Author: Dick

Gordon Baxter upon the celebration of his 80th birthday last year in Beaumont, Texas

I heard on the local news this evening that Gordon Baxter died at the age of 81. Probably a whole lot of people don’t know “Bax” outside of Southeast Texas, except for maybe those who read “Flying” magazine which carried his “Bax Seat” column for many years.

Bax was a local writer and what they call these days a “radio personality.” He was a deejay and a newsman and read ad copy on stations such as KLVI-AM in Beaumont for “Sears dears” as well as many other sponsors. But most of all Bax was a genuine media character in an area that didn’t really have such between the time the Big Bopper got killed along with Buddy Holly, and the time Janis Joplin showed up for her high school reunion in Port Arthur after she made the big time.

At some point in time Bax would piss off a local sponsor or his station manager and get fired from his radio job, then he would write books. He never was a huge success outside of this area. But he had a loyal core of fans and I count myself among them.

After I heard he died, I went to find my copy of “The Best of Bax,” which was published in the late 1960s and surely wasn’t the best. One of my favorite Bax columns of all times was one he did in 1965 about his being drawn to this magnificent fountain at a bank in Groves, Texas, on one of the scorching days we have here.

“I was wearing my speech-making suit, my best one, my Mohair Sam suit and I walked by and I thought: ‘No.’ … But there was nothing I could do about it. I just walked right up, through the spray, thinking, ‘I won’t,’ and I climbed up on the lip and when I sunk my first pants leg and shoe in the cool water, I thought ‘Ahhhh!'”

He went on to tell how he went back inside the bank and squished around on the carpets and asked the people who worked there if they ever had the urge to do the same.

“And they said: ‘Why yeah!’ And I said, then why didn’t you?”

I had few literary heroes to follow as a kid who was attracted to journalism, for some strange reason, for most of his life. I would count Bax among them. I had planned more than one time to try to seek him out and talk to him. It wouldn’t have been that difficult. But it was just one of those things I wished I had done and didn’t. It’s kind of like some of those bank employees he wrote about who were enthralled on those hot days by the fountain but never indulged.

Sometimes you just got to follow your intentions, good, bad or otherwise.

It’s pretty quiet in my neighborhood when I go for walks a bit after sunrise most mornings. You hear a distant roar that is Interstate 10, a mile or so away, but it’s something you can easily put out of your head with the greater quiet that encompasses you. That is until the dogs start talking to one another.

This morning a dog in someone’s yard was into some serious barking. This prompted a response from a dog somewhere else in the neighborhood.

Dog 1: “Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof.”
Dog 2: “Woof, woof.”

In other words, I have no idea what the dogs were talking about. Maybe barking is just some kind of primal response. But then, maybe dogs are discussing serious matters far above our ability to reason.

Nah. Probably not.

Even if dogs were doing some serious communicating, we have no idea if they all can speak the same dog language. For instance, say you’ve got a German shepherd. When it barks can a Chihuahua understand it? Can a French poodle?

I wonder if David Berkowitz got started down his road to ruin by pondering such questions? You remember David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz? He claimed a neighbor’s barking dog told him to kill. Which made me wonder why the cops or district attorney never asked Berkowitz:

“Do you do everything a dog tells you to do?”

I don’t really have to worry about a dog barking evil commands at me. I don’t much like people telling me what to do. I sure am not going to take woof from a dog.

We say goodbye to our old friend “Godawfully hot” and say hello to the U Scan Lady.

I might be tempted to fall in love with the U Scan lady were it not for the fact that she is so irritatingly bossy as well as her being a recorded voice for a piece of machinery at the grocery store.

Grocery shopping and I have gotten crossways over the years. I think part of it is the pace of everyday life, plus I’ve encountered a whole raft of rotten checkout clerks. That is not to say that all are like that but the ones who are can make your shopping experience a one-way journey to Unpleasantville. So most of the time I just want to get my goodies and get myself out into that Godawfully hot parking lot. U Scan, or self-checkout, or whatever it is called at the particular store that might have it, is wonderful. That isn’t to say that U Scan Lady doesn’t get on my nerves.

“Please put the item in the bag.”
“I did already.”
“Please put the item … thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“The weight is not correct for the item scanned.”
“My weight is not proportional to my height. So what?”
“Do you have any coupons? Do you want cash back?
“No. And yes, if it doesn’t come out of my bank account.”

That’s kind of the typical banter between me and U Scan Lady when I check out. It’s kind of a bland, perhaps even emotion-free dialogue. I’ve tried flirting with her but she doesn’t seem to respond very well. Maybe I should tell her a dirty joke. Although if I did, I wonder if she might sue me for sexual harassment? It would be a hell of a story. I’ll say that much.

I do my share of cursing automation. But deep down I like things that make life easier for me. I used to think I would want my own monkey that could do everything for me from cooking dinner and making drinks to cleaning house and doing my shopping. But I always had the fear that a monkey might commit some embarrassing act in front of a guest.

“Sorry about your suit, Reverend, it’s just that the monkey gets these … urges.”

