Archives for July 2019

This piece is about me and my snuff-dipping oral surgeon and professor cousin Roy Kindrick. I hope somebody gets a hoot out of it.

I had to look it up to be sure. A maxillofacial surgeon is a medical expert in face, mouth, and jaw surgery.

That’s my first cousin and lifelong friend, Dr. Roy D. Kindrick, a snuff-dipping dental specialist and assistant clinical professor in the department of oral and maxillofacial surgery at the Texas A&M University College of Dentistry and Baylor University Medical Center Oral and Maxillofacial Residency Program.

This is a mouthful, I know, but there is plenty more.

Roy’s home and oral and maxillofacial surgical practice has long been in Denton, but his roots go all the way back to the South Llano River and the Kimble County seat of Junction where our fathers grew up.

Maybe Roy’s propensity for Copenhagen snuff (and now a brand from Sweden called General Snus) is an inherent curse (or gift) from the cedar brake land of our fathers. He has a dental pedigree too long for inclusion in this article, but his insistence that smokeless tobacco is relatively harmless has earned him no small number of advocates and detractors alike.

It might seem odd to some that a medical man in high esteem would give any tobacco product much better than an iodine bottle picture designation, but Roy even wrote and self published a book titled A Guide For Smokeless Tobacco Users.

Roy’s father Bennett Kindrick and my father Grady Kindrick were brothers. My dad died of complications from pneumonia and a ruptured appendix before I was a year old while Roy’s father, my Uncle Ben, lived to the ripe old age of 97. His wife, my Aunt Eleanor, made it to 90. And Roy’s older brother, my cousin Freddy Kindrick, died at age 63.

Freddy Kindrick’s working career included time with the Denton State School, Gatesville State School for Boys, and the Gatesville Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections. For a brief period, Freddie played bass with Jim Ed, Maxine, and Bonnie Brown. Everyone loved Freddy.

Roy and I have both shared the agony of losing sons at early stages of life–first my son Grady and then Roy’s son Ben. Clinical depression is not a theory. It is real and it kills.

Inspiration for this piece stems from a recent email I received from Roy, a nostalgic lament spurred by my decision to end publication of Action Magazine with the January issue, and with Roy’s recent decision to hang up the scalpel.

The lionized and distinguished oral surgeon and university professor from North Texas is preparing to start a new life chapter in good spirits, and here is what he wrote me:

“I read your last issue with a heavy, but contented heart. We are both heading into our sunset years together. August 27th will be my last day in clinic. On that day I will know exactly how you feel. I really dread giving that last anesthetic, last incision, last suture, Postop. instructions, Rx, and thank you. I know that in spirit you will be there for me. Thanks for leading the way and being the man and mentor that you are for me.
Glad to hear you are doing well with your fight against cancer. You are one tough guy. Pat & I pray for you and Sharon every day.
We love you,
Roy”

For those interested in some background, Roy’s father and my uncle Ben Kindrick served until his retirement as superintendent of the State School for Boys at Gatesville long before the facility became the womens prison it is today.

When the Kindrick boys reached aduthood, Junction lawyer and Kimble County rancher Coke Stevenson was elected governor of Texas, and Coke used his position of power to help some of the Junction young people into state jobs. Miller Bennett (Ben) Kindrick was one of them.

Uncle Ben started as a business manager at the state reformatory for boys. He took to the job with true compassion and love for the kids, working his way up to assistant superintendent and then to the superintendent position. And many an oldtimer in the state school system will remember Bennett Kindrick as the man responsible for elimination of overly harsh and often cruel disciplinary practices which had been in place for years.

I spent several summers as a kid visiting the Kindrick household at Gatesville and playing with my cousins and inmates at the school, and I recall Uncle Ben eliminating the feared “Bustin’ Block” at the state reformatory. It consisted of a mattress where the offender was placed face-down and bare-assed and then “busted” with a heavy razor strop. When he was appointed superintendent, Uncle Ben’s first official act was to stop the whippings.

Some of the inmate boys learned to love Ben Kindrick. They all respected him.

There were three boys and one girl in my father’s family–Ur Dee (Turk) Kindrick, the oldest and longtime postmaster in Junction who was born Feb. 2, 1897; Anga Lillian, born Oct. 16, 1898; my father Exa Grady, born Feb. 3, 1904, a trader, golfer, and business whiz who owned a trucking business, a grocery store, and the Telegraph Ranch on the headwaters of the South Llano River when he died; and Miller Bennett Kindrick, born May 24, 1908.

My father Grady died on an operating table at San Antonio’s Nix Hospital after being rushed there from Junction by a slow moving car of that time.

Only girl in the family was my aunt Lillian Kindrick,the Kimble County beauty who died in a one-car rollover with Coke Stevenson’s attorney brother Bascomb Stevenson at the wheel.

Bascomb Stevenson and Lillian Kindrick were engaged to be married when she died in the wreck. Of the two attorney brothers, Bascomb and Coke, it was Bascomb who was always considered the biggest brain. He was also the heaviest drinker and many said he was probably drunk when Lillian died. Bascomb was unhurt in the wreck.

My mom, Bernice Kindrick, was a Chenault. The Chenault and Kindrick kids all attended school in Junction.

So here we are, the maxillofacial oral surgeon and professor who has spent his life dipping snuff and putting broken faces back together, and his outlaw journalist cousin who hasn’t worn a set of handcuffs (or used alcohol or dope) since October 16, 1989.

My plan is to keep on writing, starting with an online presence which may be a continuation of the Action Magazine website, and only God knows what else. I guess old chicken snakes are hard to kill.

I asked Roy if he is still dipping Copenhaagen snuff. I feared that he would crush me with some sort of pussified capitulation speech about how he has reconsidered and repented of his evil habit since publication of his book on safely using smokeless tobacco.

My fears were unfounded and I knew all was well when Dr. Kindrick emailed me his answer:

“I use General Snus pouches. It is imported from Sweden. Read about it at generalsnus.com. It is sun cured rather than smoke cured (less carcinogens). My favorite is the General Snus White.”

Then the doctor wound it up:

“Anything enjoyable seems to carry risks. I probably should lie and say I am not a user. Don’t let me be a bad influence. How did you know? You are amazing.”

When I went to the General Snus website the big bold warning was atypical: This product can cause gum disease and tooth loss!

Doctor Roy wouldn’t give a bear the road. I know that he will find plenty to do and that both of us will be okay. Retirement is just a word and years are only numbers.

