STICKY DOORKNOBS

Change. The good, non-political kind.

(From Sunday's Midland Reporter-Telegram)

Back before change was hoisted atop the soapbox, before it was a banner waving audaciously in the everchanging political gale, it was simply good -- nothing more. Change, it was said long ago by grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, moms and dads, is good.

It is with that collective encouragement from years gone by and from people who have passed -- and who have not -- that I have made a decision to seek change, the good and nonpolitical kind, and to go somewhere that I have not been before: on my own. And so beginning Monday, I will no longer drive to the offices of the Reporter-Telegram every day, but up the road about a mile north to an office I will share with a friend, both of us holding business cards that bear the label “Freelance Writer.”

This day was probably first foretold when I was a freshman English student at Nimitz High School in Irving. Mrs. Sibley, one of my teachers I’ve never forgotten, handed us each our copy of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I had never read anything like it.

I was moved by Harper Lee’s story and by her ability to make a non-reader like myself so utterly rapt, hanging on her every word. Miss Sibley, who encouraged creativity like few other teachers I had, gave us an assignment to do something imaginative with one of the chapters in  the book. And so I called together a few of my neighborhood friends: Brenda, the McGill brothers and Mr. Jodon, a longtime, older across-the-street neighbor who was always a good sport. I borrowed daddy’s 8 mm camera – no sound, just stunning, flickering black and white – and together, my friends and I staged and shot the scene when Jem gets his overalls stuck on the picket fence in Boo Radley’s yard. The high point in our featurette was no doubt when Mr. Jodon ran out the front door of his south Irving home brandishing an honest to goodness rifle.

I was filming this dramatic moment as Brenda and one of the McGill boys played Jem and Scout. Both were stricken with terror as Mr. Jodon ran from his house with that gun. That of course never happened in Harper Lee’s version of the story, but Miss Sibley had told us all to exercise our creativity, and I took a little dramatic license in the retelling of the scene.

It was not high art, but it was art and it was the first time I had ever attempted to go near it. And I loved it.

I showed the film to the class and received an ‘A’ for my work, but I received more than a grade that day. I was given a spark, a hope that one day I could make a living out of some type of writing and ultimately my one true desire was to have my name at the bottom of a book’s cover like Harper Lee had with “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

That opportunity has now been given to me. In fact, since October when this latest chapter began to unfold, I have received three freelance projects that have gracefully landed right in my lap. I am a firm believer that if you don’t use the gifts and the talents God has given you to your utmost, it’s almost like sinning. And I’d rather do what God set out for me to do than go against him. When three projects land in your lap at the same time and they offer you a decent wage to do something you’ve always dreamed of, that may be as good a sign as you’re likely to get from above.

Scary? You bet. But if I didn’t do it, my chances of becoming a writer of books would be exactly zero. Now, making this change, this decision, my chances are much better.

My only regret is that my dad – and my mom – aren’t here to see this. I was never like my brother and sister, both of whom are much more left-brained than I; my brother has been a successful business owner and is currently a Realtor, and my dad always joked that the city of Irving simply couldn’t run without my sister during her years there. Claudia was the assistant to the city manager for years, and later an important force in planning and zoning.

And then there was me. Always with a need to do something out there. Different. But a risk taker? Not really. Not at all.

It’s been only four months since my dad passed away. I still miss him deeply every day. Had he been here, we would have discussed this move repeatedly and he would have had me make absolutely certain that I had checked everything out to make sure it was going to work as well as it seems it will. I never had the chance to have that conversation with him, but I’ve had it a hundred times in my head since October.

Since I haven’t been able to talk to dad, after discussing it with my wife Karen, the first people I called were my brother and sister, and they were both quite encouraging.

While I was talking to my brother David, I remembered another conversation we had had several years ago when we were both visiting Cloudcroft, N.M., our family’s second home and a place we truly love. It was announced while we were there that the Mountain Monthly, Cloudcroft’s hometown newspaper, was for sale. I told David how much I wanted to move to New Mexico and run the paper, but I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. One thing I am not is a businessman. After listening to all of my excuses why not to do it, David said, “You need to buy that newspaper. You never take any chances in life.”

Until today. And this is a chance I know something more about than running a newspaper which I have never done.

I hope that you will see the fruits of these writing projects I will be working on within the next year or two. God willing, two of them will be completed within the year. The third may take a while longer, but I hope you will like it, and all of them, and will put all of these projects on your book shelves. After reading them, of course.

