On Daddies, Daughters, and Shotguns

What happened to my precious little girl? You know, the one that looked like this?

I'll tell you what happened. She blossomed into a stunning beauty with thick, lush hair, a dazzling smile, an dynamic, vivacious personality, and a voluptuous figure that turns the heads of men - and women - everywhere she goes.


My daughter and my son are similar in many ways, but polar opposites in others. Where my son is quiet, imaginative, and observant, my daughter is gregarious, outgoing, and has charisma to burn. Both have buckets and buckets of talent and both are extraordinarily creative, but each expresses themselves in different ways.


From her earliest years, Christa was a performer. Whenever I would crank up the tunes, she would stop whatever she might be doing, plant herself right in my direct line of sight, and break into dance.


Her favorite band in the early years was INXS - "Daddy, play Supersizer Blonde!! Play it, daddy! PLEEEEEEASE??"

How could I resist another performance of Supersizer Blonde?


She would be very serious about her dancing. First she would get in her "ready" stance - arms at 45 degrees in front of her, her cherry lips set just so, then nod when she was ready for me to hit play. She'd rotate her hips, shake those golden curls from side to side, then sort of jog in place before leaping straight up in the air, hair flying, all with her little tongue planted firmly in the corner of her mouth. It was all I could do not to burst out giggling every time she went at it.

I remember when she would fall asleep on the couch, thumb in her mouth, breathing softly. I would gently dust her with butterfly kisses and stroke her Shirley Temple locks. My heart would ache as I wondered how I was so blessed. Do you know that feeling? I could watch her sleep for hours and never let her go.


As she grew, she would hang with me wherever I went. Back in those days I used to cook all the time, and she was always in the kitchen, by my side. We made banana pudding (from scratch, of course - no packaged pudding in OUR recipe!), fajitas, zucchini parmesan, southern fried chicken (with buttermilk!), blackeyed peas, salads, you name it. She would bake me cakes for my birthday. One year she baked a cake, cut it up, and frosted it like a parrot. It was one of my all-time favorites, and an early indication of her innate artistic talent.


Living just a mile and a half from Galveston Bay on the south side of Clear Lake, we lived the outdoor lifestyle - always in the water, at the pool, or in the yard watching the birds, playing in the garden, or building stuff. I wore a bandanna to keep my scalp from blistering and she would do the same, just so that we would "match". She was on the swim team, and both she and her brother were as brown as their Grandma Granny's homemade biscuits.

For as long as I can remember, whenever I was in my recliner in the living room, she would climb up in the chair with me and snuggle down into her spot, her ever-present thumb in her mouth and her head on my chest. I would occasionally try to sneak her hand away from her face and get a lick for myself. "Boy that thumb sure looks yummy - can I have a bite?"

"NO, daddy!", she'd holler, and then plant her entire hand in her armpit where I couldn't get to it.

As she was finishing up intermediate school and about to enter high school, it slowly dawned on me that I was going to have a problem. No, she didn't get into drugs or misbehave or hang with the wrong crowd. She always was - and still is - a great kid, respectful (she still says "yes, sir"), polite, and aware of the difference between right and wrong.

No, the "problem" was something else. You see, my little baby, Daddy's Girl in every sense of the phrase, was maturing waaaaaay too fast for my taste. Suddenly she has these, um, protrusions that seemed somewhat larger than the other girls her age.

"Oh, shit", I thought to myself, "where did those come from?"

Visions of shotguns danced in my head as I tortured myself with all sorts of horrible scenarios. I planned my speech and worked on my "look" in the mirror. It was more of a glare, actually, the sort of stare-down visage that one might expect from a grizzled FBI agent who was trying to get a multi-state serial killer-rapist-fugitive to confess.

I tried to jokingly (okay, sort of jokingly) forbid her from going on dates, and teased her that I was going to plant myself on the front porch with a shotgun, then spend a good fifteen minutes with the boy in question as I ascertained his – ahem - *intentions* with my baby girl.

I didn’t really grill the boys that hard (at least I don’t think I did), but she was worried that I would embarrass her in front of her date. However, I seem to recall that she herself told her date for the Senior Prom about the grilling her was about to endure, and that she stood to one side and watched the proceedings with a bemused Mona Lisa smile.

