Archives for July 2019

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.

To read current and recent past issues of the publication, go to the website at www.actionmagsa.com.

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Houston told me: “Well, Soul, I guess if any of them want to get a hold of me really bad, they can still pick up the outdated old telephone and call.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 was touched with a sense of both sadness and regret when I read that Elmer Kelton had died at his home in San Angelo.

Kelton was kind to me when I functioned as a kid reporter on the San Angelo Standard-Times back in the early-1960s, and I was saddened that he had departed this earth at the age of 83 from what his wife Anna described as “multiple causes.”

My big regret is that I didn’t get to know Kelton better, for he was to become the greatest western novelist of all time, and a Texas legend-in-the-making who will surely grow in death to be bigger than the “Staked Plain” and “Spindletop” combined.

Elmer’s great novel Buffalo Wagons was in the book stores, and he was functioning as agriculture and livestock editor for the San Angelo newspaper when I arrived at the Standard-Times, green as a Kimble County gourd and dumber than an oyster in matters of import which didn’t interest me at the time.

A bunch of drunks

More than half of the newspaper’s editorial staff members were drunks, and I was to happily join their number, drinking beer in the Red Rooster Inn and playing cards until past daylight in first one apartment complex and then another before moving to San Antonio and the Express and News.

But during those two years that I wrote for the West Texas newspaper, I was intrigued by Kelton and drawn to this quiet, humble, and non-assuming wordsmith who was to pen more than 60 novels over a career which saw him transcend the genre. While the Western Writers of America Association was to proclaim Kelton “the greatest western writer of all time,” novels like The Good Ole Boys and The Time It Never Rained were to propel Elmer into a broader literary landscape with other such Texas authors as Larry McMurtry.

I never knew a person who didn’t like Elmer Kelton. And from all I have read and heard, his humility and concern for his fellow man prevailed until his death.

When asked out for a beer or a card game, he politely declined. When asked about his singleness of purpose as a western writer, Kelton once told me that he spent three or four hours a night working on his books. A graduate pf the University of Texas, Elmer had studied under J. Frank Dobie, and his background included a childhood growing up on the McElroy Ranch near Crane, Texas where his father, Buck Kelton, was a foreman.

Always wore a hat

I never saw Elmer Kelton when he wasn’t wearing either a straw hat or a silver belly felt.

After his stint as agriculture editor for the San Angelo daily, Kelton became editor of the Sheep and Goat Raisers Magazine, and later went on to become associate editor of Livestock Weekly in San Angelo where he worked until his retirement in 1991.

I have read just about every novel that Kelton ever wrote, and I can testify that there isn’t a more accurate and true to his subject matter author than Elmer. He is a student of western and West Texas history in particular, and every Kelton novel is a history lesson in itself.

Kelton was also a church-going Christian who chose to reach rather than preach, and I can recall the blush on his cheeks as a state editor by the name of Kelly Crozier good naturedly chided him about his description of a big-tittied saloon girl in one of his earlier westerns.

Elmer had described her as having “more than adequate upper mammary facilities.”

While Kelton didn’t put many rough swear words in the mouths of his hard scrabble West Texas cowboys, his writing has always been as believable and historically perfect as mesquite bushes and salt pork floating in a camp pot of pinto beans.

Kelton was believable

Elmer was always believable. And his honesty could never be questioned.

Three of Kelton’s novels have appeared in Readers’s Digest condensed books. Four books have won the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City–The Time It Never Rained, The Good Old Boys, and The Man Who Rode Midnight. Seven Kelton books have won the Spur Award from Western Writers of America for best novels of the year–Buffalo Wagons, The Day The Cowboys Quit, The Time It Never Rained, Eyes of the Hawk, Slaughter, The Far Canyon, and The Way of the Coyote.

Kelton has received the awards and honorary doctorate degrees from MIdwestern and Texas Tech universities. He was given a lifetime achievement award by the National Cowboy Symposium in Lubbock. The Texas Legislature proclaimed an Elmer Kelton Day in April of 1997.

Since 1996, Kelton has been an honorary member of the German Association for the study of the Western, headquartered in Münster, Germany. This organization presents the Elmer Kelton Award for Literary Merit.

McMurtry Center award

In 1990, Elmer received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western Literature Association. In 1998, Kelton received the first Lone Star award for lifetime achievement from the Larry McMurtry Center for Arts and Humanities at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls.

The novelist served two years in the U.S. Army–1944-46, including combat infantry service in Europe, He and his wife Anna, a native of Austria, were married for more than 50 years.

Kelton was called to speak at literary events or to aspiring writers all over the country, and his book The Good Old Boys was made into a TNT cable network movie. Tommy Lee Jones produced the film and also appeared as the starring actor.

Strange as it may seem, Elmer Kelton carried through with almost his entire career as a novelist in what he considered his spare time.

When I?first asked him about the book writing business, he said anyone entering the trade should hold on to whatever regular job he might have. And he was still saying as much when he retired after 22 years with the Livestock Weekly.

I believe Elmer Kelton left this world a bit better than how he found it. I wish I had known him better.

