to slide down that...."STEEERIKE THREE! YER OUTTTT!"

No one on my team seemed to care that I stood at home and never moved as three perfect pitches came my way. They simply gathered up their gloves and headed back out field with some "whoops" and "let's get 'em". I don't remember much about the game after that. I don't even remember if we won or lost. I couldn't get my mind off what Kelly told me. I couldn't stop thinking that I came from a...and my mama caught me as she....with my dad in hot pursuit. I probably should have done one, or both of two things. I should have run like a rabbit when Kelly started talking but since I didn't, I should have gone straight to my dad and told him what Kelly said. He might have explained things to me but I doubt it. He probably would have said Kelly was an idiot and left it at that. I didn't do either of those things. I pondered the story over and over in my mind throughout the spring and into the summer. I finally got back to the business of baseball but life wasn't as innocent and I wasn't blissfully unaware anymore.

I eventually figured it all out for myself over time...and the comfort of knowing the story of the stork helped. I'm glad I worked it all out on my own because my dad put off having "the talk" with me until the night of my marriage to Debbie. During the reception he walked up to me and asked, "Is their anything you need to know?" I said 'no' and he seemed pleased. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and enjoyed the rest of the reception.

My Earliest Memories of going to the Movies, Part Two by Mike Cooper

Following is part two of Mike's story. I promised I would post it yesterday but I forgot. I also promised the story would be delivered in three parts but I managed to get the balance on today's entry....therefore there is only two parts. Don't try to sue me. We have lawyers in the family.

When we went to Llano to visit, we would go to the movies at the Lantex Theater.  I remember seeing such theatrical greats as:

“Cinderella”

“The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold”

“Andy Hardy Comes Home”

“The Plague of the Zombies” – I didn’t see all of this one.

“Man’s Favorite Sport”

Roy Hallmark took me to see “The Plague of the Zombies”.  This was one of the English Hammer Productions horror films about zombies.  We were visiting Uncle Bill and Aunt Adelaide during the Llano Rodeo as we did every year for a while.  Uncle Bill had made souse. I’m not 100% sure what souse is, but I think it is head cheese is meat from the head of a pig pickled with vinegar.  Mom insisted that I try it and I did eat some.  Later Roy took me to the Lantex Theater in his Ford Falcon station wagon.  Roy and I sat together until he saw some girls he went to school with and left me sitting alone.  The movie started. There was a scene of a foggy, spooky 18th century English village funeral.  The pallbearers are carrying a coffin and one of the men slips and they all drop the coffin and the lid comes off giving the audience a close up of a green dead guy’s face.  Later in the movie a young English lady decides it’s a good idea to take a short cut through the spooky old English cemetery.  She starts feeling that someone is following her so she begins to panic and run.  She approaches this big spooky headstone. Suddenly the dead green guy from the coffin scene jumps from behind the headstone.  The hair on my head stood up on end, I got hot and broke out in a cold sweat. I went to the lobby water fountain and the next thing I remember was Roy picking me up from the lobby floor and then carrying me to his car.  On the way back to Uncle Bill’s and Aunt Adelaide’s I proceeded to throw up all over the inside of Roy’s Falcon.  I don’t think I was actually scared, I think that souse just didn’t agree with my tummy.  Roy never took me anywhere in his Falcon again for some reason.

The last movie I remember seeing at the Lantex Theater was “Man’s Favorite Sport” with Rock Hudson.  It was a sixties romantic comedy. I remember Aunt Adelaide saw it also and her movie review was that it was a dirty movie too indecent to be shown or something to that effect.  In the movie Rock is chasing Paula Prentiss. Turns out Rock was really acting.

I did see another movie with Roy, I guess enough time had passed that he forgot the zombie movie fiasco.  I guess mom was having one of her family get-togethers?  Roy, Sissy, Evelyn and I went to see Steve McQueen in “Nevada Smith” at the, as you probably guessed, the Cowtown Drive In.  The Cowtown was on the intersection of highways 183 (River Oaks Boulevard) and 199 (Jacksboro Highway). It had a giant mural of a longhorn steer on a hill with a B-36 flying over it.  When the B-36 became obsolete and Convair was building B-58’s, the mural was updated with a B-58 flying over the longhorn. The Cowtown burned down one night.  I remember hearing an AM radio disc jockey reporting the event. He said that Debbie Reynolds gave a blazing performance in “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” last night at the Cowtown Drive In Theater as the Cowtown burned to the ground.  Anyway back to the story.

