TEXAS FAIRY TALES

As an aside, my family would tell you that I have told the same stories so many times, for so long, that they use them to play bingo. When I tell all the stories on their "story bingo card" that line up in a straight row, someone wins and yells, "BINGO"! (If you know another male in my extended family who fits this description as well, then just keep it to yourself as us "story tellers" tend to be on the sensitive side?)

With that said, this is my damn blog and I will tell the same story as many times as I like (knowing all the while that my inadvertent senility will blow my cover as a "mental midget")?

Now to today's fascinating blog:

My dear Dad was a binge drinker. He would go for a month and not touch a drop of alcohol. However, when he got his whistle primed, he would drink for a month without drawing a breath. During what he called the "drankin" times, some pretty outrageous things would happen.

I remember getting up one morning and finding Dad asleep behind the wheel of his truck in the side yard right up next to our house. Only thing out of the ordinary was that the front bumper and grill of his truck was wrapped in a "U" shape around the tree. I guess Dad wanted to save his brakes for an emergency and just used the handy pecan tree?

Dad's distillery adventures also seemed to cultivate a collection of unusual animals. One time he brought home a snow white bulldog. It was the kind with the HUGE head and tiny butt. It had large front feet that turned in and a small curly tail. (Can't remember what happened to that varmit, but all Dad's beer menagerie disappeared after he sobered)

He brought home a tame squirrel one time and a horse the next. Course, Dad didn't let the fact that we had no pen, no pasture, and no saddle slow his equine husbandry in the least?

I could go on with a list that would rival Noah's challenge, but I'll cut to the chase and gab about my favorite.

Dad showed up at the house one day and to quote him, he was "higher than a Georgia pine". As he parked in the yard (for some reason he couldn't seem to find the driveway when inebriated?) he signaled me to come over (THAT WAS ALWAYS A SURE SIGN TO BE ON GUARD!).

I eased over and Dad produced a black chicken snake that measured just over SIX FEET long. Dad had found it on the road somewhere and decided it was his new best friend????

As we visited, Dad lit an unfiltered Camel cigarette, pried the snakes mouth open, and let the snake relax its mouth on the burning cigarette. Dad just held the snake a foot or two behind its head and let the snake move its head around with the smoking Camel in its mouth. It was HILARIOUS!

After Mr. Snake had his nicotine fix, Dad would periodically open its mouth, put his finger in the corner of the mouth to hold it open, and pour some Budweiser down the snakes throat.

Dad kept that snake with him for at least three days as he visited every soul he knew so he could first, scare the crap out of them, and then show off his smoking/drinking buddy.

Dad eventually let that snake go, but I would give anything to have been able to hear it relating his epic adventure to his slitherin' pals about his few days with Dad. I'm bettin' that snake is why yankees think all Texas Fairy Tales start out with, "Now this ain't no sh_t"!