i'm staying at granny's the summer of sixty four and momma calls and tells me that we're moving to nacogdoches. later, in austin i imagine, i remember asking daddy: 'but do they have t.v. there?' 'yes, quin, there's channel 9.' 'channel 9? i wail. in austin channel nine is the terrible lame pre-pbs university education channel (in austin we only get two stations then, 9, and i think the other was 8. at granny's you get a luxurious range of three channels, or maybe four. i love to go to granny's - if my love for my granny is entwined with materialistic tube-worship and therfore a lesser kind of love then i note that granny was scholar of such lesser kinds of love. 'when your momma went over to huntsville to school i was afraid she was sort of lonely so i went down to sears and got her a t.v. [this in a year ('48? 50?) when t.v.s still high end technology and pricey]. the salesman took me for dumb trash and told me i couldn't get a t.v. unless i bought maintenance plan. i told him i wanted a t.v., i didn't want a maintenance plan. he said: 'mrs. haney you can't take a t.v. out of here without a maintenance plan.' i said: ' you want to bet?' then i had them call the store manager and i bought the damn t.v. without the damn maintenance plan.' and thirty years later granny still nursing a lip-curling grudge for that motherfucker salesman.)
in nacogdoches we move into an old southern house just off the corner of north street (highway 59) and west austin. it has a porch that runs along the front and west wall and on the east side of the house is a garden with rangy wild rose bushes climbing a trellis. in that garden i compose my first story - it was about pirates - and momma transcribes it in longhand but i can't remember what happened to that manuscript.
the house had been owned by a man who had an interest in geology and there are all sorts of unusual rocks scattered in the yard. i remember being particularly impressed by the bubbly ones from volcanos.
behind the house there are a couple of big barns or sheds with open sides and our landlord keeps billboard stuff there. he's in the billboard business. advertising. we're not supposed to play there and if you do it's easy to get caught because the blue paint they use on the billboard paper doesn't adhere well and will come off all over you. make you look like you'd been to one of those hindu fertility parties. i can remember my brother carter getting in trouble that way.
they will tear that house down in the seventies and build the parking lot of the 'hot biscuit' over it. the 'hot biscuit' a local denny's variant. i get busted in that parking lot in '82 cos the crazy mexican i'm drinking with kicks in someone's tail-light. if there was a reason i never know it.
in the front yard of that house i'm playing one afternoon and daddy comes home from teaching at the college and i say: 'daddy, i'm playing secret agent. where's a war? i want to be a secret agent in a war. where's a war?' daddy tells me there's a war in a place called vietnam.
sharon first stays with us in that house. later she'll be daddy's second wife.
we take in a stray dog and when its people come to get it they promise us one of her litter. later they bring us a boy puppy daddy names howard. we chicken-wire some of the west porch for howard to live in. our landlord gives some old bill-board paper to put down for howard to mess on. 'they're goldwater ads,' says our landlord, 'i figure ya'll might like that.' sometime howard gets out and gets hit by a car. i go with momma to the vet. 'honey,' momma says, 'howard's leg is broken too bad. the vet had to put him to sleep.' 'but he'll be better when he wakes up?' i wail. it's one of them horrible leave it to beaver moments.
the thing is, i had forgotten, but i think howard was a beagle.
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