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Show Our fearless author finds the one way to floor a Texan. By H. ALLEN SMITH “If a lady eats a chicken neck,it will make her pretty. That’s a fact. If you got a toothache and bite on a nail, it'll stop. If a man has a mustache a different color from his hair, he’s gonna make trouble. When you get a fresh package of gum, always pull out the middle stick first because, if you don’t, all your teeth are gonna fall out. “Things like that. Beliefs. Not su- Backing away so he wouldn’t see my heels, I made arrangements to return to Big Bend to shoot the rapids with Lady Bird. I returned westward in a Cessna belonging to the Del Rio Flying Service and piloted by Herschel, Moore. He had warned me, “Watch the edge of that wing—duck down when you get to it.” When we landed at La Linda, I started away from the plane, then remembered that I had left my notebook. Herschel wasn’t there to warn me. Whaaaack! 1 walked right into that wing, cut a frightful gash in my forehead, and in seconds my face was crimson. They led me into the ranch house, cleaned the wound, and put wide strips of bandages overit. 1 told them that I didn’t care how bad it looked, I was going over to Big Bend the next day and shoot those rapids with Lady Bird. “You dumb Yankee,” they said; “You've suffered a brain injury. Lady Bird is rafting through the canyons this very hour.” I spoke some bad words. A few hours later, Herschel Moore and I took off for Galveston, where I was invited to dinner at the home-of an old friend. Td planned to tell him that my head wound came from an assault without provocation by a guileful, perfidious, and unprincipled Texas airplane. But a better story occurred to me. “I was set upon,”I said, “by a band of 16 treacherous, dirty-necked Texans and onewarlike Indian. 1 whupped them one.and all. The mad Indian got me down and tomahawked me on the brow, but I quickly disposed of him, using karate, Northern-style. And then I got up, faced the 16 Texans, and used their own weapon against them: J talked them to death.” My friend gave me a slow grin. “Pardner,” he said, “you better make wears his heels out on the inside. Ever know that? I've seen it work.” turned into a true Texan. You're one of us.”@ Avthor of “Low Man on o Totem Pole,” “Let the Crabgross Grow,” “Rhubarb,” and the forthcoming “Son of Rhuborb” I hope LadyBird Johnson will read this story— ‘on accountofit’s all her fault! HAD BEEN LOAFING around the colorful West Texas town of Alpine, where active cattlemen and retired ranchers clomp the streets in cowboy boots. Along came word that Lady Bird Johnson would be there in about 10 days for-the purpose of visiting the wildly rugged Big Bend National Park. Among other things, Lady Bird planned a five-hour raft journey through the park’s gorges, where the . Rio Grande boils and churns and twists its way eastward. Being a sort of free-lance journalist, I thought that perhaps they would let me go through those deep canyons with the First Lady. I assumed they would have press canoes and Secret Service kayaks shooting the rapids at a respectable distance behind Lady Bird’s raft. So, to pass the intervening days, I paid a visit to my son, wholives in Lake Jackson, which is about 500 miles to the east. There, I met the Bill Billingsleys, who run the local weekly newspaper. They, like most Texans,are’vigorous, imaginative people who like to tell tall tales. But that’s their right since the Texanstill sits tall in the saddle. They fed me manystories. They said that the former Kathy Grant, now Mrs. Bing Crosby, grew up in nearby West Columbia. There is a man in that town whose life revolves around a single incident—whose im- HLLUSTRATION BY ROBERT VELDE perishable fame rests upon a single negative fact. West Columbia people point him out to visitors and say, “Once he asked Kathy Grant for a date, and she turned him down.” It is reported that he may have those words.carved on his tombstone. Mrs.Billingsley is a Callan from Menard County. The Callans have madehistory, too. One is celebrated as the very first man in West Texas to drive his automobile into a stump that was growing in the middle of the road and getting thrown through the windshield in the process. The very first person to do it! Another, Uncle Jim, was the one who killed a close relative of the notorious gunslinger, John Wesley Hardin. Uncle Jim killed the man because he had left a pasture gate open, a thing you didn’t do even if your name was Hardin. 1 also fell into conversation with a senior citizen who was sitting on a bench in front of a grocery store. “I _ain’t superstitious,” he told me, “but I got beliefs like everybody else. perstitions. A stingy man always plans to settle down here. You've Family Weekly, April 28, 1967 7 When you go horseback riding, what concerns you more: Maule ‘ riding form — or your calendar? If you use Tampax tampons, you can go horseback riding any day of the month—and only have to be worried about your riding form. Tampax tampons were developed by a doctor over 30 years ago for the benefit of all women, married and single. Worn internally, they free women to be as active as they please, without chafing, bulges or embarrassment, any time and anywhere. There-are no pins, pads or belts with Tampax tampons. Properly in place, they are invisible—whichlets you wear your mostflattering clothes—even brief swimsuits. And thereis never any odor with Tampax tampons. It just can’t form. Before girls became so active —in so many different kinds of sports —Tampax tampons were good to use. Now they're almost a necessity. Do you use them? TAMPAX. SANITARY PROTECTION WORN INTERNALLY (ADEOMLYBT TANPAX INCORPORATED,PALMER,MASS. |