Tales from High Bluff

By Matt Jolley

This humorous, heartwarming collection of stories brings to life a year in High Bluff, Texas, a fictional town sitting atop the highest bluff on the Gulf Coast .  The cast of the First Baptist Church Easter Pageant navigate a flaming electric boat winch and a screaming Jesus during their now infamous ascension scene…A bus load of exotic male dancers gets 'rescued' into a situation they'll never forget…True love, action packed hurricanes, and an accidental Santa shooting all pack the pages with moments Red Campbell would've loved.  Everything inside is sworn to be fiction, but if you've been lucky enough to live in South Texas, you'll spot the difference between bull chips and clumped dirt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matt Jolley
• Release date: Dec 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781951543037

Matt Jolley

MATT JOLLEY is a national Edward R. Murrow Award winning story teller originally from South Texas.  He can be heard around the world on HistoryWorthSaving.com as well as WarbirdRadio.com and as the voice of the finest aviation events in the United States.

Book preview

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imaginations and are not to be construed as real or pertaining to a real event. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN 13: 978-1-951543-02-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019957423

Copyright 2020 © Matt Jolley

Cover by Creative Dolan Design Studio

www.creativedolan.com

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For Red.

For family...

and the friends who probably

wish I hadn’t paid attention.

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Introduction

Some of my happiest memories of my grandfather, are those of him laughing, usually with his feet propped up on his well-worn, second-hand easy chair. His Steinbeck and Faulkner were spelled McManus and Grizzard, with the occasional Foxworthy tossed in. Paw Paw was a Marine in WWII. He’d seen some of the worst of it: Midway, Coral Sea and other sandy spots of terror in the Pacific. His father died early and he, along with his lifelong friend, Charlie, who was practically an orphan, had more incredible adventures and hard belly laughs than most men, in spite of all the sorrow life had spit their way.

They loved to fish and be outside, this was their church. Their stories of misadventures and oh, remember whens were best told out back under the carport so the cool South Texas breeze could help whip up their lies.

The stories in this book are stories I think they’d appreciate. I’d never go so far as to call them stories Paw Paw and Charlie would laugh at, because I’m nowhere near the exalted status of their favorite yarn spinners, but I do think they’d at least appreciate the effort.

Now for the legal stuff. I’ll swear that everything on these pages is pure fiction, especially the characters, but if you’ve been blessed enough to live in South Texas, you can probably tell the difference between bull chips and clumped dirt.

Happy reading, ya’ll.

MJ

CHAPTER 1

DECEMBER

THE .38 CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

Miss Jan and Mom came home with a large square box from the High Bluff Community Center’s Christmas Home Beautiful Class with what appeared to be a folded-up air mattress with a shredded white pillow inside. To my surprise, it was a life-sized Santa Claus doll. Miss Jan went on to explain we just had to stuff the inside full of newspaper or somethin’ fluffy to make ole’ Saint Nick look real.

At this point, I thought my mom had completely lost her marbles. But I played along and decided to ride my bike down to Winn’s Five and Dime to see if Mr. Gregory would let me have yesterday’s unsold newspapers to stuff Santa. Winn’s Five and Dime was our everything store. A fella could buy a new baseball glove or even a live Chinese fighting fish for his bedroom, all for under five dollars. Winn’s was our window to the world and Mr. Gregory and his staff didn’t disappoint. He loaded me down with all the unsold Friday newspapers and off I went back home to help Mom stuff Santa.

Dad had been gone for several days on a pheasant-hunting trip with some buddies and was due back home late. Mom wanted to have the house decorated and ready for his return so she wouldn’t have to hear Dad complain about her puttin’ all that Christmas crap all over the place. When it came to Christmas decorations, Dad was happiest when it just happened and he didn’t have to help. Actually, that was true for just about anything regarding decorating the house. In the spring, Mom would plant new flowers while Dad fished. In the fall, Mom would help me carve a pumpkin and decorate for Thanksgiving while Dad fished. Christmas was the Super Bowl of home decorating so Dad always found a hunting trip to escape to for a few days while the house shed its normal decor and transformed into Christmas.

