Me and Mo: A Texas Tale

By Don Claybrook PhD

The authors upbringing in the Baptist tradition and the inculcation of that tradition in him by a Baptist preacher father, resulted in major conflicts in his life, particularly the traditions shortcomings off which Claybrook bounces his ideas. The novel touches bases with theologians from the likes of Mark Twain to Claybrooks teacher, Jrgen Moltmann, the worlds foremost Protestant theologian (Church Times), to philosophers as disparate as Blaise Pascal (also a mathematician), Socrates, and Shakespeare. Poetry has been used to reinforce his philosophy and heart-felt emotions. All the poetry contained herein is the authors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546254430

Don Claybrook PhD

I am a native Texan and hold three masters degrees, two in theology and a law degree. I also hold a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology and have pastored six churches in three states, California, Indiana and Texas. Ive been a school teacher, coach and an investigative reporter for the Fort Bragg Advocate-News and The Mendocino Beacon, both in California. I have four adult children and four adult grandchildren; and, the last 22 years have lived on the beautiful Mendocino Coast in Northern California. Although my novel is fiction, it is also autobiographical and is reflective of my lifes story from birth until the present time. The only place it is brutally honest is when I discuss my own shortcomings. All others in my tale have been dealt with generously and lovingly. My tale will evoke the full range of emotions; however, its primary shtick is centered around humor (which abounds in Texas!). But, tears will come as will a bit of anger, reflection, self-examination and awareness. In the end, Me and Mo: A Texas Tale is all about redemption and the will to move on.

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© 2018 Don Claybrook, Ph.D.. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/08/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-5444-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-5443-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018909229

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Each chapter is preceded by a six-line poem which I call, Conrac Verse. In the final book of his Border Trilogy, Conrac McCarthy penned a six-line verse with very specific meter and specific numbers of syllables per line. The idea is his. The poetry is mine.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my four children, Landa Patrice, Autumn Claire, Don, Jr. and Liberty (Jack) Jackson

And to my grandchildren: Kelsey Harrison, James Hunter, Abigail Ivie and Jimmy John.

May your lives be as big an adventure as mine has been. And may you always know that making a difference in this world is so much more important than making a fortune. On that endeavor, my prayers and hopes are with you.

Little Things, Big Things

I’m thankful for the little things,

Like cinnamon skies and eagles’ wings.

Like sorrow’s tears that finally dry,

And lyrics that make a grown man cry.

I’m thankful for the big things too,

Like Hi Dad, and "I love you."

Like a natural smile on a newborn’s face,

And His incredible amazing grace!

`

May God go with you!

Table of Contents

Chapter

1 Growing up in Texas

2 The Alter Ego

3 The Five States of Texas

4 The Early and the Innocent Years

5 And the Years Passed

6 The Halcyon Days of High School

7 The Year was 1956

8 The Year Was 1957

9 The Fall of ’57

10 Boys to Men

11 Camelot Lost

12 The Pedernalis Days

13 The Lost Years

14 The Miracle in the East Room

15 The Golden Years at Golden Gate

16 Pain Pills and Rolling Hills

17 The Texas Two-Step

18 The Land of the Sacramento

19 Living on Mendocino Time

20 The Second Coming!

21 By Any Other Name

22 The Day the Music Died

23 Starting Over

Epilogue

Texas is a state of mind.

It is a place for which man pined,

One of a kind,

Just to dream big.

Time out of mind,

Heaven’s gig.

CHAPTER 1

Growing up in Texas

Unbeknowance to me, my buddy Mo had moved to the Golden State at the end of his second year in high school over there in East Texas. I lived down in South Texas on the Gulf Coast, but he’d grown up in East Texas, or so I thought, and had played football there at Larue. I had moved on to Sweetwater after my sophomore year at Flour Bluff, now a part of Corpus Christi. That’s where I lived when I first met Mo when his dad, Big John Gilbeaux and mine got together at an ecumenical pastor’s conference. Mo came with him to the conference and Dad brought them both home to the Hawkins’ parsonage for dinner. Mostly because he wanted me to meet Mo. That was the summer after both of us had finished eighth grade, me in Corpus and Mo in Larue about 100 miles east of Big D, but a good 400 miles from me.