Why, you may ask, was I so worried about what might happen to my drop-dead gorgeous sixteen-year-old with the hourglass figure of a Greek goddess? After all, don’t ALL daddies worry like that?

Uh, no. No, they don’t.

You see, when I was a horny little teenager of sixteen, testosterone and raging hormones surging through scrawny, gangly little 120 pound frame, all I could think about was getting my hands on a pair of big, ripe, juicy melons. (Preferably the ones attached to Kay Klein, but that’s a story for another day.)

The point is that I knew how my buddies and I acted when we were that age (Beavis and Butthead would not be too far off), and I was mortified to imagine some little twerp putting his hands on MY little princess.

As it turned out, I didn’t have anything to worry about. Christa was far too savvy to put up with any shenanigans and tomfoolery, and even so, she ran with a crowd of good kids. Talented and artistic to a fare-the-well, she hung out with the art kids and the drama kids. I started her in acting lessons when she was about nine, and she was onstage all through her senior year of high school. She has a stage presence that naturally draws your eyes, regardless of where she might be in the scene.

The other kids flocked to her like bees to honey, and there were times during her performances when I would watch her delivering lines and playing off the other actors, and my chest felt so full that I thought it might burst. Do you know that feeling? That glorious feeling of love and pride and nostalgia and longing mixed with the knowledge that one day they will be gone. Gone to their own lives and friends and interests and careers.

Most of all, though, it was love. God, how I love that child.



Today my little girl is all grown up. She is still on stage, however, because she is “connected” – after all, Daddy is in The Business. She works for me as a trophy presenter, a production assistant, and as onstage talent for many of my live events. She has been onstage with Neil Armstrong, Tom DeLay, Eileen Collins, the NASA Administrator, the mayor of Houston, and any number of astronauts, senators, congressmen, and bigwigs. She has rubbed shoulders with Barbara Bush, NFL players, musicians, and professional actors.

She has now gone national, modeling for a t-shirt company:

Holla Back

I sometimes watch as tuxedo-clad businessmen, CEOs, astronauts, professional athletes, and the wealthy and powerful gape and marvel at her poise and beauty. I've seen people two and three and four times her age swivel their heads as she walks by, but today my worries have been replaced by the knowledge and comfort that we, as parents, did our job, and that she is more than capable of making her way in the world.

Daddy’s Little Girl is now a confident, charismatic, talented young woman who is about to start her sophomore year at a major university. She chose not to pursue an acting career, but is continuing to develop her natural talent as a sculptor and artist. She loves kids, her friends, her brother, her mom, her stepmom, and – most importantly – her daddy.

And that, my friends, is all a father can ask.

Hot Summer Nights

A long time ago, in a land far away, there existed a recreational phenomenon known as The Drive-In. The drive-in was, at its root level, an outdoor theater, a place to go to watch movies from the relative comfort of your own car, but in reality it was more than that – oh, so very much more. It was a place where families and neighbors gathered for the communal experience of watching films, sharing a picnic basket or Frito Pie from the concession stand, and a place where many a teenaged boy came of age.

Sadly, the drive-in has gone the way of the brontosaurus, poodle skirts, Fizzies, and Astroworld - extinct, goneski, outta here.

There were two drive-ins that played a major recreational and social role during the halcyon days of my youth – the venerable South Main Drive-In and the McLendon Triple Drive-In. Both of these landmarks were within four miles of my childhood home in south Houston.

My first memory of the outdoor movie experience was at the South Main. My parents wrangled my brother and I into our 1960 Ford Starliner, along with a basket of Sunbeam white bread sandwiches and a cooler full of six-and-a-half ounce bottles of Coca-Cola. You know – the short ones in the thick green glass; the kind that would glisten with beads of sweat in the humid Houston summer night and make the roof of your mouth hurt because you guzzled the ice cold syrupy goodness way too fast.

South Main Drive-In

I was six years old at the time, and the movie was To Kill A Mockingbird. I remember this for two reasons – it was an excellent film starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, and also because the buzz around Houston was that this was one of THOSE films, full of scandalous behavior and things that people just didn’t talk about in Texas in the early 1960s.