Action Magazine can now be viewed in its entirety on the world wide web. We are completely online.

It took me long enough to get there.

In addition to the complete publication issues, the site includes select Sam Kindrick columns, advertising rates and ad measurements, a history of the 35-year-old entertainment publication, photos of me and compadre Joe Cardenas, whose son Danny designs many of our better color covers, and some kind words of appreciation to webmaster Harry Thomas, the knowledgeable computer “techie” who put it all together.

Before Harry came along, I didn’t know a cyberduck from a ruptured duck, and my computer skills today are piteously minuscule. But I can now turn the Mac on and off, and (don’t laugh) I can send and receive e-mails without paralyzing fear and fits of filthy language and trash can-kicking rage.

Like a fairytale dream

Now the enormity of it, and the fairytale surrealism of the whole damn cyberspace event in my lifetime, still taxes my imagination.

The notion of people in Snakes Navel, Wyoming, or Itchypussy Japan, reading Trap Lounge owner Frank Mueller’s inimitable poetry in Action Magazine, will forever blow my mind.

Ron Houston, my longtime friend and former airtime companion on old KEXL Radio, died this past October without ever owning or even touching a computer, and I couldn’t see any negative effect on his life as a result.

When told of the KEXL website now managed and maintained by Jay Pennington of Boerne, and the various e-mails from longtime supporters of the radio station and friends from the past, Houston told me: “Well, Soul, I guess if any of them want to get a hold of me really bad, they can still pick up the outdated old telephone and call. I don’t need anything like a computer to complicate my life.”

This had been my stance until only a few short years ago when I was forced, kicking and scratching, into the 21st Century. Computers were then (and still are to a certain degree) devil machines and idiot boxes.

Internet ignorance

Until only a few years ago, I used my old Macintosh computer as nothing but a word processor, since I could no longer go to a printer with copy banged out on a regulation typewriter. Before purchasing my current Mac, and getting into a personal training program at the Apple Store at La Cantera, I had no internet access, no knowledge of photo scanning, no color photos or artwork in Action Magazine, and no way to send or receive an e-mail even had I wanted to do as much.

Everybody and their kids were communicating with electronic mail before I finally took the plunge. I had to get with the program in order to stay in business, but I fought it and I fought it hard.

When some advertising customer would tell me to just e-mail them an ad proof, or when one would say they wanted to e-mail me some ad copy, photographs, or other information, I would tell them that I could personally leave the copy or pick up whatever they had because I was going to be in the neighborhood anyway.

I simply could not bring myself to admit that I was computer illiterate, and that I had no way of sending or receiving anything electronically. I don’t know how many miles I put on the truck or how much gasoline was wasted before I finally capitulated and learned to e-mail this material with a click of the mouse.

In all seriousness, I am beginning to realize the advantages I have been denying myself with a print publication with no internet access. I am not one of those fools who believe that electronic gadgetry will completely replace the print media in this or the next lifetime, but a combination of print and cyberspace greatly expands upon the possibilities.

Now every single advertiser in Action Magazine is being exposed to a market place without borders or restrictions, and the aggravation of mail-order subscriptions has been removed forever from my mind.

Because of the time-consuming hassle of snail mail subscriptions, I had long ago discontinued the service. And this was a true disservice to Action readers who have moved away and want to receive the magazine on a monthly basis.

Military personnel especially.

It was hard to say no

It’s hard to tell a hard-core Action reader who is overseas risking his life and serving his country that we could no longer supply the magazine on a mail-order basis. But this is what it had come to.

Now everybody in the world with a computer may read Action Magazine without charge. Just click on www.actionmagsa.com, and you are there.

While I have had a bare-bones web presence for some time, this issue is only the third Action Magazine production which can be viewed in its entirety on the website.

And I am already beginning to see the vastness of possibilities with electronic access to the publication.

Possible advertisers from some far-flung ports have started to bite, and we are again hooking up with Action faithfuls like Karen Dittman in Marble Falls, Barbara (Legs) Marullo in Dallas, and former South Side musician Dale Dawson who now resides in Colorado.

Welcome back, maggots

And it is also comforting and reassuring to get a blast of hate mail every now and then. I had feared that some of the faithful hate mail maggots from my Express-News column-writing days had crawled back under their rocks and died. But a few of them have crawled back out, and their presence gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

The late Paul Thompson, my mentor and the most widely-read columnist in San Antonio newspaper history, always told me that the hate mail cretins were to be coveted and cherished.

“When you don’t hear from them anymore,” Thompson always said, “then you are in real trouble. They are an indication of readership, and the worst thing that could happen would be for them to forget your name.”

Now they can jerk off with their resentments by simply hitting www.actionmagsa.com. I think this is a real hoot.

He called me Soul. He gave me strength and saved my ass. He was an angel with a microphone, the safety net I needed back during the mid-1970s when I was free-falling out of the daily newspaper business.

Ron Houston is the name.The greatest voice in the history of San Antonio radio.

Maybe you read his obituary last month in the newspaper. Death, they say, has silenced the mellifluous voice. How this can be I am not sure. Over more than 40 years, Ron Houston and I were intent upon living forever. It was a feeling we both had, and a feeling which I experienced again last month as I stood next to a little gold-colored urn in the First United Methodist Church of Blanco, Texas.

Eulogy fell short of the mark

So the brief memorial service eulogy I tried to give for the man who became my soul brother seemed inadequate and far short of the mark. The church was packed with friends and fans, and many of them can recall the days when Ron Houston’s smooth voice purred over such radio stations as KTSA, KBUC, KFAN, KENS, and KEXL, the free-form outlaw rocker where I was to work a morning drive show with Houston in the dubious role of “alternative newscaster.”

Houston and I first met in the 1960s when I was writing a column for the San Antonio Express-News. I believe he was a KTSA DJ at the time. Our trails crossed and re-crossed over the years, as Houston became an unrepentant friend of San Antonio police character Bunny Eckert, and during the days that I hung out with people like Willie Nelson, middleweight slugger Al Juergens and a few others who would never be considered for membership in the Texas Cavaliers.

The official reason that Express-News executive editor Charlie Kilpatrick gave for my firing was “association with undesirable characters.” This happened shortly after I promoted the World Championship Menudo Cookoff in Raymond Russell Park, an event that featured Willie Nelson and some 30 other area bands.