He was tall for his age but also just a slight bit chubby, well heavyset might be a kinder way of saying it. And he had a killer of a dimple on his left cheek. On his face, that is. But I’ll get into that later. I was not as tall as Mo but was maybe a little bit better put together. Course, that’s a judgment call. In other words I didn’t have a pound of fat anywhere on my body. Not then I didn’t.

That configuration would change over the years, mine and Mo’s, but it fit quite well in those early days of us knowing each other. And that’s exactly how Mo got the added nickname, that extra weight, that name of Slo, as in Slo Mo as in Slow Motion. His daddy gave it to him, the Slo part. I had already branded him with the Mo. His full name was Maurice T. Gilbeaux. He might have been a little slow with that extra poundage, but he wasn’t slow where it really counted. Mo had a good mind and better yet, he could be taught. That’s just my way of saying, he’d not yet become an old dog. As luck would have it that turned out to be my job, teaching Mo what little of West Texas wisdom I had to impart. He was also my best friend. Well, at least after a couple of summer camps together, we became best friends.

After he pulled that disappearing act and moved to California, there was a hiatus of 45 years that went by without me and Mo so much as sharing even a Christmas card. I really had no idea where he was. Nor he I. But I’ll get into that soon enough.

I didn’t necessarily want to get involved in Mo’s scintillating tale; but, his story was pretty much my story too. There’s a word I learned from Mo. That scintillating business. He knew how to speak good Texas jargon, but there was way too much Lose E Anna built into it, him living over there close to it and all. He called it Lew-eez-ee-anna, kinda like Anna was its last name. That’s the very reason I took to calling it like I just did. Took Mo twice as long to say it as it should have. Add that to the overall Texas drawl and you’ve got slow coming out the kazoo!

Today, lots of folks call that swamp just east of the Texas line like I do, Lose E. Anna. I pretty much named it that way in a tribute to my good buddy Mo. In Texas, we’re not especially out to get folks to love us, just to get the truth out is our main point. As we see it.

In fact, let me get back to my point. As I sit here typing, I’ve decided that as mine and Mo’s tale unfolds, I’ll just be…what? The narrator? A teller of truth with a few well-placed Texas embellishments thrown in? A Texan is lying to you if he won’t throw in a smattering of those ever now and then. The people that they’re a’telling those lies to are going to factor that in anyway. So, maybe I’ll just be a conveyer of another Texas tall-tale. Don’t get me wrong, in many cases the names have been changed to protect the innocent. In all others, they’re either not innocent; or, I’ve shown them to be so ornery that nobody would claim to be any of ’em, in the story anyways. But it is autobiographical based on facts; some of which have been called into question.

So, I was thinking about just telling it as another tall tale out of Texas. But, naw, that boot just don’t fit the foot either. That’s what we call it when these old cowboys out here’n West Texas try to force a new boot on their foot just because it’s pleasing to the eye. So’s Pepto Bismo for crying out loud! Never mind that boot being as tight as a tick on turpentine.

So, I’m thinking I’ll just be Mo’s alter-ego, as he calls it. I’m guessing that might work; but, only because me and him grew up together. In the same batch of years, that is. I was raised way out yonder in Sweetwater, well, in a couple of other places too, and Mo grew up in deep East Texas in that pissant little burg of a town called Larue on Highway 175. So our growing up together was dependent on us becoming friends even though our daddies were natural enemies, but ecumenically tolerable…to an extent.