There was a playground at the base of the screen where all the kids played before – and often during – the movie. In those days, parents let us kids run off and play, regardless of our ages. My brother was just a tyke (he was three and a half at the time), and my mom told me to “look out for Greg while you boys play on the swings”. There was no worry about abductions, getting hurt (nothing that a little mom-spit couldn’t fix, anyway), or losing our way.

At one point during the movie I had to pee, but it was after dark, I didn’t know where the bathrooms were, and my parents were engrossed in the movie, so they told me to pee by the car. Again, this was fairly common during those days - at least for kids it was.

The McLendon Triple

In 1970 I was a sophomore at Madison High School (yes, the same school that Vince Young would attend some thirty years later). During the fall semester word spread that the McLendon company out of Dallas was building a three-screen drive-in in the shadow of the old South Main drive-in, about a mile and a half from the school. A den of iniquity in our very backyard!

The McLendon opened to boffo box office, and was the most popular destination around for most of the kids at Madison. On Friday and Saturday nights you could catch a triple feature of monster movies, teen flicks, or Hollywood features. The state-of-the-art concession stand and projection building was in the middle of the huge lot, and if you scored just the right spot you could turn around and watch three movies at once!

I will never forget the long lines of cars streaming into that wonderful place, the sound of gravel crunching under the car tires, the heavy ribbed speaker that you hung from the car window, and the smell of popcorn wafting across the acres of cars on a warm summer evening.

When I was a senior at Madison, I drove a snow cone truck to earn enough money to buy myself a van. It was a ’66 Ford Econoline window van, and I tricked that baby out, let me tell you! I installed bucket seats out of a wrecked Pinto, brown shag carpet, and a raised platform just inside the back doors which was covered in four inch thick foam rubber and a – ahem – “bed”. It had a Craig 8 track tape player mounted on the floor between the front seats and a beaded curtain between the front and the back. My dad helped me install paneling on all the walls, and I jacked up the rear end with a lift kit and added some big-ass Goodyear tires and slotted mag wheels.

My buddies called it The Love Truck.

The Love Truck before I installed the window curtains.

We would pile into that bad boy and head to the Triple, but instead of pulling in normally, I would back in so that we could open the back doors and lay on the bed to watch the movies. And to answer your question, yes, we did close the doors on occasion, particularly if my date was Linda Schick, a buxom young brunette with a penchant for peasant shirts, love beads, no bra, and making out.

The Love Truck is long gone now, as is the McLendon Triple and the South Main Drive-In. This aerial image of the McLendon was taken in 1995. The screens are gone, but the concession stand and grading remain, as do the ghosts that once inhabited the summer and winter evenings of my teenage years.

My memories of those experiences remain as vivid as ever. Sometimes I wish I could return to those days – to feel those feelings of excitement and joy and freedom; to see and taste and smell once again the sights and flavors and aromas of The Drive-In.

Babes, Hot Cars, and Monsters!

Okay, long time no post. Let's try to get back on course, shall we?

I started this blog so that I would have a place to rant, muse, ponder, and meander about. I just didn’t realize what kind of time it would take to keep it updated and do a good job. I am really persnickity when it comes to getting things "just so", and as a result I have to commit to spending the time to really do it right.

I know, *Waaaaaah!* - we’ve all got lives, dude, get on with it!

Uh, okay – here we go.

My hobby is modeling, primarily cars and bikes, but two years ago I started dabbling in figures. Now some might ask - and actually have, in point of fact - “Aren’t you a bit old to be playing with toys and dollies?” Well, I s’pose it depends on your point of view, but the short answer is, um, "no!"

I’ve been building models since I was a wee lad. I had my first exposure to plastic models about 1964. I was ten years old at the time, and one night my dad – who was an excellent draftsman, illustrator, woodworker, and all-around craftsman – started building a model car. I think it was a Mercedes SSK – all I remember is that it was long and a convertible. I was fascinated. I couldn’t wait until supper was over and my dad would clear the dining table and get out his model.

It took him about two weeks to build that car, and I thought it was the most incredible thing I had ever seen. He took a box of plastic parts, some glue and paint, and two weeks of his time, and crafted a gorgeous scale replica of a classic automobile. I decided then and there that I too wanted to build models, so the next week we stopped in the local five and dime so that I could pick out a model in lieu of my next month’s worth of allowance.

