I Should Have Known Better

I goofed in yesterday’s blog when I said that the police car on the cover of Return to Dog’s Run was a 1960 Ford. Blog reader Dave Davis corrected me on that, telling me he thought it was a 1963, and he was right. I should have known better, because back in my high school days I owned a ’63 Ford, among other cars.

That wasn’t because I was rich. I was darned sure at the other end of the economic scale. Back in those days you could buy cars from the early 60s back through the late 40s for anywhere from $25 to $100. They were not show cars by any means. Some were beaters, but others were in pretty good shape. All my life I’ve been a bit of a hustler, buying and selling cars, motorcycles, guns when I was an adult, or whatever else caught my eye.

I always had some kind of gig going on, whether it was mowing grass, having a big newspaper route, and later on working in gas stations and things like that. I would save up some money, buy a car or motorcycle, play with it for a while, then sell it for usually more than I paid for it, and buy something else. One time my dad got ticked off at me because he had one car and I had three. But I was always a great son; once when his car was in the shop for repairs, I let him use one of mine. Yeah, I’m that kind of guy.

I’ve owned all kind of cars, but I always seem to gravitate toward Fords. My first was a 1949 Ford, followed by a 1955 Ford Victoria, then a series of 1959 Fords. I don’t know why I had so many of them, but I had at least one of every body style made that year – a two-door, a four-door, a convertible, and a station wagon. I also had a 1960 Galaxy and a 1963 Fairlane.

But I wasn’t exclusive to Fords, I had a 1948 Oldsmobile, a 1961 Chevy Bel Air, and a massive boat of a 1963 Pontiac Catalina convertible. Not to mention two or three motorcycles along the way. And all this while I was in high school! There used to be a comedian on the old Hee Haw TV show named Junior Samples, who was a car salesman. Tell the truth, if you were around in those days, did you ever call BR-549? I know I did. Anyway, every time that skit came on TV, my dad used to say that was going to be me someday.

In other news, in yesterday’s blog I said I hoped to get between 3,000 and 5,000 more words done in my new book. But as it turned out, I actually knocked out a little over 8,000 words. I stayed at it pretty much nonstop until about 5:30, when our friend Jim Lewis showed up to help us work our way through a delicious meal of shrimp and grits, with bacon bits. Miss Terry has never cooked a bad meal, or even a mediocre one, but this time around she went above and beyond. It was amazing!

It was cold here yesterday and it’s going to be cold again today. One of my neighbors said that there were something like 30 or 40 manatee in the canal a couple of blocks from our house in our little community. As soon as it gets cold, they come in there and huddle up and stay throughout most of the winter. If I feel energetic enough I may bundle up and go down and see if I can get some pictures of them. Or maybe I’ll just stay here at home where it’s nice and warm and keep on writing.

Congratulations Mike Knight, winner of our drawing for an autographed copy of Big Lake Blizzard, the fourth book in my Big Lake mystery series. This copy has the original cover, before I commissioned Elizabeth Mackey to design all of my book covers. We had 107 entries this time around. Stay tuned, a new contest starts soon.

Thought For The Day – When I see lovers’ initials carved into a tree trunk, I can’t help wondering why so many people bring knives on dates.