Kicked off the grounds

As more than 50,000 rowdy drunks stumbled through an adjacent trailer park and passed out amid the tombstones of Sunset Memorial Park, I found time to have Hal Davis, the general manager of KITE AM and KEXL FM, thrown off the grounds for reasons which have completely slipped my mind. I believe he had been loudly arguing with someone, but I am not sure who.Only days after my firing, I was dead broke and feeling lower than whale shit as I played 9-ball pool for $2 a game in a San Pedro skull orchard known as the Desert Fox.

I could scarcely believe my eyes and ears when Hal Davis walked into the beer joint and offered me an alternative newscasting job on KEXL FM Radio.I recall telling Davis that I knew nothing about radio, and that I didn’t believe he would give me a job after what happened at the menudo cookoff and concert. I was to soon learn that Hal Davis was a far bigger man than I had even dreamed.

“I have an FM outlaw rock station with what I believe are thousands of dope-smoking hippie listeners,” Davis said. “I have a hunch that you might go over big in the market. If you are interested, be at the station on Data Point at 6 o’clock in the morning.”

He then walked out of the beer joint without uttering another word.

I was convinced that Davis had offered me the job just so he could toss me off the property, but he was true to his word. When I arrived at the KITE AM, KEXL FM studios, Davis pointed to a control room where a smiling Ron Houston was spinning records and waving me in.”

Sit behind that microphone, Soul,” Houston said, “and we will get this show on the road.”

“What do I do?”

“Just talk, Soul. I will play this Charlie Daniels record, and we will start jawboning.”

My voice is rougher than Houston’s was smooth, and the first word I uttered on the air caused the volume needles to all but bounce out of the box.

“You got it, Soul,” Ron laughed. “We are off and running.”

The rest was history

The rest is history. I was getting Action Magazine started at the time, but the KEXL salary kept me alive when I needed it most. Houston and I had a radio rapport which I find hard to explain (I believe it was spiritual), and there was sideline money as we cut commercials for land companies and western wear stores.Ron always said he wanted to kick himself for failing to record our first air outing together.

Houston had an uncanny talent for hitting 30-second and one-minute commercial spots without a hitch or a script. He could hold rough, hand-scribbled notes from some radio ad salesman, and turn them into concise, entertaining, and informative air commercials as if he were reading from a prompter. And he taught me enough about commercial radio to make a few bucks on the side. While Ron was selling property for G.G. Gale, I was hawking land for the late S.A. Sam Green, a.k.a. Father Benedict, who always said, “The Good Lord ain’t makin’ anymore land.”

So this column is for you, Soul. It is also for Sheryl, your life love and beautiful wife who you first started dating when we formed our unlikely KEXL tandem. This one is also for the many people you helped anonymously, for the cats and dogs and ducks you took in and fed simply because you loved animals and people. And this is for your adopted hometown where you worked tirelessly as a city councilman and promoter of local events.Houston’s wife Sheryl was an attorney in the A.L. Hernden law firm when she and Ron got together, and Hernden called me shortly after Houston’s fatal heart attack to say that Sheryl was the best lawyer ever to work in his office.

Ron had told me that he had joined the Methodist Church, and that he was a firm believer in the oldest carpenter story of all time. Death wasn’t casting much of a shadow as I stumbled over my eulogy in that brightly-lighted Methodist Church, and I could almost hear the Billy Joe Shaver refrain: I’m gonna cross that river, I’m gonna live forever…

It’s what we always wanted. And if the water ain’t too deep, Soul, I plan on seeing you later.

I know it’s a bit late for Christmas stories but I’ve got one that is just too hairy to keep under wraps. It would be more fitting for halloween, but one can’t always pick the season for reports on creepy, crawly, multi-legged creatures which might appear on a darkened sidewalk.

The event of which I write took place in the King William area of San Antonio two nights prior to Christmas Eve. The precise spot would be on the Alamo Street sidewalk, at the intersection of Alamo and Wickes streets, at about 11 o’clock at night.

This is an area directly in front of the restaurant and saloon known as Casbeers at the Church, a multi-level eatery and live music venue which is actually housed in a former Methodist Church building which is almost a hundred years old.

Cherubs and angels

Casbeers at the Church presents live music in both its ground floor restaurant area, as well as an upstairs former church sanctuary which is almost daunting in its stained glass and heavily carpeted interior. Like the Alamo chapel, where visitors are more apt to whisper than talk in normal tones, the Casbeers patrons are probably more attentive, if not a wee bit subdued, than what one could expect at your average shit-kicker roadhouse or green hair rock joint. With cherubs and angels peering down from their stained-glass perches, any proclivity for hooting, hollering, and outhouse cussin’ is just naturally suppressed by the reverence of the surroundings. And the great acoustics enjoyed by musicians who play the sanctuary concert room are enhanced by the attentiveness of most audiences.

If there is a “Presence” to be felt in the live music sanctuary, it has always been that of a happy spirit who probably digs pure harmonies and slick guitar licks as much as us earthly counterparts who hang around the joint, listening to the music and scarfing down “truck stop enchiladas” and Kinky burgers.

Brown wooly object

Now let it be known that I have never been one to put much stock in “haints and haunts,” but you’ve got to cut me a little slack as I recall my disturbing and (literally) hair-raising experience on that darkened sidewalk in front of Casbeers. I was leaving the place with spouse Sharon, who was dutifully trailing along with a sack full of pecan pies she had purchased from the Casbeers kitchen, when the brown, wooly object appeared on the sidewalk blocking my path.

Hairs or something that might have been slender tentacles protruded from the weird-looking mass which seemed to challenge our progress toward my truck, and I couldn’t help but wonder if something not of this world might be materializing to give me some sort of lesson in spirituality. . Maybe Fred Eaglesmith’s lyrics did something to piss off the saints. I wasn’ sure.

At this point, I believe I warned the spouse to stay back with her pies as I studied the critter hovering a few short feet from the toes of my boots.

Could it be a giant bat? I wondered, recalling some of these creepy-looking winged mammals which I used to watch pouring out of the Devil’s Sinkhole up in Edwards County. But the bat possibility was ruled out when I could see no wings.

There were curly brown strands poking out in every direction. And I leaped high over the sidewalk when I spotted what I was sure was movement. Maybe the “thing” had small clawed feet and possibly a bobbed tail which was hard to see. And teeth. There has to be an evil set of pointy teeth down there somewhere.