As I looked through the brightly colored boxes, I found just exactly the right kit. It wasn’t a car, though – it was Aurora’s newly-released Frankenstein monster, walking across the graveyard, arms extended – the living dead. I had to have it, but it cost 98 cents, and my allowance was only 50 cents every two weeks. After much wrangling, whining, pleading, and promises to keep my room spotless and my chores done without prompting, my dad capitulated and bought me the kit, two brushes, and three little rectangular bottles of Testors enamel paint.

The end result was pretty pitiful, actually – glue blobs everywhere, fingerprints all over it, and the most god-awful paint job you’ve ever see, but I was hooked. I built all of the Aurora monsters – Dracula, Wolfman, Mummy, King Kong, Godzilla, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Bride of Frankenstein – but as I got older I began to gravitate more towards model cars. That transition paralleled my developing interest in real cars and motor racing. I continued building models until I was about thirteen or fourteen when, like most boys my age, I became distracted by a phenomenon called Raging Hormones.

That’s right, GIRLS! That, however, is the subject of another column.

Anyway, I returned to modeling in the mid nineties when searching for something that my eleven-year-old son and I could do together that didn’t involve television, video games, Ghostbusters, or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. One day at Toys-R-Us I picked up a model of a Ford Taurus (don’t ask – I don’t remember), some glue, and some paints, and Austin and I sat down to build. I didn’t really do anything but coach and guide him, but we had a blast together. (I still have that model, by the way.)

Building that kit with my son reminded me how much fun it is to create something with your own hands. I discovered that the car modeling hobby had really advanced in the previous 25 years. There were two major magazines devoted to the hobby, all sorts of new kits and materials, and a thriving aftermarket of parts, transkits, paints, and space-age materials.

I jumped in, head, hands, and feet, and before long I was buying an airbrush and setting up a small modeling area in Austin’s bedroom. We both got better as we continued to build, so we entered a few contests and won some prizes. Soon I was traveling to major contests across the country, and my son developed into one of the top Junior modelers in the U.S., winning Best Junior at several prestigious shows. Dad did okay too, and our models were photographed and published in the magazines, which tickled us both no end.

Before we knew it, though, Austin discovered real cars and (gasp!) girls, and his interest waned, just as his daddy’s did some three decades earlier. I hope that he one day returns to modeling as I did, and shares his interest and talents with his son or daughter.

Today modeling has become my favorite hobby. I have a big stash of kits, more than I will ever build in this lifetime. I build almost daily and try to spend at least a half hour each night at my bench. For the last five years I have written a regular column and penned feature articles for the aforementioned model car magazines, and I travel to model shows and contests across the country several times a year.

Interestingly, I have come full circle - I am now building monster models again. As I mentioned earlier, I started building figures a couple of summers ago when I discovered anime. After a couple of years learning how to build and paint figures, I attended Wonder Fest in Louisville about a month ago to see how I would fare against the Big Boys. The vendor room at that show was awesome, and I returned home with a suitcase full of girl kits (of course!), as well as some fantasy and horror models.

I hope to get back to posting in this here blog on a regular basis, and I hope to include some build-ups and works-in-progress of my current models. I will post on topics other than models, of course, so don’t give up on me just yet!

Hide and Seek

When I was a wee lad (back when dinosaurs roamed the fertile land that is now known as North America) I wanted to learn to play the drums. Although I played baseball, football, and basketball throughout elementary school, I was a scrawny little dude when I finally got to junior high and couldn’t make the sports teams at school. I was pretty nerdy-looking and found myself on the outside of the rapidly-developing cliques that make up the Cool Crowd as 12 and 13 year-old kids begin to learn the dynamics of social stratification.

Like most kids that age, I gravitated towards others who I perceived to be “like me” – kids who doodled in their notebooks and on bookcovers made from brown paper grocery bags, kids whose mothers bought their clothes at Sears, shirts buttoned all the way to the top, stiff blue jeans with two inches of the cuffs rolled up, and black Keds. We ate ham sandwiches on white bread, slurped Campbell’s tomato soup from Thermoses, and drank lukewarm milk from tiny cartons bought with the ten cents we were given for lunch every day.

