Author: Dick

Can your eyes play tricks on you? Define tricks. Okay, rather than verbally spar with myself let us assume we mean some wild pinball games can take place inside your brain that result in what you think you are seeing not necessarily being what you are actually seeing. You see?

I bring this up because of something I saw — yes I actually saw it — while driving back from the beach this afternoon. I was cruising on this road that is pretty much flat Gulf coastal marsh. That is why I was astonished to see this very red, 100,000-ton deadweight, double hull, petroleum tanker ship appear before my very eyes.

The ship, The Eagle Phoenix, was traveling and appeared as if it was going to run into the highway. But how could that be? On the left hand side of the road was Keith Lake, a sort of back bay and on the right was the ship channel running from the Gulf of Mexico to Port Arthur and on up the river to Beaumont. But I only saw this huge ship that looked like it was going to ram Texas 87, which already has a long interrupted section along the beach because of a hurricane more than 20 years ago.

Strangely enough this momentary cross-communication between my brain and my vision wasn’t frightening. I say that because a huge tanker running aground onto a highway somewhere would probably be rather dreadful. With my experience in journalism, I can easily predict that such an occurrence would make worldwide news. I guess I just knew it couldn’t happen, or hoped it wouldn’t happen, and instead just let the awe take me away like mental Calgon.

Of course, as I rounded the curve I could see the ship was just churning down the channel and I could almost picture a collection of multinational merchant seaman singing in about 10 different languages: “Rolling, rolling, rolling on the river.”

Once I did drive astern (hey, I learned ‘astern’ in the Navy), I just laughed and looked awestruck at the big tanker. I then realized for the umpteenth time that it’s funny what your brain can do to you. Well, I’m sure for some people it’s not very funny. As a matter of fact, I remember a couple of times when it wasn’t all that hilarious for me either what my brain was doing.

I made it home though. The whole ship experience was one of the more interesting parts of my afternoon. I was a little disappointed with the beach because hardly anyone ever goes where I go. That’s because the beach is just off the highway that once went to Galveston but now runs nowhere because of the hurricane. But today a lot of people were on the beach. Well, it’s Memorial Day, what was I thinking? I also saw some kind of dead four-foot fish that was at the road leading to the beach that was pretty gross. I mean, it didn’t ruin my day but I have had better outings there.

I don’t know where The Eagle Phoenix is tonight but I hope the crew is having a good trip. Hopefully, those who take the helm of the tanker won’t have problems with their eyes playing tricks on them. Despite being somewhat funny when it happens, it can create some serious difficulties both ashore and offshore.

What a tough break for the U.S. Naval Academy graduates. All they have gone through during the past four years and they have this freakish downpour of hats over that part of Maryland on their graduation day!

Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas. The movie.

The song Waylon Jennings sang back in the 70s about “Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas” might not be the best premise for a movie. But considering how Hollywood has gone into considerable retread mode, it seems like any idea not relatively fresh might work as the new blockbuster.

I am certain what passes for screenwriters these days could transform something stellar out of the whole concept of getting back “to the basics of life.” (Is Ned Beatty still alive? If so, maybe we can see a new ‘Deliverance.’) For that matter, some screenwriter on autopilot could probably make a major motion picture out of the crappy photo above I took back on a mild January day in Luckenbach.

Is the motion picture industry, and the television industry for that matter, afraid of coming up with some film that might not be a rehash of a 70s television show like “The Dukes of Hazard” or some rehash of a movie such as “The Longest Yard?”

Why things have gone to seed so badly, television is having to rely on REALITY. Yikes. You remember the old saying: Reality is for those people who can’t handle drugs? Reality, for Christ sakes! People are competing against each other to see how obnoxious their realities really are and it really sucks.

With the fixation that everything past is better than present, I think I am going to go back and re-read all of my old books. Maybe I’ll finally tackle that 700-page Merck surgical manual I bought at a flea market. I think it was written when good health care consisted of being bled by leeches. Who knows, maybe medicine will go retro and we can go to doctors for the price of a good hen.

Certainly there is nothing wrong with the past. I happen to like reading about it. It’s called history. And we all know the gems of literature and performance arts from bygone days. But, come on, we’ve seen cinematic remakes of just about every 1970s television show. That’s not to mention the dreadful period of time when movies were being made to fit the name of some song like “When a Man Loves a Woman” or “Pretty Woman.”

So here’s to the past. May it make somebody stinking rich and leave the rest of us wondering where the creative types go bowling these days.

Would that be irony — or just a crying shame? Who the hell knows? All I know is that old saying stood me well for a good couple of weeks. I now require a saying reflecting my surroundings. I need something hot. Godawfully hot.

For you see, it is Godawfully hot here in Beaumont, Texas. It is the heat. It is the humidity. This is the third time I have moved here. I suppose I like 11-month steam baths and mosquitoes the size of the Predator unmanned aerial vehicles the Army uses.

I told a friend of mine who lives here that I will get used to the humidity. I think I told her that as I was melting into a Margaret Hamilton-like puddle.

I’ve had a horrible two days since I moved in my place. It’s a long story involving insomnia and I won’t bore you with the details. But I felt better today and actually got out and took a walk in my neighborhood.

It was about 11 a.m. when I went walking. It wasn’t so bad. There are plenty of trees, big trees, with big limbs and leaves in the neighborhood. And by the afternoon I was feeling like I might just make it after all, no matter the heat or humidity.

My feelings were helped even more as I was later riding along the boulevard and had this incredible feeling come over me like I actually belong in this place. It’s not a bad feeling, but it is strange because during the past seven years I spent in Waco, Texas, I never once really felt at home.

I’m not going to use two “Wizard of Oz” references in this post and say: “There’s no place like home.” But I feel okay about where I am right this moment. I just hope I don’t evaporate.

The San Diego Chicken couldn’t eat all of Ted Turner’s head 

For some reason I thought about the San Diego Chicken this afternoon. I don’t know why.

He, she, it, the overgrown chicken mascot is now known as “The Famous Chicken.” It was the KGB Chicken when first I saw it in San Diego in 1978 at some concert. KGB were the call letters of a rock station there. The chicken was not some Soviet spy with the KGB, at least I don’t think it was because it was a pretty damn conspicuous chicken. But then, maybe being conspicuous would be a good cover for passing important secrets among spies. Do it all right out in the open, comrade.

Not only was the KGB Chicken conspicuous, it was also pretty obnoxious. I don’t think that it is a prerequisite for sports and other mascots to be obnoxious, but it seems to fairly prevalent from what I’ve seen. I guess if you have an inner-actor, or an inner-actor-upper, then being a chicken or an overgrown bear mascot would be just the disguise for some mild-mannered person who would in reality like to be a major pain in the ass.

I remember a fight broke out among mascots at this high school football game when last I worked in Southeast Texas. I can’t really remember how it went, the bear got belted by the bulldog or vice versa. I wasn’t there at the game, but the play-by-play sounded hilarious. Football seems to bring out the best in folks of that region.

At one game between different schools, but in the same county, one of the high school bands was performing a “West Side Story” routine. When the performers began a fight scene, a local police officer on the sidelines thought some real trouble was going down and rushed onto the field to stop the “melee.”

“Gee, Officer Krupke, we’re very upset;
We never had the love that ev’ry child oughta get.
We ain’t no delinquents,
We’re misunderstood.
Deep down inside us there is good!”

Well I am sure a moral exists here somewhere among the obnoxious chickens, warring bulldogs and bears and Officer Krupke stopping the half-time show. Danged if I know what it is. I guess you will just have to try to figure out the rest of where my mind was wandering all on your own. Good luck. I hope you do better with my mind than I do.