While I had directed the spouse to keep back with her pies, an order I deemed necessary to insure her bodily safety, Sharon proceeded to take matters into her own hands. Showing little respect for the “wooly booger” hovering down there on the sidewalk, and displaying a total disregard for her own safety, she kicked at the mass, believing in her Christmas spirit-possessed mind that the brown blob was a cluster of ribbon from someone’s holiday gift basket.

It was no ball of Christmas ribbon. I knew that much.

As I saw the creature move, I then became convinced that we were being challenged by a gargantuan brown tarantula which probably had green venom dripping from its waiting fangs.

Cedar chopper reaction

So I did what any cedar chopper or shit-kicker redneck faced with the same set of circumstances would do.

I stomped the damned thing hard with my right boot heel, grinding and pulverizing it into the cement. Then, as I leaped high for a follow-up stomp with my left boot, I saw the distraught gent charging out of Casbeers and onto the sidewalk, his eyes wide as banjos and his arms flailing like windmill blades.

“Have you seen anything on the sidewalk?” he cried.

“What?” I implored.

“My wife’s add-on,” he said.

“Add-on?”

“Yes,” he stammered. “Her add-on hair piece. She thinks she lost it just as we were entering Casbeers.”

Horrified, I shied away from the hairy brown mess which I had just stomped mercilessly into the sidewalk. The wooly booger was moving. I will swear to it.

Pointing to the ugly pelt, I asked with quavering voice: “Is that your wife’s add-on?”

A bald spot covering

“That’s it,” the guy cried happily, scooping what was left of the mini-wig from the sidewalk. “I ought to put it up to cover my bald spot and keep my head warm, but I will take it in to my wife. I want to thank you folks for finding it.”

At this point, I looked around for my missing spouse.

She had taken her pies and scampered off to hide in the cab of the truck. I then managed to slink off in like fashion.

All of which goes to show one thing for certain.

You never know what you might find on a San Antonio sidewalk at night. And you can’t kill everything you stomp on, no matter how hard you might try. Especially not if it’s already dead but still managing to move. And even armed with the facts as I know them today, I’m still grateful that the damned thing didn’t jump up and bite me.

That’s my Christmas story and I’m sticking with it.

The June 12 Express-News death notice of former Bexar County Sheriff Harlon Copeland brought back a torrent of bad memories which I have never attempted to shut the door on.

Copeland and his deputies represented only one of several law enforcement agencies which were to bust me for drugs during the middle and late 1980s, a tragi-comic period of pitiful and incomprehensible personal demoralization in my life.

Getting busted by Copeland and his bevy of beer belly Keystone Cops with deputy badges was an indicator of my mental frame of mind at the time.

The late Sheriff Copeland was a public buffoon in the eyes of many, a redneck publicity hound who sent a platoon of mounted deputies to chase the whores out of Mahncke Park, and the very same law enforcement turkey who tried to hang a cocaine rap on former Governor Ann Richards.

This was the sheriff who backed into office simply because there was no worthy opponent available at the time, and this was the sheriff who infuriated the community with the infamous quote which followed the arrest of a deputy charged with exposing himself to a young girl.

Copeland’s dumbest quote

Said Harlon: “What he does on his own time is up to him.”

I was busted for felony drug possession six times by county, city, and state law enforcement agencies, but my capture by Copeland’s troopers represented what I considered at the time to be the ultimate disgrace. Better have the Keystone Cops and Deputy Dog bring you down than Harlon’s Hordes.

It was during my early recovery years from methamphetamine and alcohol that I learned a valuable lesson. If I ever forgot my last drunk, I probably hadn’t had it yet. And the same goes for drug busts. I’ve never forgotten a single one of them, but the Copeland raid on the black early-afternoon of June 9, 1988, remains as the lowlight of my dismal downward spiral into the pits of drug addiction and jail cells.

Copeland’s undercover people had already found the dope in my truck which was parked in front of the Action Magazine offices on Wurzbach Road at the time. The front door was wrenched off its hinges as deputies surrounded me and my catahoula leopard cow dog Hoss, an innocent bystander who was later turned over to friends who cared for him until I was released from jail.

Sheriff’s grand entrance

The late sheriff made his grand entrance only after I had been handcuffed and read my Miranda rights, a process which took what seemed like an eternity as deputies ransacked my offices.

Following the sheriff’s death at age 79 in a Pleasanton nursing home, former Republican activist Steve Heinrich was heard to say: “Whenever there was a crime scene, Copeland was there in front of the cameras.”

I can testify to the fact.

When the sheriff entered my offices, he said, “Well, Sam, you have written a bunch of bad stuff about my administration. And now we gotcha!”

Then, while I sat handcuffed for more than an hour, one of Copeland’s deputies called the daily newspapers, TV and radio stations, and probably every chickenshit little weekly rag they could find in the phone book before the sheriff was ready for the show.

Satisfied that a maximum media turnout was waiting in the parking lot, Copeland combed his hair in front of my office mirror, then stepped forth to personally lead me out the door. I was a former Express-News columnist and radio personality who the sheriff was ready to display like Geronimo’s scalp.

And the press was on hand. With TV cameras and microphones and Big Chief writing tablets the media queue is a blur in my memory. I do recall one electronics media jackoff thrusting his mike in my face. I want to say he was a WOAI reporter, but he might have been from KENS 5 or even KSAT Channel 12.

‘You’re on live TV’

“You’re on live,” he said. “What do you have to say?”

By that time, I was completely out of control, shot through with fear-based anger and the realization that my life in the free world was probably over.

I shot back into the TV man’s microphone: “I have one thing to say. I have always wanted to say fuck Harlon Copeland on live television.”

As I rode to jail with the high sheriff in his personal car, Copeland asked, “How do you feel now, Sam?”

I recall telling him in all honesty: “I feel like digging a hole, crawling in it, and dragging you in behind me.”

Then, in a very uncharacteristic tone, Copeland said softly: “You will probably get probation, or maybe your lawyer friend Alan Brown will get the case dismissed. You always seem to land on your feet, no matter who has you in custody.”

The records will reflect that I never made it to prison. Drug cases were dismissed for lack of evidence, and many kind people came to my rescue even after I had violated one 10-year probation on aggravated possession of methamphetamine charges. Lawyers who included Alan Brown. A.L. Herndon, and Jack Paul Leon all tried to assist me along the way, and it was Brown who finally led me to the recovery program that eventually saved my life. Shortly after that, it was then District Judge Susan Reed who granted me a second and unheard of probation and the freedom I still enjoy today.