That is why, if I wanted to be really super lazy, I would want a robot. It would have a lot demanded of it and it best be a funny robot but at the same time one that could behave itself in public. Knowing my luck, my robot would probably obsess over the U Scan Lady and start stalking her at the grocery store.

Maybe I am just better off just doing things for myself.

The most obvious headline of the day comes from Yahoo News referring to a story by Reuters news service:

Prison would prove tough if Jackson convicted

Ya think? The headline is pretty awful. The story, which if you want to spend your time reading you should have the fun of looking it up on Yahoo News yourself, (hey, I can’t do everything for you) is one of those stories in journalism where sow’s ears are spun from a sow’s wiggly little tail. Reporters are awaiting the jury to decide upon poor Michael’s fate. So this writer reached down into the depths of her journalistic tool box and pulled up a jewel about how life could be difficult for the so-called “King of Pop” inside the slammer.

I wish I could say that I cared. I don’t. Whatever the jury decides is something Jackson will have to live with, whether behind bars or not. But I can understand this journalist writing such a story. Because the awful truth behind newspapers is something called the newshole. It’s like a pothole except you have to fill it with whatever material you have handy. It is also possible that this Reuters writer (say that fast 16 times)was given such an assignment by an editor. That is because editors are where the truly bad stories originate.

Editors scream at their minions to “fill that damn newshole” with something, anything. Just as long as the hungry beast gets filled. The result is instant enlightenment. Oh my, Michael Jackson might have it rough if he goes to prison. I did not know that.

I’ve filled the newshole with my share of meaningless drivel so I feel I can sit here and criticize. In fairness, nothing stories come from a variety of circumstances ranging from idiot editors to slow news days. It’s quite common to see this on local television news. Hey, nothing happened, let’s do a story. Make some s*** up! Why? It’s the newshole.

Just remember, as long is there is an empty newshole, no stupid story will go untold.

I have about five cardboard boxes full of stuff that I moved, mostly newspapers from my previous jobs, that remain unpacked. I vowed to one day clip the articles I kept from those papers except for those particular pages I wanted to keep such as the front page when the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded. I probably will never get around to clipping them though, realist that I am.

But on the bright side I did manage to throw away a whole lot of crap that I had accumulated over the past 25 years or so. Why I kept every matchbook from everywhere I have ever been is beyond me. I never aspired to be a matchbook collector. Postcards are something different. I’ve been collecting them since I was a kid. Not that I am any kind of big-time collector. It’s just when someone sent me a postcard I would keep it. Or I would go somewhere and see a postcard and buy it. Or I would find a really odd, old one at a flea market and spend a buck on it. But matchbooks, no. I used to pick up matchbooks because I smoked. Now I don’t — smoke or pick up matchbooks.

I am going to make a really big leap right here, from my crap-o-rama to presidential crap-o-rama. When I was working in Waco, one of the big deals was the attempt by Baylor University to get President George W. Bush to locate his presidential library there after he is out of office. It’s a logical wish on Baylor’s part. GW has his place outside of Crawford which is only a 10-minute ride or less by helicopter from Baylor or a 25-minute ride by armored Suburban.

Of course, the Bushes and most notably Laura, have made their intentions known that they will be living in Dallas after they move out of the White House. GW will still keep the ranch, should he find himself feeling sort of insignificant in the middle of the night and just has to go whack some mountain cedar. Their living in Dallas means, however, that his presidential library could go to Southern Methodist University (Laura’s college). Other schools in the running include a daily double for Texas A & M, which has his dad’s library.

These presidential libraries are a wealth of information for serious geeks who study presidents. They also are a tourist attraction. I’ve only been to one — LBJ’s at the University of Texas at Austin. But when you come right down to it, the commodity being sold is crap. And I know there is a lot more crap collected during a four-year or eight-year presidency than my past 25 years of semi-significance.

Waco, and Baylor University, wants your crap Mr. President. So does SMU. So does A & M. It’s historical crap, no doubt about it. I know that going through my years of crap I’ve kept anything related to the U.S. President. That includes a certificate of gratitude that the president sends when a veteran dies. In this case, it was for my dad and it was signed by Bill Clinton. Some may call that ironic. Others may call it a crying shame.

And I’ve kept my press passes for presidential events I covered in Crawford. One such pass almost pisses me off so badly I can hardly bear to look at it. It’s got my name and affiliation written in pen and is all smeared on the page. That’s because the children who run presidential events felt it made perfect sense to keep the press waiting out in a downpour for 30 minutes at Fort Hood while … well I don’t quite know what they were doing. If it was all for security’s sake, I’d be understanding. But we were finally let in and then the Secret Service swept the place for bombs and other assorted items. Chill boy.

So I have my presidential crap as well and I can understand why people think that it’s important. On the other hand, millions of dollars are being spent just to attract the president’s crap to a college campus so the college and town it is located in can make even more millions of dollars. It’s not like GW will be leaving crown jewels. It’s crap. Isn’t that a little warped?