I leave the Reporter-Telegram with mixed feelings. This place has become sort of my identity for much of the last 22 years. I love it here. I will miss it and I will miss helping you tell your stories through the written word. I will miss the people here because those who run this place are just very good people. I will be leaving behind more than merely bosses and co-workers, and my thanks goes to Dave Wedel, the publisher and my friend, for his encouragement, and Stewart Doreen, who I have sat across from for many years and with whom I have shared much. And I wish John Boyd, the new online editor at MyWestTexas.com, much success. There couldn’t be a better choice for taking over that spot.

And I thank all of you for reading and enjoying, and for stopping to tell me so when we’ve been out and about together.

I will continue to write this blog and I’ll be back up on the scissor lift this July for another Blogging For Fair Havens.

Christmas blessings to you all.

I’ll see you soon.

Local artist Ricky Chou on 'Texas Country Reporter' Sunday

Ricky Chou, quite possibly the world's most talented tortilla maker, and certainly Midland's, will be featured on this Sunday's "Texas Country Reporter" with Bob Phillips. Air time on NewsWest 9 is 10:30 p.m.

Chou, a Chinese artist by night, has had his works hung in a number of galleries and locations locally. To be featured on a statewide program as popular as Phillips' show must surely an great moment for Ricky. Congratulations, bud.

A church that's serious about no smackin'

 
 Maybe the next really good idea Our Lady of Guadalupe will enact is, instead of a coat check, a place where parishioners can check their cell phone during Mass.

Midland's new Community Christmas tree awaits first light

Midland's new Christmas tree in Centennial Plaza ... a lighting ceremony will be Saturday, Dec. 5,
and will also feature the city's first after-dark Christmas parade, which will begin at 6:30 p.m.

Team building: Lee coach James Morton gives band practice field, then drives to Odessa to support Lee musicians at UIL contest

For Midland Lee football fans, a lasting image of James Morton occurred October 2 in Amarilllo's Dick Bivins Stadium following a Rebels' win over Tascosa. There Morton was, running off the field in the middle of a pack of his players, hand in hand with his young daughter. Then there's a lasting story of the first-year coach, the one he tells about how his son, a first grader, hands out a Player of the Week award after every game, presenting the lucky Lee team member with a handmade silver star and a brief speech about how the chosen player performed well enough to receive the honor -- but won't be eligible again unless he continues to play hard.

The lasting impression of James Morton is the emphasis he places on creating a family feeling in the school's football program. But the family emphasis Morton fosters extends beyond his wife and kids, and has reached into other programs at the school as well.

I imagine good relationships between football coaches and band directors are not rare things. I would think they even happen more often than not. Lee band director Randy Storie said former head football coach Randy Quisenberry loved the band, even awarding them a game ball after one hard-fought win. Earl Miller once got on the band buses to thank them following a game. Spike Dykes referred to the Rebel band as "My band."

While the relationship between Morton and the Lee band may not be unique, some impressive things have happened this football season nonetheless. Taking nothing away from Quiz, Spike, Earl or others who have been and should be commended for keeping open those lines of communications between extracurricular programs, Morton seems to have gone a step further this year.

In the days and weeks leading up to the band's First Division performance at the October 17 UIL competition at Ratliff Stadium in Odessa, Morton gave the band the football team's practice field to use. The lines on the field located just off Tarleton Street are cut better and the spacing more precise than on the makeshift field the band normally uses.

Morton also gave the band a pep talk the week of their UIL performance, but he didn't stop there: On what is arguably the biggest day of the year for any high school band musician, Morton drove to Odessa to watch Lee perform at contest.

Storie has nothing but kind words for the school's new coach, who will guide the team into the first round of the 5A state playoffs tonight against El Paso Coronado (7 p.m. at Grande Stadium).

The football coach even directed the band during a pep rally, something Morton told me made him more nervous than just about anything else this year. A former baritone player in junior high, Morton was also greeted at 6:30 the morning of the Lee-Permian game by the entire band playing the fight song in his front yard, a tradition carried out for years by Storie's band. Hey, some years it works. Some years it doesn't.

Morton says good relations between the adult leaders of different programs at a school fosters a better atmosphere at football games and credited Storie for giving him "instant credibility with his kids" one day when the director talked up the new coach and his support of the band.

"Some people say the game is just about football, or band, or other things," Morton told me this week, "but to me that's why I love working with kids: I like for everybody to feel a part of the cause, and I like for everybody to work together for the same cause, and that's what's best for Robert E. Lee High School."

As for giving the band the football practice field, Morton says its not his field, or the football team's but the school's.

"For all the work the band's done, that's the least I could do," Morton said.

RebelNation has long marketed itself as a "FamiLee," a brand that this year seems to be working especially well.