The hatred was gone

I quit drugs and alcohol for the final time on October 16, 1989, and as part of my recovery program, I approached Harlon Copeland as Hank Thompson performed at the Eisenhauer Flea Market.

A blank expression crossed the sheriff’s face when I told him: “Sheriff, I just want you to know that I have stopped hating your guts.”

After I left the market that day, Copeland remarked to flea market owner Jimmy Weiss: “Sam Kindrick is really weird. I can’t figure out if he’s for me or against me.”

I meant what I said that day, and I still feel the same.

I was a manufacturer of my own misery, and I guess we all had a little fun with it along the way.

So rest in peace, Sheriff Copeland. I’ve never mentioned it before, but I heard the hint of sympathy in your voice as you hauled me off to to jail.

This will be my first-ever and (hopefully) my last critique of modern-day Christian church music.

Call me a prehistoric throwback, an ignorant Junction redneck, or even an infidel by 21st century standards, but I firmly believe that most contemporary music heard in protestant churches today sucks.

My research for this project, I must admit, has been somewhat limited, owing to the fact that I went AWOL from church when I was 15, and didn’t set foot in any church (except to attend a few funerals) until this year.

Although I understand that traditional (old-style) music is still available in some churches, my limited exploration in area God houses has found nothing but toneless, tuneless, unimaginative racket with song lyrics so poor and repetitious that one wonders what manner of tin-eared dunce could have penned such drivel.

An insult to the greats

The contemporary song hackers are beating words like “amazing” and “worthy” to death, an insult to such religious tunesmiths as John Newton, who wrote the original and time-tested blockbuster Amazing Grace in the 19th Century.

There are religious songs today which use the word “amazing” 15 or 20 times, even more than the worldwide favorite Amazing Grace. And on one of my recent forays into an area Baptist Church, the choir repeated the word “worthy” in one song until my head threatened to split wide open.

You are worthy, You are worthy, You are worthy, You are worthy, You are worthy, and on and on and on went the refrain, leading me to wonder almost out loud:

Who are you jerks to call the creator of the entire universe “worthy?” A poor choice of words from a songwriter who shouldn’t be writing poorly-done religious songs in the first place. Even church music hacks suffer from acute cases of rectal cranial inversion when it comes to invention and creativity, and they shouldn’t be allowed to use praise for the Lord Jesus Christ as an excuse for slop music.

How about Amazing Grace?

Whatever happened to (yes) Amazing Grace, Will the Circle be Unbroken, The Old Rugged Cross, I Saw the Light, and Low in the Grave on Easter Sunday?

My wife and I attended Easter morning church services to hear nothing but amateurish guitar licks and a You are worthy, You are worthy, You are worthy refrain which lasted the better part of a 42-minute choir performance (and with the congregation standing on their feet all the while).

My early-years religious exposure was in a Junction, Texas fundamentalist Baptist Church where my mother had dragged me kicking and screaming. I hated everything about it, and my aversion to church and its people carried on to what I believe was a resentment against God.

In recent years, and while finding my way back to spirituality through a popular 12-step program, I began to realize exactly why I hated church so much as a youth. The fundamentalist Baptists were against everything I wanted to do–drinking, smoking, fighting, fornicating, dancing, and snuff dipping.

I withdrew as if from a hot flame. My favorite jokes were of the Baptist persuasion. Did you know that Adam was a Baptist? Only a Baptist could stand next to a buck-naked woman and be tempted by a piece of fruit. And Baptists object to pre-marital sex because they are afraid it might lead to drinking.

God didn’t do it

That sort of stuff. The fundamentalists were anathema to my thinking process. But my resentment against God was mis-directed. God didn’t force me into those Junction church services, where I can still hear old Brother Kellum pounding his pulpit and screeching hell fire and damnation. My poor brainwashed mother was the culprit. Determined to salvage my soul, she forced me into Sunday sermons, Sunday school classes, and Wednesday night prayer meetings until I got too big and stout for her to handle.

By age 15 , I was drinking Four Roses whiskey and rolling Bull Durham cigarettes. And it was hard to make Sunday morning church gatherings when I had been in an Acuna, Mexico whore house until the sun started coming up.

So I jumped the parental traces for the final time, leaving church in my dust. I didn’t miss the fundamentalist doctrine, but I?always missed those time-worn old gospel songs which musicians like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, the Carter Family, Kris Kristofferson, and Leon Russell are wont to sing. And my recent forays into both Baptist and non-denominational churches have made me miss the classics even more.

Church hopping

Poking through various Bulverde-area and Comal County churches, I found the traditional hymnal songs at the tiny First Baptist Church of Bulverde to be more palatable than the noisy, new-age racket which seems to be the norm today. I don’t know about that church’s doctrine, but I liked the music.

For more than 30 years now, I have been associated with some of the greatest musicians in the country. So the notion of attending church to hear lousy guitar pickers, dragging drummers, and tone-deaf choir leaders doesn’t interest me one whit. I would still rather hear a little old lady playing piano with a choir comprised of ordinary people doing the best they can with the time-worn classics. And I don’t need “worshippers” standing in front of me with arms upraised as if they were waving at airplanes.

Defenders of the weak lyric and toneless contemporary Christian racket of today will argue that this is what the young people want. And this is bullshit.

I was in Austin’s old Armadillo World Headquarters when Willie introduced his song Trouble Maker, the comparison of a dope-smoking, anti-establishment hippie with Jesus Christ. The young people went wild, all but tearing down the old national guard armory which was, at the time, the citadel of youthful liberalism and the birth place of outlaw Texas music.

Bad music is bad music, whether it be on a beer joint stage or in church. And the church people of all ages deserve better than what they are getting.

This will be the final report on Petey the wonder dog, my tough little Jack Russell Terrier who guarded our truck and slept under my covers for the better part of 16 years.

Petey is gone now. I had to put the ornery little booger down on May 9. It was the hardest decision I have ever made, and my roiled emotions and shattered heart have delayed this column until the present.

I learned the true meaning of tough from Petey. When he was about nine months of age, a Honda Civic backed squarely over his back with both front and back wheels, mashing him down into deep caliche mud which somehow spared his life and enabled him to crawl out unscathed.