Now, the location of the town of Larue is coming up as you head out of Big D going due east toward Jacksonville. But don’t get a gnat in your eye as you go by or you’ll miss Larue. Mo doesn’t much appreciate me telling folks that, but Texans have to stick to the truth…as we see it. Mo would have had a totally different view on that mess than me. He did tend to get things a bit catty wampus. That’s what came to be my job. Helping Mo to get his act together before it got more untogether. Like Mescans. My growing up time that I spent in Sweetwater, mostly high school, was the first thing that reminded me that Mescans get every danged thing backasswards. In Texas History class, which by the way, is rightly required of anybody in seventh grade in Texas, is mostly facts. Mostly. At least 87% or thereabouts. Course, that left about three out of every ten would-be students behind, because back there in the forties on into the fifties, lots of our daddies felt like a good sixth-grade education was more than enough. Boy, did I ever reek some steer-branding calamity on that notion!

Anyway, in Texas History, we learned that another one of those little bitty old towns down in South Texas was called Agua Dulce. Now, what does that mean? Well, you might not believe this but it means water sweet. You gotta be kidding me. Why can’t they just call it what it is. They mean it to be Sweetwater but as any fool can see, it’s really Water Sweet. That’s not the only things the Mescans get backassward. I’m a’thinkin they’d call Cimarron something like Ron R. Simmons. By now you get my point. Which is, those Mescans are good folks but their minds just work backwards about 61 percent of the time, as anybody with a lick of sense can see. And, I did exactly that…saw.

Now, if you’re wondering about my knowledge of percentages since you can now see that I buttress all my arguments with them, then I think I can enlighten you on that subject too. Awhile back, I heard this account about working on percentages from a friend which more or less affirmed my position as being credible. He relayed the following story just to help him make his point that percentages will work if we just use a little common sense, much like the old New York Yankee, Yogi Berra did when he said that, Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.

It seems that a Missouri farmer bought the farm, that is, he died, and left his 17 mules to his three sons. His will instructed that his oldest son would get half the mules, the middle son would get one-third of them; and, his youngest would get one-ninth of those 17 mules. Well, those three boys commenced to argue about the split because they couldn’t come to any reasonable conclusion as to who got what. They kept getting part of a mule short or part of a mule too many.

So, their uncle hears about their dilemma and decides he’ll help. He hitched up his own mule and drove over to settle the matter at his brother’s farm. He added his mule to the 17, bringing it up to 18 mules. The oldest son got 9, the middle one got 6 and the youngest son got 2, and all this added up to 17. The uncle then hitched up his mule and drove home.

Now as you can see, the total number of mules didn’t work out perfectly but the percentages did. Which makes them more reliable. I’ve put all that together and I now believe you can trust me when I tell you the percentages I’m working with here. What I’m saying is you have to use your imagination on the number of mules because the percentages are going to cover you. And, you’re still working with whole mules, not parts of a mule. Which is convenient, at least for the mules.

So, you can see that if 87% of Texas History is facts, and 39% of Mescan’s minds work backwards, that’s 87 minus 39, which is 48% of the time Mescans were in for some screw ups when it came to Texas History. They had to learn that lesson; but, lately they kind of forgot it when they won’t even let Texans tell their own story about the Alamo. But, like they say, to the victor goes the spoils and they did win that shindig at the Alamo. But for a long time, I was one of those more or less reasonable folks who thought it was one of their screw ups. But they did have that margin of 4% in their favor; so now, I’m not so sure anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, Mescans are good workers. They like the heat; and, we do have some kind of heat in Texas. Old Sherman said if he owned Hell and Texas, he’d rent out Texas and live in Hell, and I say, may God grant his wish.

But those Mescans picked our cotton and kept the weeds out of it, but not all the rattlesnakes they didn’t. My granddad Steven Hawkins, on my dad’s side of course, lost a finger trying to show my daddy and them what not to do when they were picking cotton, That is, reaching round back of the plant without looking close first. Talk about your show-and-tell. That was it. My granddaddy never forgot that particular rattler. It was the show; but, he did live to tell about it. But lost a finger.

