Where were you born?
In East Texas, near Longview, in the great East Texas Oil field, then the biggest in the nation
Do you have any siblings?
3 younger brothers, including one--named after my dad's wartime buddy--who died just after birth when I was about 6. I was staying with my maternal grandmother that day and my dad telephoned the news. I remember her hanging up the phone and telling me and Don (18 months younger) that the baby died. I remember instantly bursting into tears, but I also remember thinking at the time, "Why am I crying? I didn't even know him." Don and I didn't attend the funeral, but they took pictures of the baby in the coffin. They used to do that. He's buried in a small East Texas grave yard where my maternal grandparents were later buried, and I've visited the grave a couple of times. My youngest brother, Jerry, was born later and is roughly 7 years younger than me.
How many wives have you had?
How many other people's wives have you had?
Ahh, you remembered my joke about "counting my own?" ! I've been married 3 times and am still married to the third. I'm her fourth husband, so the odds should be greatly against us, yet we're still going strong after about 22 years together. (Second marriage lasted about 24 years.
As for other loves, it's not gentlemenly to keep count!
But there was a period where I had a run of married women. Talked to one of them just this morning--it's been at least 20 years since our affair but we still talk on the phone every few months and sometimes go to lunch together. And I still want her each time I see her. There was another married lady who used to call each New Year's when my office was closed to say she was thinking of me. Never would leave a phone number where I could call back. The calls stopped 4 years ago; wish I knew why. She was one of the great loves of my life. Just guessing, I'd say I've had affairs with about six women who were married to someone other than me at the time. That's not counting a couple of cases where we had affairs and then some years later connected again. It's usually a mistake to try to capture what you once had. One of the funniest things is that the guy my first wife ended up marrying (after I refused to let her come back the last time) later told her I was not to come into the house any more when I came to pick up my daughter! He didn't know I wanted nothing to do with her, but it tickled me to know that she was now
his worry!
Would you have more than one wife if legally possible?
Not on your life!!! Men who are into polygamy are basically losers who have to have some weird religion help them get a wife. Women have to have low self-esteem to become part of a harem as it were, and I've always preferred women with spirit. Now running around is one thing, but I think it's just rude to make out with one wife in front of others. I prefer to compartmentalize, that way I can pay attention to the one I'm with and be in love with her at that moment, and then switch my attention and love to another when we're apart. I fell in love with every woman I ever romanced, but there still were a certain few I'd stand up some of the others to be with. You can't love them all the same, so why give them all equal status as a wife?
Would you ever live anywhere besides the United States?
I was in Germany for 1 1/2 years and I choked up when the troop ship pulled into New York harbor and I saw the Statue of Liberty in the dawn's first rays. I'm American, through and through! Three weeks abroad and I'm itching to get back to Texas for some Tex-Mex food and Shiner beer. I love visiting places like London, Scotland, Paris, the Middle East, Bucharest, and South Africa, but they ain't home to this ol' country boy!
Have you ever stolen anything?
The usual kid stuff. As a preteen, I swiped some girly magazines from the pharmacy magazine rack--it was a stupid thing to do, a bad risk, and I've always regretted it. Had a cousin from San Antone, 6 months younger than me, who lived on the bad South Side and that sucker would steal a red-hot stove if you didn't watch him. The SOB even stole from me--minor stuff--but you don't steal from family! My little brother once took the blame for his stealing (Don wasn't 100% innocent, but our cuz got him into it). Since then, I hate a thief more than anything!
Have you ever spent any time in jail?
Well, you might say I've spent a lot of time in jail but I've never been incarcerated. When I was working the cop-shop as crime reporter, I was often in the city and county jail areas. Was once in the Huntsville, Tex., prison, but just working, not serving time.
What is your favorite food?
I get hungry for Tex-Mex anytime I'm some where I can't get it. Start craving enchiladas and tacos in Paris, then come up and drive right by Tex-Mex restaurants on my way home from the airport. It's the not being able to have it that makes me want it so much--guess my love life used to be something like that, too!
I like the cheesecake you get in NYC, where it tastes like cheese and is not as sweet as they make it here in the South. On the other hand I like unsweetened Southern cornbread where you can taste the corn, not the too-sweet corn-cake they try to pass off in most places. When ordering home delivery, I prefer Chinese or Japanese food over pizza. Love sushi (especially eel), oysters on the half shell, and escargot. I've eaten chitlins and have had scrambled eggs and calf brains for breakfast.
One of my favorite meals is a bowl of beans (pinto, butterbeans, or blackeye peas), cornbread, buttermilk and a big slice of onion that bites back at each bite.
If I had to pick one city for food, it would be New Orleans with the cajun, Southern, and seafood mix. But the best two Chinese meals I ever had was in Johannesburg and Aberdeen.