The summer Jamey Wardlow lived with us, while he was working for Uncle Frog, there was a movie excursion to the Cowtown.  It was Alfred, Jamey, Gary, Ronny and me. We saw the Clint Eastwood / Lee Van Cleef movie “For a Few Dollars More”.  This wasn’t mom approved “Walt Disney” fare. Instead it was full of bloodshed, fights and the basic premise was Lee Van Cleef being after the bad guy some Italian actor was playing who had assaulted his sister before she shot herself.  I think it embarrassed Jamey that Gary and Ronny were with us since they were so young.

Alfred took us to the movies when he lived with us and he lived in Fort Worth.  He took us to see “Cat Ballou” at the Cowtown (I loved the Cowtown).  This is the only Jane Fonda movie that is not only good, it’s actually great.  Alfred took us to Houston once; we visited our Davis relatives there, went to an Astros game at the Astrodome and saw the Cinerama movie “Grand Prix” at an actual Cinerama equipped theater.  It was amazing. You actually leaned in your seats when the GP cars cornered, you couldn’t help yourself.  I had a 1964 Corvair that I drove to high school (and UTA, later to General Dynamics).  The car had dual glass pack mufflers. The guy we got it from gave us another dual exhaust manifold with glass packs which he said were too loud for the street.  When we got home from Houston I swapped the exhaust out to the louder setup so my Corvair would sound more like the GP cars. It wasn’t loud enough, so I came up with a process.  I would come home from school, remove the mufflers completely driving around the neighborhood racking the exhaust pretending to be Phil Hill or Dan Gurney until it got close to time for daddy to come home from work.  I would then reinstall the quieter exhaust setup. I did this for a few weeks until I realized it was too much work.

When I was very young I would get up early on Saturday mornings before daybreak, sneak into the den, turn on the Wards Airline TV set and watch “Rocky Jones, Space Ranger”.  That was my favorite show up there with “The Lone Ranger” and “The Adventures of Robin Hood”. In my memory those shows were so realistic, but there was one episode I never watched completely through because it was too scary.  It was the episode where a robot went around crushing people. The victims couldn’t run away because the robot had some kind of magnetic field that would suck the victim into the robot’s people crushing arms. It was as scary as the time the movie “King Kong” came on our black and white 14” Airline screen and I crawled under the couch and hid.  I have slowly redeemed my manhood by watching the endings of these movies that scared me: “King Kong”, the robot episode of “Rocky Jones, Space Ranger” and “The Plague of

the Zombies”.  A restored version of “King Kong” was re-released in 1970 and I saw it on a date with Nancy. She didn’t really want to see it and she still pretends that it wasn’t good, but it was great.  In my defense, I did see “Love Story” with her and she pretended that it was good, when we all know it wasn’t. My next vindication was at Halloween time a few years ago. Turner Classic Movies had a horror film marathon and one of the films they showed on TV was the “Plague of the Zombies”.  It turns out that if you watch this movie past the point that I passed out, it gets extremely stupid and laughable. The green guy jumping out from behind the headstone was the last scary scene in the movie. I only had one more scary show to watch to completely vindicate myself, “The Rocky Jones” episode.  Last week Nancy went to play Canasta with a church ladies group and I was home alone. Through the miracle of the Al Gore invented internet, I was able to figure out the title of the episode that frightened me so much. It was “Out of this World”. I discovered that I could watch any Rocky Jones episode that I wanted via YouTube.  “Out of this World” consisted of three half hour episodes. I watched episode one, no scary robot. I watched episode two, again no terrifying robot. It had to be in the final episode. I remembered the extremely realistic robot, the elaborate sets and the complex terrifying action scenes. I watched the episode. The robot looked like a child made his own robot outfit for Halloween, it was filmed on a small soundstage with cheap cheesy sets and the terrifying crushing attacks were nothing more than hugs.  It wasn’t anything like I remembered, but I now feel vindicated, I faced my fears.