Now, what I’m going to warn you about is that Mo calls himself Maurice but I just call him Mo. In West Texas, we give anybody worth their salt a good-old-boy name. Mine for him was Mo. It stuck like bugs on, like they say, your proverbial windshield. Up until the Slo was hitched to it by none other than his old daddy John L. Gilbeaux, if I didn’t mention it. But even if I didn’t, everbody and their favorite aunt knew Big John over there in that neck of the woods… and lot of places beyond that too. He could preach to a rock and get that hardened stone to repent of its sin. I’m just joshing when I say the altar call song might rightly have been Rock of Ages. It could a’been, but like I mentioned, I was just giving you a hard way to go.

So, in the naming department, Mo provided the hitch and Big John slapped the ball joint of Slo right up to that chrome hitchin post. Slicker’n a whistle.

When Mo was a teenager, Larue had been a goodly size town, up to almost 1100 or maybe even 1200 during the Golden Fifties, not five years after another big war. But time and change saw all but about 800 of those good folks, give or take a handful, moving to greener pastures, which amounted to taking factory jobs in Dallas; or, going on over in Fort Worth at Convair; or, General Dynamics as it later was called. Most of them just started calling it GD. Which, for Baptist, was just another shortcut for a word that would get you in trouble…if you said it…out loud, that is. I later learned that if a member of the Church of Christ said those two words, not GD but what they stood for, he was about to lose his salvation. And probably should have. That’s one time I would have agreed with them.

Mo told me his oldest brother, Pierre, had worked there at GD putting fire curtains in those big B-36 airplanes. He was heard to say on one occasion, The tars are so big on that flyin boxcar to where you gotta use a parachute to get out of the plane. And that’s after the dern thang puts down. As one can properly get a good whiff of from what I’ve already told you, Mo and his brother Pierre did have a way with words. I admired that about Mo and all of them. But you missed the essence of Pierre if you didn’t read his part reaaaaalll slow. Like he said it.

Like I said, Mo was just a nickname over against his real name, Maurice T. Gilbeaux, better known, as I mentioned, as Slo Mo after Big John got through with him. No middle name, just the initial. I was always joking with Mo about that middle initial T. I Called him Tibido but without all those X’s and U’s and stuff; but, it sounded just the same without all that curly-Q business added to it.

If Big John had not given all four of his boys a nickname, folks in Texas would of known for sure he was an imposter, either from Yankee country or the Mid-West, wherever that might be on a well-appointed Phillip 66 roadmap. Anybody over 12 years old could get one of those free down at old Tommy’s filling station as one comes into Larue from parts unknown back towards Big D.

But Maurice grew up to be a likeable, stout young man with a smile bigger’n Big Tex over there at Fair Park at the state fair. Now you know why they call it Fair Park. And a dimple on his left cheek that made all those slow talking, fast moving, pretty Texas gals go batty over him. He eventually came to be just pure-D old Mo to me because I thought that Slo business was a bit of a put-down. That moniker stuck to him like double-bubble on a hundred-degree blacktop, which is about as stick-worthy as caliche. But that’s coming up fast. So, if you’ll just hold your horses, I’m getting there.

Now, if you don’t see that about my buddy Mo right away, that he was a lady’s man with that dimple and big ole smile, you most likely should put this book down straightaway and do something useful, like shoveling the aforementioned caliche off the bottom of your boots. And as he grew up taller more than out, his charm got a whole lot more appealing to the ladies. And that dimple.

Caliche was what they paved the old highway 175 with before prosperity and the Caterpillar Company came calling. Caliche and a mix of shale which everyone in Larue just called shell. All those little bitty Farm-to-Market roads were made out of shale or caliche, which, if I’m not mistaken, is just Mescan for yellow clay, but without resorting to the use of Amarillo, which means yellow, in its naming. Course, more likely than not, they would of called it Clay Yellow as has been reasonably demonstrated. As I look back, I liken this new super glue stuff as to just caliche in a tube.

Caliche is a Spanish word meaning lime and what Stephen R. Bown, in his book calls the Most Damnable Invention ever; so, I think that settles it. But, in the absence of good old asphalt, I suppose it makes a pretty decent road…when it doesn’t get wetter than an old hen during that wrong time of the month business. If chickens observe that custom.