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Photo: Marching Band Director Paul Meiste directs the Lee band at Amarillo's Dick Bivins Stadium, Oct. 2. A fixture of the Lee band is its loud and repeated playing of 'Dixie' while the opposing team has the ball and is driving toward a score, making it difficult for the offense to hear the quarterback calling signals.

'Well excuse me, but I think you've got my chair'

Have a seat.

Andrews Hwy. and Cuthbert Thursday morning.

Rusk Elementary's Veteran's Program: When public education works best

 I have had the good fortune of attending most of Rusk Elementary School's Veteran's Programs over the last 12 years. Not only is the event moving and impacting on veterans and civilians alike, it is also a shining example of public education at its finest.

Thanks to former P.E. instructor Sharon Morgan, who created the event back in the mid-90s (and who returns to Midland every year to help pull it off yet again), current music teacher Lanese Davidson and the entire faculty and staff at the westside Midland school, children who attend this campus are learning something that wouldn't have been included as part of the classroom curriculum. The good people at Rusk took the character traits set forth in Dr. Patty Smith's Character Education Program and applied each and every one of them to showing just how much veterans are loved and appreciated every year during this touching tribute. For many of the children it is quite simply the highlight of the entire school year. The kids feel so strongly about the program because they are being taught that what they are doing by honoring veterans is important -- and necessary. The kids take it to heart and it sticks with them long after they no longer call themselves elementary students.

The kids are not the only ones affected so strongly: It is a spectacle to behold these veterans as they watch misty eyed while first thru sixth graders at the school give them the credit they so richly deserve.

One of the most memorable photographs I ever took is of a first-grade boy handing my late father a folded American flag. The look on dad's face cannot be described. That flag stood in his den until the day he died. It was more than a material gift. It was a symbol of today's children, the warmth they extend to the veterans every year, and that the job they did overseas still means something to today's generation.

There are a lot of things right about public education -- extracurricular programs that teach children to color outside the lines, teachers who work behind the scenes so often to help a student understand something she might not otherwise get, or foreign language teachers who plan for years for trips overseas in an out-of-classroom experience their students are likely to never forget. The Rusk Elementary School program is the finest example of above and beyond in public schools I have ever witnessed both personally and from a distance. And I feel fairly certain that opinion would be shared by more than just a handful of veterans who are feeling better today because of the actions, love and appreciation of Rusk students and teachers.

View a slide show from Tuesday's 12th Annual Rusk Veteran's Program at the Commemorative Air Force Museum hangar.

Watch Congressman Mike Conaway's words about his visit to Fort Hood following last week's shooting that killed 13 soldiers.

Laura Bush helps put new face on Bynum School

Save for the occasional times when Laura Bush would swoop into Midland undetected by the masses for a private visit with mom (protected by swarms of Black Yukon driving, wrist-talking secret service guys), and those two famous appearances standing by her president-husband's side on their way to and from Washington, the former First Lady really never made it a habit of visiting her hometown during the Bush family's 8-year residency in the people's house. Not publicly at least.

After Tuesday night's presentation benefiting the Bynum School, we now see what we have been missing. Funny, endearing and warm, the former First Lady held the crowd of 750 at the Midland Center in the palm of her hand from the moment she first appeared onstage. Her words were brief, but in giving the school's supporters updates on the family -- her former president-father-in-law's most recent skydiving adventure and mother-in-law Barbara's recent heart surgery -- she made everyone feel a part of her family.

While we have been less in her absence, we can now instead turn our appreciation to the fact that Laura Bush did make her public return to Midland and for that we are now better and we can only hope there will be more public visits to come. After all, how many times do you get to say you (and 750 others) went to dinner with a First Lady?

Her stories of George H.W. Bush skydiving over Kennebunkport and Bush 41's joke about the new pig valve in Barbara's heart ("She's been craving corn") were laugh out loud funny and proof of Mrs. Bush's skill with an audience and a punchline. Working on her memoirs, Mrs. Bush said the title of her book will be "Former Shy Librarian Tells All." Watch Laura Bush's speech at the Bynum School Fundraiser Tuesday.

Her visit was no doubt friend helping friend; Midlander's Don and Suzie Evans long depended on the school for the education of their daughter with special needs.

As noted on the Facebook page of fellow Midland blogger Cindi Mladenka, who also once turned to the school for her own late daughter's education, Mrs. Bush helped put a new face on Bynum wth her appearance Tuesday night. The school, its directors, board members and parents have to be floating today because of the success of the event last night.

Laura' Bush's public persona has always been elegant and poised. She served the country well and was a great representative of Midland. She "done us proud" and it was good to have her back home.