Except I don’t watch vampire movies or any movies with blood. These

movies make me queasy ever since I saw a movie on TV where the invisible man, either Claude Raines or Vincent Price transfuses the blood from some guy so he could become visible again. After seeing that I couldn’t sleep without my feet being covered because I was afraid Vincent Price might stick a needle in my foot and take my blood.

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My Earliest Memories of Going to The Movies...by Mike Cooper

I've invited others to send stories about their memories. I had about decided no one had anything to say but this week I received a story from my cousin Mike Cooper. Mike has the unique talent of remembering every tiny little speck of his long, and I really mean LONG, history. It's spooky really. I've had to stop him on more than one occasion when he would start, "I remember a funny story about the moment of birth....". Thankfully I've always been able to stop him in time. I hope you enjoy his personal walk down memory lane.

My earliest memories of going to the movies were of “Song of the South” and “Giant”.  Quick research through Wikipedia indicates that these movie trips would have been in 1956.   In my memory, I thought they were earlier because I have no memory of Gary and Ronny being with my parents and me.  In my vague memories we were going to a theater in downtown Fort Worth to see “Song of the South” and I remember walking at night on the sidewalks of Fort Worth with mom and dad.  I also remember mom and dad taking me with them to the Cowtown Drive In to see the movie “Giant”. I was bored pretty quickly and I remember curling up in the floorboard of their 1941 Pontiac Opera Coupe and failing asleep at my mother’s feet.  The movie Giant was re-released sometime after I was old enough to drive. I thought what a great movie it must be and went to the Cowtown Drive In again, this time as the driver, to see it.  That movie is extremely boring.  I had to leave before I curled up and fell asleep again.

As Kids, my mom only let us see Walt Disney movies.  We saw almost every Disney movie released while we were kids.  Usually at the Bowie Theater which is now a bank on Camp Bowie and sometimes at the Ridglea Theater which has been restored on Camp Bowie.  “Pollyanna” was the first movie that moved me emotionally. I dreamed about that movie. When I ask my grandsons if they would like to see this movie they make all kinds to disgusting sounds to indicate how much they did not want to see a “girls” movie.  I quit asking because I don’t want to completely lose whatever street credit I might have. When I see in celebrity birthdays that it is Hayley Mills birthday I always note it to Nancy. This seems to irritate her a little bit. I mentioned at work once that it was Hayley Mills birthday and my friend at work said I think you have the “Hayley Mills crush” like he said his brother had.  He said his brother kept him informed of Hayley’s birthdays, “thank you very much”. By the way, Hayley Mills' double performance in “The Parent Trap” should have won her two Oscars for two best performances.

Sometimes there would be group outings to a Disney movie with Bruce Walker, Russell and Glenn Mihills, Gary, Ronny and I.  We all saw “Babes in Toyland” together.  I remember Rusty and I thought we were too old for this movie.  I still had years of Disney movies to see, but I never saw another one I didn’t like.  I was so sad when our kids got too old to see Disney movies with us. I miss going to Disney movies.

Daddy didn’t go to the movies with us much.  I remember seeing five movies with him.

“Song of the South”

“Giant” – I didn’t actually see this, but I was present.

“Night Passage”

“That Darn Cat”

“Pink Cadillac”

Mom had a bunch of ladies over one night.  I don’t remember if it was church ladies, River Oaks Garden Club, North Fort Worth Women’s Club or the PTA.  Daddy took us to the Cowtown Drive In to see Jimmy Stewart, Audie Murphy and Dan Duryea in “Night Passage”.  I think this is the best movie Audie Murphy made and one of the few movies that Jimmy Stewart plays the accordion and sings in. To this day, every time this movie is on TV I watch it because it is the one movie daddy took my brothers and me by himself. This had to be about 1957.  The next time we went to the movies with daddy was to see Disney’s “That Darn Cat”.  Mom wanted to have a family outing to the movies. This was about 1965. The next and last time I went to a movie with daddy was when we took him to see the Clint Eastwood movie “Pink Cadillac” after mom passed away.  This was a terrible movie and a good excuse to never see a movie again.