It doesn’t take much of either one, the super glue or the caliche to just get sticky all over the place. At least with caliche you get to see what it is that’s sticking to you. But if you ever got caught up in the stuff, you know that’s not much consolation.

Larue was not far from another wisp of a town called Holt, named after the man who started the Caterpillar Heavy Equipment Company; or, as Mo called it, The Big Ole Fuzzy Yeller Worm. Maurice T. Gilbeaux, nee, Mo, told it in such a way that few Texans had any reason to doubt his wisdom. What few folks remained in Larue worked over at what is today just called, The Big Cat.

Big John Gilbeaux, Mo’s daddy remember, was a first-generation Texan whose folks came to Texas from the hills of Eastern Kentucky way back about the time the damned Yankees invaded the South. They were from Eastern Kentucky where they had this kinda slogan that said, Jist cause I was born in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, don’t mean I can’t walk on flat ground. In fact, Big John was born on the trek west that got them there. It was planned to end up in Louisiana but that swamp didn’t have no more appeal than a skunk in the kitchen; so, the Gilbeaux’s, as Big John often reminded his Cajun buddies, kept right on going until they got to God’s own true country…Texas. But it was only just East Texas.

They sure did find lots of that flat ground to do their east Kentucky hilly country walking on, because the only hills of any kind of height in Texas are way out west in the Edward’s Plateau, which, by the way, rhymes with Gilbeaux. Plateau…Gilbeaux. I know. Go figure. Those Cajuns might not be part Mescan, but they sure were part something. I did get Mo to admit that. Yeah, he allowed, Yup, those Cajuns are sure enough part somethin, Buckaroux. When he said it, I couldn’t see how he spelled it; but, I knew he was going to add that Parleevoo and Curly-Q Too business out on the right end of it. And, as you can see, I was right.

Between that talent of being able to walk on flat ground and Mo’s agreement about the Cajuns, It wouldn’t be too big a stretch to see that Mo had the makings of a sage of sorts by the time we joined up again in California. So, between us, we thought we’d play that notion to the hilt…later.

That indeed was another indication of Mo’s Cajun influence on him. He had to add some of that parleevoo language to almost ever thing he told me, or anybody else for that matter. That’s when I told him it was parleevoo and curly-Q-too. East Texan Cajuns sometimes had a hard time seeing the truth of that. Their mommas and daddies taught them it from day one. I’m guessing that was the same failing that got them to thinking that Gilbeaux rhymed with Bo and Slo. It’s the only thing that makes a whit of sense. That’s why, when I was feeling especially ornery I called Mo Box with the x said out loud. I always contended that if it’s there, say it!

Now I did mention that the Gilbeaux family made it on to God’s Country. So, God’s Country is a good time to record that Big John was a Church of Christ preacher, what time he wasn’t raising rabbits, corn and boys…and a little bit of well-placed Hell. All the boys, Pierre, Bubba whose real name was Max, and Mo, Mo being the baby, caught some of that Hell at the slightest provocation. Big John believed, like all Campbellites, that you could lose your salvation. Later, that was to become a big bone of contention between me and Mo. As a good Southern Baptist, I could see I had several bushels worth of work to do on Mo. And not just with West Texas wisdom either.

I think I finally got the point across to him that God did the keeping and not even a Baptist could keep his own salvation. Didn’t have to if God did. But, I’m thinkin that’s the reason Baptist thought you couldn’t lose it was because our list of things that would lose it for you was a lot longer than the list the Campbellites had for losing theirs. It’s plain as vanilla that you’re thinking that I sure do know a lot about Baptist. Well, I ought to because I am one. But that’ll come on down the road a piece.

What those Campbellites did believe is that baptism saved you. If you didn’t get baptized and get good’n wet all over, you sure weren’t gonna get to heaven. Now get this, they even thought if you sinned after getting dipped, you’d lose your salvation as sure as shooting. I told Mo, I’d be looking to be baptized every night because I didn’t think I could get through the day but what I’d be committing some sort of sin. And that included the sin of O-mission. If you omitted to do what you ought to do, that could be fairly telling on your standing in the security of the believer ranking, as we Baptist called it. We believed that if God couldn’t keep it, you might just as well get you a God who could.