Then, when he was barely two years of age, Petey espied some sort of varmint, bird, or offending shadow as I drove east on IH 35 somewhere near the Weidner Road exit. It was early afternoon. I was hitting 65 or 70, and 18-wheelers were rumbling behind me and on the left flank.

That’s when the Jack Russell “Terror” chose to leap head on out of the passenger side window which was rolled down during those times of little money and no air-conditioning.

In my rearview mirror, I saw my beloved little bundle of solid muscle and high-wired energy hit the pavement and bounce like a ping-pong ball directly between two eastbound Mack diesels. My heart fell to the pit of my stomach as I somehow managed to pull my truck over next to the concrete side wall which offered little shoulder for the hot and screaming traffic lane. When I got my truck stopped, I looked back to locate the dead and flattened mass of white and black fur which would surely mark the death site for Petey.

Instead, I saw a very lively little Jack Russell Terrier, somewhat bloody but unbent, dodging 18-wheelers and running like a little white ground missile after my truck. When I managed to get the passenger side door open , Petey exploded into the truck cab, his elbows and feet skinned and raw, and an expression on his Wishbone-like face which seemed to implore: “Come on, Pops, let’s get the hell out of here.”

At the Acorn Hill Animal Hospital on Perrin Beitel Road, vet Don Johnson was checking Petey’s limbs, neck, back, and skull as I related what had happened, and I could hardly believe my ears when the doc started laughing.

“What’s funny?” I asked.

“This dog,” said Dr. Johnson. “There is nothing broken. Absolutely nothing. If most any other breed of dog had jumped out of that truck, you would have had to scrape him up with a shovel. I find Petey here to be rather amazing.”

And that’s what Petey the wonder dog was. Amazing. He was also my friend and running mate who never had the misfortune of seeing me drunk or wired on speed.

I met Petey shortly after quitting drugs and alcohol. I consider our meeting to be spiritual fate. I have had dogs since I was a kid–mutts, catahoula leopard cow dogs, Walker hounds, and a little female fox terrier I called Echo. She was the last dog I owned before meeting Petey, and the loss of Echo was a morale-busting tragedy which was threatening to unwind my emotional main spring for good when my friend Collin Aldrich stepped into the picture.

Those were hard days. I was flat broke and on the second 10-year probation for drug possession when someone stole the junker of a truck I had bought for $700 shortly after leaving jail for the final time. Losing the wheels was a blow, but the real dagger in my gut came when the truck thieves took Echo with the stolen vehicle. The old truck was later found stripped and worthless, but I never recovered my little dog, although I had offered all the reward money I could afford.

Collin Aldrich offered me friendship, help, and the greatest gift I could ever have received, although I couldn’t see it at the time.

Aldrich offered me a year-old Jack Russell Terrier named Petey, free of charge, and with no strings attached. Petey and his father, Collin’s other Jack Russell named Hollywood, were as intent as only Jack Russells can be on the proposition of killing each other, and Aldrich had learned what most Jack Russell breeders and owners already knew–two male “Jacks” in close proximity are a likely combination for mayhem and possibly even death.

“I would come home from work and find them locked onto each other’s throats, blood all over the place,” Collin said. “I knew that one of them would eventually die, and I figured it would be Hollywood. Petey was obviously the stronger of the two.”

Aldrich said, “Take him if you want him,” and that’s what I did. But not without some serious misgivings and doubt that any sort of bond could ever exist between myself and this barrel-chested little reb who planted his feet and growled his defiance the first time I ordered him to drop a huge green beetle he held wiggling between his teeth.

“Drop the bug, Petey! Now!”

I’ll never forget that first clash of wills. He took two steps back, growled again deep in his throat, and swallowed the big nasty bug in one mighty gulp.

As he gagged and dry heaved, trying mightily to get the offensive obstruction out of his innards, I sat down and laughed at him until tears of joy flowed from my eyes.

And there began the Petey dog years, a deep love affair between me and the Jack Russell Terrier who taught me a lot about grit, gumption, raw courage, survival, and the mortality of both man and beast.

Since I didn’t raise Petey from 8-week-old puppyhood, I wondered for some time if a true bond between me and this strong-willed little bruiser would ever take shape. And Petey was certainly no easy sell.

He was never a lick-the-master’s hand sycophant who would jump through hoops and cower for crumbs of affection. Not this little Jack. Petey was a fierce competitor who bloodied me on numerous occasions as we rough-housed in tough love play. He was 23 pounds of twisted steel and panther piss, as they would say up on the South Llano River near Junction, and he would fight a circular saw and tell you which tooth of the blade hit him in the butt as he sailed through the door. Petey would sink his fangs into a tennis ball, and hold on with the tenacity of a vice as I swung him in circles above my head. Dobermans and Rottweilers failed to impress this little Jack Russell, and I do believe Petey would have bowed up and attacked a grizzly bear had one of the big bruins crossed his trail. He hated thunder and Harley Davidson motorcycles with equal intensity, and his prowess as a hunter was without equal.

Petey caught and killed cottontail rabbits before they could get out of our rural yard near Bulverde. He chased raccoons, possums, lizards, low-flying birds, butterflys, and “boogers” that appeared in the night. Petey located and bayed every single scorpion that ever invaded our Bulverde cabin. He would grab the stinger-ready scorpion between his teeth, pitch it into the air, and repeat the process until I arrived to stomp on the dangerous insect. And he would kill wasps that ventured close enough for him to grab them.

The city home I also occupy with wife-to-be Sharon was also Petey’s domain, and there were some hairy fang-to-fang encounters between the Jack and Sharon’s cocker-mix pound refugee Princess, whose unlikely name belied her street dog nature and vicious survival instincts.

Male dogs don’t usually attack females, but Petey made exceptions to this dubious rule of general dog society any time Princess even thought about getting near his food. In retaliation, Princess almost chewed off Petey’s hind foot on one occasion, but the worst encounter of all came when the female ventured too near the burial site of a squirrel which Petey had killed and stashed for future use. He damn near snuffed her on that occasion.

The closeness between Petey and me was first made manifest by his territorial dedication to guarding the truck in which he rode with me almost everywhere. I noticed that he was following me to the bathroom, and sitting patiently by the door until I emerged. Petey had the uncanny ability to sense when I was sick or upset, nosing closer and closer to me during such times of pain or stress, and only Petey and I really knew that he could understand the English language when he wanted to listen. There was a spiritual connection I cannot explain.