Midland artist Ricky Chou hits the big time

If you've dropped by here with any sort of semi-regularity, you might have, on occasion, read the story of Ricky Chou, who immigrated to America over 40 years ago from his home in Canton, China. Most people no doubt know Ricky from his work at H-E-B where he goes about his workdays in carefree fashion making tortillas. By night, Ricky's passion is his brush. He paints every evening when not working. His work has hung in the Midland Community Theater and the McCormick Gallery at the Allison Fine Arts Building on the Midland College campus. He is a humble man and doesn't even like his picture to be taken.

Understandably, that all changed earlier this week when Chou was visited by Bob Phillips and a production crew from Texas Country Reporter. Phillips had been alerted to Chou's story by someone at Midland College who sent an article to the show's creative staff.

Ricky said Phillips and his producers took shots of him at his tortilla station at H-E-B and then at his home where his studio is located. Ricky was impressed with the professionalism of the crew and he described Phillips as quiet and nice.

The crew was unable to tell Ricky exactly when his story would air, but he was left with the impression that it would be within a few weeks.

Texas Country Reporter currently airs in Midland-Odessa on Sundays at 10:30 p.m. on Newswest 9.

Dream Big: Wink hopes generous investor will help refurbish historic theater where Roy Orbison got his start

Wink, Texas, can use a little encouragement.

The same way a young married couple benefits from a banker willing to take a chance so the two can get started on a new life, or how a man who has paid his debt to society is given a new suit and some folding money as he starts life again, Wink could use a little help.

The little out-of-the-way oilfield town in Winkler County experienced the height of its glory days long ago and all that's left standing today are memories, some 50 years old, some older.

It was in the late 1950s when humble, quiet high school student Roy Orbison picked up a guitar, formed a band and played weekends at the Rig Theater, a structure still standing in what now passes for a downtown.

There's not much that still goes on here. Even the vendors that descend on this place for the annual Roy Orbison Days every June take up less than a city block, and more often than not there are plenty of seats at the exhibition building during dances that feature Orbison tribute artist Walt Quigley, a man -- maybe the only man -- who has devoted his life to perpetuating the memory of Orbison.

Quigley, who splits residences between Wink and Lake Havasu City, Ariz., just this week planted a marker awarded by the Texas Historical Commission at Roy's boyhood home on the former Waverley Ave., and has already turned his attention to his next project: refurbishing the Rig.

There are not a lot of people or businesses out here willing to drop six figures to put a new roof on the old place, despite the history that once graced the stage. It does seem like a good opportunity, though, to be a good steward to a place that long ago served an oil company in a good manner. Maybe now all these years later, giving back would be a way to say thank you, although that's maybe an idyllic way to view the world today.

Quigley says a mere $160,000 would take care of replacing the roof on the old place, which would then allow workers and volunteers to go in and complete a total refurbishment, which could run a shade over $2 million.

"Being a small town like this is the main problem," Quigley said of any potential efforts to raise funds for such a project. "We'd like to find somebody who could use a tax write off. I promise them we could offer a lifetime prime title sponsorship of the theater. It would read, for instance, 'The Exxon Mobil Rig Theater' on the sign out front and in all our advertising. It would be very nice to have someone be able to commit to that kind of money."

Quigley said a revitalized Rig could be used for a number of occasions: dances, school functions, a hamburger stand, even a new home to the Orbison memorabilia currently housed down the block in a museum that offers the artifacts little protection from the sunlight and other environmental factors that may be damaging the items, including this rare and aging photo at right of a pre-teen Orbison and one of his beloved model airplanes.

In promotional materials designed to appeal to someone who might invest in such a venture, the people of Wink stress the historical significance of the theater, the fact that Orbison's band The Wink Westerners once opened for Slim Whitman here, and how the interior of the structure has "pen knife graffiti" still preserved on the staircase walls leading to the balcony.

"Simply put, the memory and talents of Roy Orbison and his timeless and beautiful music will be given permanence in his hometown of Wink, and Wink (would) again have a beautiful central location for all forms of entertainment, arts enterprise and gathering. ... It's most important historic value lies in its place in West Texas entertainment and the fact that the world famous and greatest rock and roll operatic ballad singer, Roy Orbison, delivered some of his earliest performances here. ... This is a very timely undertaking. We appeal to the world to get involved."

Appealing to the entire world may be a bit of a stretch at first thought, but the guest book in the Roy Orbison museum reflects even today that 20-25 visitors a month still venture out this far to get a glimpse of Orbison's boyhood home. If that many people come as far and as out of the way as Wink, that alone should suggest that such an investment to refurbish the Rig would give this little place the kick start that maybe it needs and one that would help more people sit up and take note of the cultural impact Roy had.