But what I like most of all is gourmet food of all types at expensive restaurants, preferably when someone else is paying for it. Places where you pay not only for the food but for the ambiance, and there're no little kids making noise (I love children, but I don't want to dine with them, especially when they belong to someone else and I can't correct them.)
What is your favorite dessert?
Hot or cold! I'm a sucker for sweets. Cheesecake I've already mentioned. Love pralene candy, especially from Naw 'Leans. Love the really good Italian cakes you get in good Italian restaurants, none that I can spell, much less pronounce. Also Italian ice cream. Love a really good pecan pie that isn't as sweet as most you buy in stores. It shouldn't put you in a sugar coma at first bite. Also love coconut cream pie, and anything chocolate.
What's your favorite ice cream?
Wow! where to start--anything produced here in Texas by Blue Bell Ice Cream, I guess. Like their Mocha and love their Mango ice cream. Ever tried Watermelon sherbert??? GOOD stuff! As is their Peaches and Cream and Strawberries and Cream. Again, I like most chocolates, but not chocolate mint or strange things like Moose Tracks or that have candy bits of any kind in it.
When I was a kid, we use to make our own ice cream at home, with us kids taking turns sitting on top of the machine to hold it down while our dads and uncles too turns cranking the machine by hand. That was the best ice cream, I think. I used to make some great peppermint ice cream using 3-4 cans of Eagle Brand milk, plus a gallon or more of regular milk. I was making some one summer day for my daughter and sons. When I opened the ice cream machine, I was puzzled that it was only about half full. But I went ahead and dipped out big bowlfuls for the kids and then one for myself. I noticed they were setting on the couch with odd expressions after the first bite, but they tentatively took a second bite. So I take a bite of mine, and gawd, it was nothing but that cloyingly sweet Eagle Brand Milk and peppermint flavor. So sweet you'd have to lick the toilet seat of a dirty Texaco station to get the taste out of your mouth! Oh, it was gawd-awful, and my kids were so loyal, they took two bites of that foul stuff.
Can you cook and/or bake?
It's been awhile but I used to bake a mean upsidedown cake for family occasions. My mom was such a bad cook that my brothers and I had to learn to cook in self defense. We used to joke that mom was once in a cooking contest and Army won!
What is your favorite restaurant?
This is one of my weak points--I can never remember the names of restaurants. For years, sources have taken me out for lunch and they always would ask where I wanted to go, and I never could remember the name of a restaurant. Mostly I like seafood, real Mexican food (better than Tex-Mex), Cajun. Maybe it would help to know that at Disney World, my 3 favorite eateries are Mama Mia's Restaurant in the movie backlot area where you can get real Italian dishes while listening to Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett; The rotating restaurant in the Land Pavillion of Epcot Center, where they serve basic American in family servings, and the Mexican restaurant in the Mexico pavillion where they serve real Mexican food from inside Mexico. (On the other hand, in my younger days, I'd eat enchilladas off the street wagons in Juarez in the small morning hours after a night of drinking).
What is your least favorite restaurant?
Any of the cheap "eat all you can stand" chain restaurants. Standing joke between me and other family members is, "The food isn't very good but there's so much of it!"
Have you ever been to a concert before, and if so, who all have you seen? Gawd, who haven't I seen! Ray Charles, Simon and Garfunkle, Andy Williams, Frank Sinatra, Hank Williams (the original, not his son or grandson) Dave Brubeck and his quartet, Henry Mancini and his orchestra, Stan Keaton and his orchestra, Cannonball Adderly, Roberta Flack, Reba McIntire, Ernest Tubb, George Strait (he was singing at the Houston rodeo and Lois and I were dancing when I proposed to her), George Jones, Johnny Rodriguez, Johnny Gimble, Willie Nelson, Johnnie Cash, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristoferson, Bette Midler, Tom Jones, Carlos Montoya, Chuck Berry, the Everly Brothers, Clint Black, k.d.lang, Ray Price, Hank Thompson, the "Hag," many others I can't even recall at the moment.
Funny thing is I really don't like concerts, in the sense of sitting and listening to a singer. If that's all you're gonna do, might as well stay home and listen to his or her CDs. If you're going just to see the singer or group, you've accomplished that the minute they walk out on stage.
But dancing to a live performance, now that's worthwhile. Used to when we'd go to the Houston rodeo and were sitting out in the lower part of the Astrodome, as soon as the singer came out, we'd get up and go to the aisle outside the seating area and dance to the music which was piped out there too. You don't have to see the singer and the band--he's there, you know it, but you're dancing to his music, and that's what really counts.
I prefer going to a honky tonk where a country band is playing and dance there. But if we're in a concert genre and we're the only couple up dancing and everybody is watching, gawd, I love that!
What is your favorite song?
My kids claim that when I'm listening to a classic country or classic rock & rool radio program, every song that plays is "one of dad's favorites." They heard them all growing up.