The bullies avoided us for the most part because we gingerly tiptoed across the tightrope around the precipice of weirdness. We were normal kids who were not as cool as the In Crowd, but we were not social outcasts, either. We were just trying to find where we fit and avoid drawing too much attention to ourselves, lest we be knocked back into place. The “tallest nail” theory in action.

I was in the seventh grade at James Madison High School in Houston, Texas, the very same school that University of Texas quarterback and soon-to-be NFL legend Vince Young would attend some thirty years later. Back in those days, the student body at was divided into two main crowds – the Surfers and the Kickers (as in “shitkickers”, a derogatory name for cowboys).

My favorite song in the fall of my first semester was a little ditty called Wipe Out by the Surfaris. The song centered on a drum riff that my buddies and I would try endlessly to copy – we pounded on our notebooks, on lunch tables in the cafeteria, on the metal sides of our desks in class. I became fairly adept at it and decided that I was going to make my mark at Madison as the best drummer in the entire school.

The only problem was that the band teacher wouldn’t let me into the band.

He first made me take choir. Choir?? WTF?? Isn’t that where the Churchies hang out? I’m a Surfer, dammit, an aspiring drummer! I can play Wipe Out better than any Freshie in the whole school! When Mr. Robbins told me that I had to learn to read music first, I swallowed my pride and did my duty. The following semester I was rewarded with a promotion into the orchestra class. I was going to play the drums!

Not so fast little dude – we’re short a cello player, so – TA-DA! – I learned to play cello.

That series of events was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It taught me that there is no such thing as instant gratification. In order to construct a building that will stand the test of time, that will endure for centuries, the architect must first lay a solid foundation. There is learning, and study, and planning, and prep work, and practice. All of these things must be in place before we are ready to walk out into the bright lights that shine on the stage of success. There are no shortcuts - dues must be paid before we are to reap the rewards of our lives.


I finally achieved my goal. By my senior year I was All-State in UIL Stage Band in Texas, first chair drummer in stage band and marching band at Madison, and played in several rock bands. We were playing Chicago and Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and I was hooked on jazz-rock and brass. My little garage bands played Led Zepplin and Deep Purple and Trapeze and Wishbone Ash, and I was loving every minute of it.

Which brings me to the point of today’s installment.

As a musician, there are times when I discover music that catches me totally by surprise and blows me completely off my feet. It is an added benefit when I can relate to the artist on a personal level, when there is “something” there that grabs me by the short hairs and will not let go. This does not happen often these days, maybe once every five years or so, but it happened to me a few weeks back.

I was poking around on my daughter’s MySpace site and clicked on one of her buddies’ links. When his page loaded I heard the opening bars of a song that hooked me and wouldn’t let go. I wrote down the artist’s name, and a week later did a Google search to find out more.

Her name is Imogen Heap, a young British artist that spent a year composing a masterful work called Speak for Yourself. I went to her MySpace and listened to three clips from the album - Hide and Seek, Goodnight and Go (the song that hooked me initially), and Headlock. I was able to locate the only copy of her CD in my area at Fry’s, and I cannot stop listening to it. Every cut is wonderful, full of textured nuance and musical brilliance, composed and performed by one person, Imogen herself.

I suppose one the reasons I am so enthralled with Immy is her backstory. She has always been a “little odd” – not an outcast, but not in the Cool Crowd either. She found herself through her creative side, and expresses herself through her craft, traits that I identify with to this day.

Tired of the perception in the industry that she was “just the girl singer” for a band called Frou-Frou, she was determined to create her own music, independent of the big labels. Risky business, that – the roadside is littered with idealistic failed artists. She could not find anyone put up the money to create this album, so she did it herself by selling her flat in London to raise the capital to buy the equipment she needed to build a studio to perform and record her music.

The music speaks for itself – you will like it or you won’t. After all, that’s why they make chocolate and vanilla. But for me, I have connected with a kindred soul that speaks to me in so very many ways.

I am going to write to Immy and send her samples of my work, because I would like to produce a music video for her next album. That’s my goal, and I will make it happen.

Filmy