The truth is stranger than fiction

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction and I would like to share some personal experiences, some good, some, well, read on.

I saw a dog with a broken back walking around on its front legs, like a human. It would even stand still while it waited to cross the road.

Back in 1975, while working for Brown and Root at the Mobay Plant construction site, I witnessed 3 millwrights inflating a cherry picker tire when it suddenly popped. 15 seconds later, an orange hardhat came floating down and landed on the ground. It had been blown about 100 feet straight up.

I watched a man plow his pick-up truck into the side of a Volkswagen Beetle on a construction site parking lot, because the other fellow hadn’t followed the normal protocol of every other car.

I witnessed a little boy sitting in the crook of a tree holding a monkey. The monkey jumped out of the boy’s hands onto a passing cat and before the cat could react, jumped back into the boys lap holding the cat. I even took a picture of it. I had a wild monkey attempt to wrestle my expensive SLR camera from my hands in Thailand (I won). I saw a monkey remove a wrist watch and retreat before the man could react and it was ten feet away when it began its move.

My brother and I watched a guy throw a longneck beer bottle over the top of his car and it smashed against the south entrance of the Baytown-La Porte Tunnel. It was so unexpected and bizarre all we could do was laugh.

An orange-robed Buddhist Monk in Thailand offered me a drink of water from a cistern, when I was out hiking. I was severely parched. He pointed into the large clay vessel and looking into it, I saw a snake swimming around. He dipped out about a liter and taking a small brass container from his pocket, “thumped a dab” of pink powder into the water and shook his head up and down, signally it was okay to drink. I raised my eyebrows (as we could not converse in each others language) and he nodded. I drank it down and thanked him.

I saw a snake the size of a full-grown boa constrictor in a creek in northern Georgia 35 years ago while hunting snakes. I nailed it with .22 bullets twice before it slipped off the fallen tree into the water...and then I ran like a Carl Lewis.

I didn't see this, but Baytonians Catfish Jack and Lovey Randolph, both long gone, swore they once had a friend who owned a pet javelina. The little stinker went everywhere with the man and get this...it smoked cigarettes! The fellow would pull two smokes out of his pocket and light them, then put one in the javelina's mouth. They both swore the animal inhaled the smoke too.

Years ago a buddy and I drag-raced our beat-up pick-up trucks out in the country. We went about 115 mph before we shut them down. This area is just north of Lowe's and Home Depot…Garth Road.

My brother and I rode to work one day with an older fellow named Frank Briethaup, who owned a mint 1957 Chevy wagon (no, not a Nomad). It was just like it was sold, except there was a lot of refuse on the floor. We were headed towards Baytown on old 2-lane Hwy 225 when we came up on Miller-Cutoff Road, red light as usual, with about 10 stopped cars in each lane. Frank mumbled something about hating that *&^% light and onto the right shoulder, we blew through that light like we had a flux capacitor in our 'DeLoreon'. My brother and I were flabbergasted and we all broke out in a fit of laughter. We never rode with old Frank after that and he is long gone. God bless him.

I had a new .22 rifle and it was loaded. Dogs were killing my chickens and I had already lost close to 20. A friend came over whom I hadn't seen in a long time and he wanted to look at the rifle. I told him it was loaded and we stepped out on the porch. Directly, he shouldered it and fired before I could stop him. To my total surprise 2 birds fell out of the tree and he said "Well, lookie at that"! I snatched the rifle from him and still to this day do not know how he did that or why.

When I was about 16, I was riding in a friend’s car when we hit a section of 'black ice' just as we went into a corner. We spun round and round, then off the road, around a large tree and then back onto the road past the curve going backwards before we stopped. It was so wild we did it two more times.

I had a friend who had a giant old Buick car. One evening a load of us guys were driving out of the Washburn tunnel and ran right over a queen sized mattress, which immediately hung up under the car. My friend decided to do what all red-blooded American guys do and that was to put the accelerator to the floor. I think we lost the mattress somewhere around 80mph.