When it comes to jazz, I guess Paul Desmond's
Take 5 is probably my all time favorite. I saw the Dave Brubeck perform that shortly before Desmond died. That's the ultimate cool jazz tune, I think, although I like Johnny Griffth's
Offering Time, Thelonius Monk's
II BS, and Holt and Young's
Girl Talk... See what happens? I mention one tune and then start thinking of all the other's I like.
Rock 'N Roll--I like the rock of the 1950s when it was still had a rockabilly flavor to it, like Elvis' up-tempo version of Bill Monroe's bluegrass classic of
Blue Moon of Kentucky. I liked the Everly's tight country harmony. Loved Chuck Berry's beat that always matched the motion of a car. But there were two singers who, the first time I heard them, it was one of those stop-the-car-and-dance in the street moments. One was Little Richard. There had been other black rock singers but none that had the full throttle shouts of a black man like I used to hear on a black blues program that came on about midnight Saturday nights out of Shreveport, La. We'd listen to the current country tunes of people playing the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport, and then as the Hayride ended, the all black blues program came on with people like Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King, and Bobby "Blue" Bland. My folks and grandfolks would holler at me to turn of that "n----- music" but I'd turn down the radio and close the door and listen to a whole different world out there.
The other person who personified rock and roll to me was Jerry Lee Lewis, the Killer! Hearing him rip through
Great Balls of Fire,
Rocking at the High School Hop, and country tunes like
You Win Again--man, I loved the rawness of his sound. Lewis was the real stuff, not pretty-boy Elvis. I like anything Killer ever played.
But lord help me, I love country music best of all, because you can hold the girl while you dance to country! George Strait was singing This Man Will Always be in Love With You and we were dancing when I proposed to my wife. And I love George Jones songs like
He Stopped Loving Her Today, which is just cut-your-throat blue. Even better although less well known is his
Cold Hard Truth; guess it gets to me because it could be about my own cheating ways. I love the big band sound of Bob Willis and his western swing even more than I love Glenn Miller's big band.
Hank Williams always gets to me, especially his breakthrough
Love Sick Blues. I had an uncle who used to sing that so much that I thought at one time he must be Hank Williams! The only names I ever heard on the radio growing up was Hank Williams and Jesus, so one night when I and my family were at the Louisiana Hayride because another uncle was on the bill that night, I couldn't believe it when they announced Hank Williams and his long lanky frame staggered to the mic. Man, the roar that went up from that crowd must have lifted the top of that hall by 3 feet! I've never seen anything like it before or since.
But if I had to pick the absolute one song I can't do with out, it would have to be an old Bob Wills favorite,
Faded Love by anyone who ever played it. In fact, I've thought of burning a CD with nothing but all the different recordings of
Faded Love. My granddad used to sing that song, so it has always been special to me.
What is your least favorite song?
Anything rap--it sounds like people talking in a noisy place, not like music and singing to me.
What is your favorite music genre?
Country
What is your least favorite music genre?
Rap
Do you prefer board games, or computer games?
It depends. I play board games with my grandkids but computer games by myself.
What is your favorite sport?
Rodeo: it's unique in that your "opponent" outweighs you usually by hundreds of pounds, is stronger than you, faster than you and can really hurt you bad if you let your guard down. Yet you pay your fee to participate and furnish your own gear. And if you get hurt, you pay your own hospital bills. That I think makes it the ultimate American sport. I used to know the stats on all the top rodeo contestants. I never rodeoed myself although I've run with a few who did. I used to admire the ropers, which is one of the few things in a rodeo that people still do on a ranch. But I haven't the hand-eye coordination for it, and I don't like getting thrown by the rough stock--that hurts! Still, the first wage work I ever did was at an East Texas rodeo when I was 9 years old carting buckets of ice and bottle drinks (back in the days before cans) up and down the stands. I think my right arm is still an inch longer than my left because of that.
However, I saw one of the alltime rodeo greats ride that night, Casey Tibbs!
What is your favorite hobby, besides watching movies?
What is your favorite TV show?
What is your least favorite TV show?
What is your favorite theater snack?
Theater, or home theater?
If you had to throw away all your movies but one, which one would you keep?
Do you avoid watching certain movies, simply because of an actor that is in them?
Name 5 actors you would love to meet, and why. What would you want to do to, or with them?
How many new movies do you watch per year?
Name the movie you hate the most.
Name the oldest movie you've seen.
Name the newest movie you've seen.
What is your favorite movie genre?
Who is your favorite action star?
What is your favorite decade of movies?
What is your favorite movie for each genre . . .
Horror?
Sci-fi?
Suspense Thriller?
Comedy?
Action?
Drama?
Musicals?
Westerns?
Martial Arts?
War?
If you could look like anyone famous, who would it be?
Do you share a birthday with anyone famous?
If so, who all do you share that day with?
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