‘, ‘Kelton remembered’, ‘, ‘publish’, ‘closed’, ‘open’, ‘, ‘kelton-remembered’, ‘, ‘, ‘2014-07-30 19:43:44’, ‘2014-07-31 00:43:44’, ‘, 0, ‘http://actionmagsa.com/?p=281’, 0, ‘post’, ‘, 0);
INSERT INTO wp_posts VALUES
(282, 1, ‘2014-07-30 16:53:04’, ‘2014-07-30 21:53:04’, ‘I was touched with a sense of both sadness and regret when I read that Elmer Kelton had died at his home in San Angelo.

Kelton was kind to me when I functioned as a kid reporter on the San Angelo Standard-Times back in the early-1960s, and I was saddened that he had departed this earth at the age of 83 from what his wife Anna described as “multiple causes.”

My big regret is that I didn’t get to know Kelton better, for he was to become the greatest western novelist of all time, and a Texas legend-in-the-making who will surely grow in death to be bigger than the “Staked Plain” and “Spindletop” combined.

Elmer’s great novel Buffalo Wagons was in the book stores, and he was functioning as agriculture and livestock editor for the San Angelo newspaper when I arrived at the Standard-Times, green as a Kimble County gourd and dumber than an oyster in matters of import which didn’t interest me at the time.

A bunch of drunks

More than half of the newspaper’s editorial staff members were drunks, and I was to happily join their number, drinking beer in the Red Rooster Inn and playing cards until past daylight in first one apartment complex and then another before moving to San Antonio and the Express and News.

But during those two years that I wrote for the West Texas newspaper, I was intrigued by Kelton and drawn to this quiet, humble, and non-assuming wordsmith who was to pen more than 60 novels over a career which saw him transcend the genre. While the Western Writers of America Association was to proclaim Kelton “the greatest western writer of all time,” novels like The Good Ole Boys and The Time It Never Rained were to propel Elmer into a broader literary landscape with other such Texas authors as Larry McMurtry.

I never knew a person who didn’t like Elmer Kelton. And from all I have read and heard, his humility and concern for his fellow man prevailed until his death.

When asked out for a beer or a card game, he politely declined. When asked about his singleness of purpose as a western writer, Kelton once told me that he spent three or four hours a night working on his books. A graduate pf the University of Texas, Elmer had studied under J. Frank Dobie, and his background included a childhood growing up on the McElroy Ranch near Crane, Texas where his father, Buck Kelton, was a foreman.

Always wore a hat

I never saw Elmer Kelton when he wasn’t wearing either a straw hat or a silver belly felt.

After his stint as agriculture editor for the San Angelo daily, Kelton became editor of the Sheep and Goat Raisers Magazine, and later went on to become associate editor of Livestock Weekly in San Angelo where he worked until his retirement in 1991.

I have read just about every novel that Kelton ever wrote, and I can testify that there isn’t a more accurate and true to his subject matter author than Elmer. He is a student of western and West Texas history in particular, and every Kelton novel is a history lesson in itself.

Kelton was also a church-going Christian who chose to reach rather than preach, and I can recall the blush on his cheeks as a state editor by the name of Kelly Crozier good naturedly chided him about his description of a big-tittied saloon girl in one of his earlier westerns.

Elmer had described her as having “more than adequate upper mammary facilities.”

While Kelton didn’t put many rough swear words in the mouths of his hard scrabble West Texas cowboys, his writing has always been as believable and historically perfect as mesquite bushes and salt pork floating in a camp pot of pinto beans.

Kelton was believable

Elmer was always believable. And his honesty could never be questioned.

Three of Kelton’s novels have appeared in Readers’s Digest condensed books. Four books have won the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City–The Time It Never Rained, The Good Old Boys, and The Man Who Rode Midnight. Seven Kelton books have won the Spur Award from Western Writers of America for best novels of the year–Buffalo Wagons, The Day The Cowboys Quit, The Time It Never Rained, Eyes of the Hawk, Slaughter, The Far Canyon, and The Way of the Coyote.

Kelton has received the awards and honorary doctorate degrees from MIdwestern and Texas Tech universities. He was given a lifetime achievement award by the National Cowboy Symposium in Lubbock. The Texas Legislature proclaimed an Elmer Kelton Day in April of 1997.

Since 1996, Kelton has been an honorary member of the German Association for the study of the Western, headquartered in Münster, Germany. This organization presents the Elmer Kelton Award for Literary Merit.

McMurtry Center award

In 1990, Elmer received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western Literature Association. In 1998, Kelton received the first Lone Star award for lifetime achievement from the Larry McMurtry Center for Arts and Humanities at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls.

The novelist served two years in the U.S. Army–1944-46, including combat infantry service in Europe, He and his wife Anna, a native of Austria, were married for more than 50 years.

Kelton was called to speak at literary events or to aspiring writers all over the country, and his book The Good Old Boys was made into a TNT cable network movie. Tommy Lee Jones produced the film and also appeared as the starring actor.

Strange as it may seem, Elmer Kelton carried through with almost his entire career as a novelist in what he considered his spare time.

When I?first asked him about the book writing business, he said anyone entering the trade should hold on to whatever regular job he might have. And he was still saying as much when he retired after 22 years with the Livestock Weekly.

I believe Elmer Kelton left this world a bit better than how he found it. I wish I had known him better.

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.