Denial, they say, ain’t a river in Egypt, but I refused to toss in the towel as Petey began to decline. Two years ago his liver failed, but we got a reprieve through numerous medications and a lot of sheer determination on his part. His hearing went, his joints ached, and his hindquarters began to sag as the onetime jumping bean and lightning-quick varmint killer struggled to get over even the shortest door stoop.

With the failing liver came a cardiac cough which only steroids could control, and when I wasn’t poking liver pills and steroids down my little old fella, I was dosing him with baby Tylenol and Robitussin to help with the cough. I had to lift Petey into the truck, and up onto the couch, and into my bed. And as he began to lose control of his kidneys, I covered the bed with with an old rain slicker to deflect the dog pee as we continued to sleep together as always.

Someone asked me if I wanted my dog to live forever.

“That,” I said, “is exactly what I want.”

The person who asked the stupid question turned and walked away.

Sharon and I never knew Princess’s exact age, since she was a refugee from the city pound. But we had her almost as long as I had Petey, and her death from cancer in March both shocked and saddened us. Then, just two months later, Petey’s time came.

I knew the days were numbered, and I prayed that I would get some sign when the last day arrived. And I did, but just five days before his death, the mighty little Jack Russell hobbled out of the back door and came back into the house with a baby possum scrunched between his gray jaws.

“Hot, damn, Petey,” I cheered. “You still have it.”

He couldn’t handle an adult possum, but he did manage to crunch a miserable infant marsupial which I had to mercifully finish off with a stick.

Then my prayer was answered. Petey walked out the back door and sank to the ground. He couldn’t rise, and the sad, almost apologetic look in his eyes seemed to say it all–I’m sorry, Pops, but I believe I have hoed out my row…caught my last rabbit…cornered my last scorpion. I guess I’m ready to go.

I held Petey and tears flooded my face as Dr. Johnson administered my dog his last shot. Petey stretched, seemed to sigh, and then he was gone.

It took some praying, bawling, and deep reflection and self-searching before I was fit to write this piece.

Petey and Princess were both cremated at the Paws In Heaven pet crematory in Sattler, and their remains now sit side-by-side in two little white jugs on our den bookcase.

Life goes on, too, as sure as death will catch up to us all, and the new lights in our lives are two wild-assed Jack Russell rocket puppies named Henry and Annie.

No dog could ever replace Petey in my heart. But there are spiritual things I could never hope to understand. The new male pup bites blood out of my arms, holds onto a tennis ball as I hoist him almost belt-high, and he sits by the bathroom door every time I visit the donnicker. I’m waiting now for him to corner his first scorpion.

And then there was my recent discovery in the weeds out by the Bulverde cabin.

I poked at one of Petey’s last dried-out old calling cards with a stick as a tear rolled down my cheek.

Many people could never understand, but there are a few animal nuts out there who know how a grown man could cry over a crumbly old dog turd.

After 43 years and 10 months of continued publication without missing a single issue, I have pulled the plug.

The world knows that print advertising is going the way of the buffalo and manual Royal typewriters, but a dearth of paying advertisers is only part of it. And I can’t cite health problems as a major factor, although I am being treated for thyroid cancer which metastasized to my sternum.

Treatment is going well and I feel fine at this time. I have reason to believe I will beat the cancer, and I still had some faithful advertisers when I reached this decision.

So why have I ceased publication at this point in time?

The best answer I can come up with is described in the Bible. Read it in Ecclesiastes 3 which is headed A Time for Everything.

You hear portions of this reading at a lot of Christian funerals. I was brought up to believe the teachings of the Bible, and I can truly relate to Ecclesiastes 3 which says in part: There is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build…

I truly believe that Action Magazine’s time to end had come, just as its time to exist came in March of 1975. Now I must find something else to do.

Certainly I was to shed a tear or two. The little entertainment rag has been my life and soul and blood for almost 44 years; it has been my little voice in the forest of journalistic hypocrisy and enamel paper horse shit; it has been my small statement before the junior-sized daily newspaper oligarch whose chickenshit axe job would have banished me to the honking, clattering, mosquito-infested humidity horror which is Houston. Fired from a column-writing job with the San Antonio Express-News, and subsequently offered work with the Houston Post, I hung around to start my own paper. As in Ecclesiastes, it was Action’s time to be. And by the grace of God, I didn’t go to Houston.

I have never made much money with Action Magazine, but I have always had enough.

Johnny Bush has long said that musicians don’t quit the music business.

“The business quits them,” Bush says.

The same might ring true for the entertainment magazine racket as well. I guess it is best to walk out rather than to be carried out, and retired newspaper reporter Arthur Moczygemba speaks for most of us when he says, “Better to be seen than viewed.”

The biblical words offer both closure and hope for me. I would rather laugh than weep, and the prospect of healing while building something new and exciting is the ticket. The monkey ain’t dead and the show ain’t over as long as the organ grinder stays willing.

The late Harry Jersig, president of Lone Star Brewery, got me started in 1975. I don’t think Jersig cared much for the Express and News back then, and he responded favorably when I told him what I had planned.

I told Jersig that I wanted to sell him the back cover of a non-existent entertainment tabloid, and that Willie Nelson and some of the other outlaw musicians who were catching Jersig’s fancy would be featured on Action’s pages.

Jersig wrote me a thousand dollar check and the rest is history. Nelson adorned that first Action cover on March of 1975, and there followed a string of talented redneck rockers that included Waylon Jennings, Jerry Jeff Walker, Willis Alan Ramsey, Leon Russell, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen, David Alan Coe, Rusty Wier, Ray Wylie Hubbard, B.W. Stevenson, and many more.

Action Magazine has featured colorful characters ranging from Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson to Bandidos Chapter founder Royce Showalter and tattoo legend Honest Charlie Potter. Throw in legendary madam Theresa Brown, famed aetheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Bourbon Street Parson Bob Harrington, and world champion bronc rider Casey Tibbs and you have barely scratched the surface of Action Magazine cover articles. Great musicians such as Johnny Bush, Augie Meyers, and Darrell and Mona McCall have stuck with me like family over the years.

Although Action Magazine has never been considered a music magazine per se, I believe it has offered exposure to some fine musicians who might never have garnered a line of ink space without this publication. World class fiddler Ron Knuth called Action Magazine “Our Rolling Stone.”