I hope you are enjoying this....part two will post tomorrow!!

Nicknames....

I wanted to title this something else but I was afraid it would give away the ending. You know how authors are. They keep you hanging as long as possible...so I'll try to do the same. Who knows, maybe someday I'll be an author too.

How many of you out there have had a nickname sometime during your life? Show of hands? Really? I thought there would have been more. I've had a few.

The subject of nicknames came up last week when I was visiting with a couple of old friends. One of the guys I remember as being called "Butch" by his late wife so when I walked up I said, "Hi Butch". The second guy looked surprised and said, "Hey, when I was growing up my nickname was Butch! I really blew him away when I admitted my nickname as a child was also Butch. Talk about three goobers standing around slapping each other on the back and saying "Butch" over and over. Someone said we should start "The Butch Society". After a moment though we decided that was a terrible idea.

I struggled with my early nickname because I was anything but a "Butch" kind of guy. Skinny and pale along with clothes that were always too large or two small made me a candidate for several other nicknames other than the one my dad assigned me. I think he must have had higher expectations for me. It wasn't until we moved to New Mexico during the sixth grade that daddy gave up on the nickname for me. Several families from my dad's company were transferred the same time we were and one of the men was a good friend of my dad's. His name was Jim. Jim came out early like my dad had done and started to work before his family moved out. Jim was a big, muscular, crew-cut wearing, macho type of guy. We had him over for dinner one night and my dad introduced us. "This is my wife Blanch, my oldest daughter Cindy, my oldest son Butch...." That's as far as he got because Jim couldn't stop laughing. He tried to not laugh but laugh he did. It went like this: "Butch? Did you say Butch? Har Har...oh I'm sorry....nice to meet you Butch...snicker snicker snicker." I never heard that name again.

In fairness, my dad did try to come up with a more appropriate name for me but eventually gave up and called me 'Rusty', which is what the rest of the world already called me.  I'm glad he settled on that because I did not want to be called "Grandma Moses", "Whistle Breeches", or "Slug". Rusty was just fine.

I tried to convince the world my name was Russell when we moved back to Texas. I thought Rusty sounded a bit immature. I was pretty successful at school because nobody remembered me. Most of my relatives still call me Rusty and that's okay. I kind of like it now. 'Russell' didn't work for me for long because in 1963 I got a new nickname that stuck until I graduated from high school.

In 1962 an artist named David Rose came out with a song that became really popular. It was called "The Stripper". If you don't remember it go to YouTube and type in "David Rose - The Stripper". You'll like it. I loved it and so did most of my friends. By the fall of 1963 we were all trying to learn how to play it on our horns (we are band people don't you know). One of the guys played trombone which is the lead for the song. During a lunch break one day a few of us were hanging around the band hall and he started playing it. Hey, it was just us guys in there so I started acting like I was the stripper. Boy oh boy, I have no idea where my inhibitions went. It wouldn't have been so bad had the band director not been sitting in his office watching. Eventually he started clapping and all desire to mime a stripper was gone. Everyone laughed and one of them said, "Way to go Gypsy Rose". From that day on I was "Gypsy". On the night before graduation some of us were going out and a car load of guys came by to pick me up. They drove up, laid down on the horn and yelled, "HEY GYPSY, COME ON". I took off out the door as fast as I could with my dad following behind wanting to know "What's this Gypsy thing they're calling you"? He had to drop his paper and get up out of the chair before he could chase me so he didn't catch me before we took off. He never asked about it later. I guess he wasn't that interested.

If you ever decide to give someone a nickname please be selective and use a name fitting the personality. Try to avoid the following unless they truly express the personality of the individual.

Don't use these:

• Grandma Moses
• Whistle Breeches
• Slug
• Windy
• Glob
• Dunderhead
• Molasses
• Lardball
• Fencepost
• Phartbuster
• GYPSY

I'm sure there are more but I've never been called any others.....not that I was called all of these...no no no