I’m a person besieged by kooky things. If it’s odd beyond reason, it probably happened to me, happened due to me, or affected me ancestrally. Often, I wonder if these experiences are common in everyone’s lives, and it is my only-child mentality that has led me to believe I’m special in this world of silly absurdities. Judging by the horrific or highly entertained looks on the faces of the folks listening to Dina’s True Tales, it’s just my life. Those perplexing looks seem to be on the rise these days. I was once told, by a dear friend, that a conversation with me is like talking to a time traveler who spent their childhood in the civil war and their teenage years in the groovy seventies. My southern monologues are generally on point. My Texas accent is accenting. Yet, I feel honored to be the daughter of the handsome dude who was born in the roaring twenties and the lovely lady, nearly twenty years his junior, who hunted squirrels with her dad and thought Buddy Holly was the end all be all. Somewhere in the middle lies a great story. Let’s get into a few, shall we?
I grew up in a rural area where there were no other children, at least none after my best friend Tammy moved away. I did a lot of solo bike rides to pick mustang grapes in the ditch next to the pasture where the circus people lived in the off season. I wasn’t allowed to speak to the circus people. Momma said it was because they walked through Branson’s grocery store barefooted and smelled like manure. Still, it was great fun, standing there, munching on wild grapes, and waiting on the elephants to make an appearance through the Hackberry trees. One of the circus girls looked like Linda Ronstadt in the 70s. Her cutoff jeans may have been accidentally washed in bleach. She wore massive hoop earrings under her long, dark hair. To this day, that defines my style.
If I wasn’t spying on the circus, I was riding a mule. My mom’s cousin plopped a doublewide trailer down next door to us. She was so glamorous, driving around in her dark purple Chevy Nova with her matching fingernails. She taught me how to tease my hair and how to properly saddle Robin, her mule. Some of my best memories were spent sloshing through the creek at the back of her property. The smell of an animal mixed with the odor of a well-worn leather saddle was intoxicating. It never occurred to me that most people don’t ride mules on a daily basis. Sure, Robin tended to scratch his back on the electric pole next to our house, knocking out the power for days in a few instances, but when the two of us were riding together, I felt like I was leading French trappers to the promised land in some 1800s expedition.
Here in the south, we have a certain flair for storytelling that lies more in the characters than it does the action. We cut our teeth on fantastical tales starring relatives we’ll never meet or barely recall, yet we know every nuance of their lives as if they’d just been to supper last week. Hence, I can tell you about the time my Great Aunt Johnny, in her younger years, started a bar fight to defend my grandmother’s honor when a good-for-nothing jezebel wouldn’t stop flirting with my grandfather. My grandmother drove the getaway car but claimed to have no prior notice of the nefarious activity. I can tell you about my paternal grandfather, J.B., who barbered during the day and drove his wind-up Model A to a honky-tonk most nights to play the fiddle in a band, much to his wife’s dismay. Then there’s my Uncle Buford we refer to as The Beast for reasons that aren’t clear to me. He played the bass fiddle with Ernest Tubb for a time, post-WWII. I had an Uncle Goat on one side of the family and an Uncle Spider on the other. I can tell you which areas of Texas were better for lying low after run-ins with the law, and which ones were best for bootlegging during prohibition. I could go on for hours about the time my parents took a vacation with their best friends to try and buy an island just off the Bolivar Peninsula in the early 70s, only to narrowly escape death when a barge almost clipped their small boat in the dark. Unfortunately, the island was a water moccasin haven and they balked on the deal. Such are the adventures of the past.
These days, I lead a very safe life. There aren’t many opportunities for adventure, though I’m not sure if it’s due to my age or my lack of willingness. All the vagabonds who stand tall in these stories have long died. Still, I may have a few tricks up my sleeve. Recently, my husband and I drove a few hours away to attend a funeral for a distant relative. It was just my family’s kind of kooky. There was a country preacher in a straw fedora, an impressive selection of tall tales featuring the deceased, and a Stevie Ray Vaughan impersonator. I kept thinking about my mom and how much she would have loved that funeral. Afterward, we stopped at a gas station on our way out of town. I was melancholy. Moments later, I see my husband running toward our car. “Honey, get out! You have to see this!” The next thing you know, I was standing next to the car at the neighboring pump holding a tiny pet monkey named Roxy, laughing hysterically, and talking to a girl who bore a striking resemblance to a young Linda Ronstadt. Here’s to the crazy characters in our life. May we always be open to adventure.
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