Now it turns out the Campbellites didn’t even have a piano; or, anything else that might make their singing sound a bit more like good Baptist singing. They based that whole instrument-free diet on one little statement from St. Paul in Ephesians, 5:19 where he told the church at Ephesus that they should be making music in their hearts to the Lord. We Baptist thought it could be a might easier to make music in our hearts if we had a good piano in the church to help us along a bit. Or guitars.

I always thought they didn’t believe in instruments in their churches because they were too busy arguing with us Baptist to have time for both. But, like we say in Texas, there ain’t no accounting for taste, and that was double true of the Campbellites. They’d rather get shut of their instruments. And that was just like getting rid of their salvation…a fulltime job.

Now, since I was always giving Mo a hard way to go about being a Campbellite, I guess I should tell you what that label means just in case you weren’t involved in those Baptist and Campbellites wars back there in the Fifties. Alexander Campbell was what they called a restorer, that is, he was trying to restore his brethren who had gotten away from ancient truths and had bought into all that crazy denominationalism and creeds and other such false teachings.

Mr. Weldon Warnock, in a 1957, who was right square dab in the middle of those aforementioned Baptist-Campbellite Wars, in an article wrote that the name Campbellite was given to those who held the real truth, because the non-Campbellites were full of animosity and jealousy and the enemies of truth who didn’t have a biblical leg to stand on, so they just hollered Campbellites! Warnock explained, The reason men still refer to Christians today as ‘Campbellites’ is for one of two reasons or even both. (1) They are not acquainted with the truth, or (2) they are willfully malicious. The Lord will take care of the last one in the judgment, and we trust this lesson will aid in clearing up the first one.

Well now, that didn’t clear up much of anything for me; but, as I look back on those days with Mo and the arguments we had about losing or keeping our salvation, I’ve decided we both were likely interpreting the bible about that whole mess about once saved always saved, like we wanted it to be. And not necessarily like it was. But, of course that led to a whole batch of new problems and questions.

If my present theory is right, that we’re each interpreting the scripture like we want the matter to be, then why would Mo ever want to be able to lose his salvation? Why would anybody, as a matter of fact? So, I was right back to square one. I even told Mo once when he was trying to convince me that he was right, I said, Mo, stop trying to convince me that you’re right because if I agreed with you then we’d both be wrong.

So, if Mo wanted to lose his salvation I guess it wasn’t any of my business. Who was I to try to change him? I didn’t want to lose mine and so, I was happy to be a Baptist.

Many rules on the Sabbath,

Satan waiting just to grabbeth.

His darts jabbeth.

The Devil to pay.

But we hadeth

The wrong day!

CHAPTER 2

The Alter Ego

Well, by now you must have seen that I, Mo’s alter ego, didn’t seem to have a name. If that’s the case, then you saw something that’s not even there not to see. I do have a name and one I’m proud of, Clinton C. Hawkins, that’s my full name. Course you can already see the first nickname they were going to give me. It was actually my football coach in 5th grade, Coach Ken Burris, who started calling me Clint; but, lots of folks already called my daddy Clint; so, my eighth grade football coach, that would be Coach Homer Arms, set all that right by calling me Hawk. Of course, I’ve got a crow to pick with Coach Arms too. He’s the one that hung that nickname, Pretty Boy, on me which has caused me more heartburn than not having it.

At first, some fool wanted to add Black to that Hawk so as to make it Black Hawk. That lasted only long enough for me to pitch a wall-eyed hissy fit. I don’t have a racist bone in my body, but I told them that they were just taking that naming thing too far. Might as well call me a spic. As I’ve already told you, I’ve got nothing against Blacks or Mescans. I have a few friends who say that they’ve got nothing against coloreds at all. But in the very telling, they get found out. I told Roy Hemphill, my other friend that his racism was just in his calling the Blacks coloreds