It was hard, but I had to say goodbye to some faithful advertisers when I shut the operation down last month. Joey Villarreal of Joey’s, Joe Blues, and Blue Star Brewing Company still occupied Action’s back cover when I made the decision to cease publication. I still had other faithful advertisers which have been with me for years–Tony Talanco of Texas Pride Barbecue, Joe Gonzales of Broadway Amusements, Bruce Embry of A-Action Bail Bonds, Frank Mumme of The Other Woman and Spurr 122 nightclubs, Sam Cedillo of Cowtown Boots, Roy Barnett of The Deer Crossing, Mike and Jason and Ruby of Planet K. And I will never forget the many former advertisers who stuck with us for years. Frank Mueller’s Trap Lounge was with us from day one until poor health resulted in him closing the business a few years back.

My late son Grady Kindrick helped with delivery and some editorial work at the outset. He and I both shot photos, and both of us did our own lab work when we were using film and photographic paper before the digital computer age was to swoop down upon my head. And I have had other family help. First wife Vicky sold some ads, and my current wife Sharon has been my proof reader, office manager, and Bulverde delivery lady for a number of years now. I would not exist without Sharon. Musician Amy Heller Reif has sold a few ads over recent years when not performing with her rock band, but Action has had no real sales staff since the 1980s when twin buzz saws Lana Seekatz and Caroline Pound were accounting for advertising which represented 75 percent of a 44-page tabloid. Our last issue in January had 12 pages. For so many years Action sold itself. The ads came to me.

Ronnie Reed has delivered part of the magazine over the past 30 years, but I have personally done the majority of deliveries for most of these years. For hundreds of hours, days, and months I have jumped in and out of a pickup truck, rain and shine and bitter cold. Jim Chesnut has contributed some editorial copy over the past year or so, but I have written the majority of all Action articles and shot most of the photos since the beginning. Sometimes the pressure and the strain of having to crank out a publication by the first of every month was almost too much. I have cussed and cried and gritted my teeth and asked myself why, why on many a night out there with the paper. Wife Sharon says I have been “driven,” and she may be right. For some weird, snarky reason I have been marching to my own drumbeat since I was a little boy. And sometimes there has been blood on my footprints.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what is happening to the paper print industry. The Express-News is but a shell of its former self and personnel layoffs continue unabated. And La Prensa, once the oldest Spanish language tabloid in San Antonio, has gone out of business. Next to take the gas will be Current, the free-distribution alternative that has already changed hands several times.

The cost of newsprint paper continues to soar, and the vast majority of this product comes from Canada where striking lumberjacks and other production woes beset the industry.

My Canadian friend Alycia Ambroziak has first hand information. A former writer for both the Montreal Star and the Montreal Gazette, she has been a friend for years. We met at Willie Nelson’s third July 4 Picnic.

“Newsprint is gone,” Alycia said. “Nobody reads the newspaper anymore. It is going online. In the print industry, only book sales are up.”

I view my years with Action Magazine with mixed emotions. I could have done better, but Ecclesiastes 3 comes to mind when I consider musician friend and museum music curator Hector Saldana and his efforts to land me and Action Magazine in the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University. There I am, probably the only convicted felon in the entire lineup with legendary writers like Carmack McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, Willie Nelson, and Sandra Cisneros.

Nothing, I know, happens by accident. And it must have been some powerful and unseen juju that resulted in Express-News writer John MacCormack penning an article about me that commanded a full page Sunday issue spread in the paper that I was fired from so many years ago.

MacCormack’s article was fair and generally factual, but he made one statement that piqued my interest and think process.

Noting that Sam Kindrick columns can be “hilarious, vulgar, pretentious, insightful and self indulgent,” MacCormack also noted in his story that “Action Magazine is unknown to most people in San Antonio.”

This curious juxtaposition of facts and ideas reminded me immediately of musician friend and lay minister Claude (Butch) Morgan’s observation that we are only effective and relevant in our own circles of influence.

I believe Morgan is right.

MacCormack wrote that Action Magazine is unknown to most people in San Antonio. But it was known to John MacCormack or he would never have written the story about me and the magazine.

Action Magazine and Sam Kindrick were also known to Hector Saldana; had we not been known to Hector, he would never have entered us in the prestigious Wittliff Collections at Texas State.

I don’t know for certain what I will do without Action Magazine. I do know that I will likely continue writing in some capacity. I have ideas. I will also maintain some sort of presence on the internet.

It’s in Ecclesiastes 3. There is a time for everyone and everything.

I want to thank each and everyone of you who have been reading me through the year. I hope there will be more of it.

Happy Fourth of July from Action Magazine and the Kindrick family. We have glad tidings to report this July 4, much better than the doom and gloom from last year’s painful Independence day experience.

First on the good news list is the favorable medical report that just came in on my thyroid cancer. Second on the glad tidings list is my decision to rebuild the Action Magazine website into a personal blog which will carry photos, old and new Kindrick columns, occasional articles, and personal opinions – both popular and otherwise.

Now working on the new web presence is webmaster Harry Thomas, former graphics artist with the Express and News and the Action Magazine web guy who was with me from the beginning of our online presence. . There is none better in the business than Harry. We will again be on the world wide web.

At this time in 2018, I had just been informed by Dr. Robert Noland of Bulverde Well-Med that the masses in both my throat and on my sternum were metastatic thyroid cancer. It was a grim diagnosis, since metastatic cancer is the kind that often breaks loose and travels into other organs such as lungs, liver, pancreas, brain, etc. It had already moved from my throat area to my breast bone, and I knew that I was in for a fight.

First off, Dr. Benjamin Webb surgically removed my thyroid glands. Then I was administered 18 direct zaps of radiation to my sternum area. Radiation oncologist Keith Eyre supervised this procedure. And then I was given radioactive iodine by Dr. Daniel Katselnik, the endocrinologist who is now overseeing my medical recovery.

The first full body scan indicated that I may have dodged the bullet. The cancer had gone to no other areas. The first blood work following the thyrogen (radioactive iodine) showed result better than I had ever expected. Said Dr. Katselnik: “You had a lot of cancer in your body this time last year. You have a small amount in your body now. This report could be a little better, but it could be a whole lot worse. We will continue your thyroid medication with regular monitoring.” I’ll take this report with a smile on my face.

And I wouldn’t be standing upright and with my brain still in place without my wife Sharon. The late Stoney Edwards put it well. His best country song was: “She’s my rock and I ain’t gonna throw her away.”