Decorating the house became a way to help mark time and the seasons, especially since High Bluff really only had two. Hot and Not as Hot were our names for Summer and Winter. Squarely at the start of Not as Hot, Mom would schedule herself and Miss Jan for the Christmas decorating class down at the community center. They looked forward to it all year long. Ms. Wanda LaFaye taught the class and, every year, she had homemade mulled cider and gingerbread for the ladies before they began. It might not have been snowing or even cold but inside the High Bluff Community Center, it was a Christmas wonderland.

Wanda ran the silk flower department for Mr. Rogers down at Winn’s. She kept up with the latest trends in artificial floristry. One year, Wanda accidentally drizzled some hot glue on a whole batch of fake dandelions. The women who came in thought they looked like flowers doused with fresh dew drops. Mr. Rogers was going to make her pay for the damage but the glue-drizzled mess wound up selling for three times as much, so he encouraged her to make more mistakes and start teaching classes.

This year, the ladies learned how to make giant garland strands and wreaths, but the coup de gras was the life-sized Santa Claus doll. A gentleman from the Rio Grande Valley was making the stuffed Santas from old red tarpaulins used for covering the citrus trees during the winter freezes. After a few winters, the old tarps were thrown away or, as in this case, sold up the coast as stuffable Santas. Mr. Rodriguez painted a jolly face on each Santa by hand and sold a wig and beard set, along with the suit, to the ladies for a price that made everyone happy. Courtesy of their past life, the tarps came with a lemon-fresh scent for no extra charge.

When Mom came home, she went right to work. The Andy Williams Christmas album went on the turntable and the season became real. It’s hard to describe Christmas in South Texas because often times, Dad would build a roaring fire in our fireplace but it would still be 85 degrees outside. He did it just to make Mom and me feel like it was a real Christmas. I suppose traditions are like that, they make things real even though they’re sometimes a world away. Christmas was, and still is, my favorite time of year, but this Christmas turned out to be a real shot in the dark.

We had Santa stuffed by seven o’clock that night. Mom and I marveled at how real he looked. He sat in Mom’s chair right beside the fireplace. She’d agreed to give up her chair the entire month and join me on the couch because she really liked the way Ole’ Saint Nick looked sitting there. The garland and lights were hung across the mantle and over the kitchen entrance. The tree was perfectly trimmed, adorned with all our favorite ornaments. It was the finest the house had ever looked for Yuletide.

That night, a fresh pot of Christmas chili simmered on the stove and we even had a few early Christmas Eve tamales to help ring in the season. Dad wouldn’t be home till after ten o’clock, but Mom and me were flat worn out after setting everything up. She fell asleep reading in their bed and I was asleep in my room as the Andy Williams album, set on repeat mode, played on.

The next thing I remember was gun shots—three right in a row.

Mom screamed.

Dad yelled, Stay down – I think I got him.

I heard one more round go off.

Dad hollered, Call Sheriff Wilkins!

At this point, I dialed 911 and told the operator my dad had just shot someone in our house. Mom ran into my room. She asked frantically if I was all right. Still on the phone with the operator I said, Yeah, I’m fine. Go check on Dad.

Mom yelled down the hall, Jim, are you okay?

I’m fine, I think I got him, Dad shouted back.

Oh my God, who was it? Mom hollered.

I don’t know, I can’t see anything because I can’t get the lights on. There’s crap all over the place in here. It looks like it’s rained newspaper. What the hell did you and Matt do in here? Dad yelled.

A sinking feeling hit me right in the gut. I remember telling the operator, Go ahead and tell Sheriff Wilkins to come out, but I think it’s going to be all right.

When we finally got the lights turned on, we could see Dad had shot Mom’s Santa doll three times in the chest and once in the face for good measure. Tiny scraps of Friday’s newspaper stuffing were everywhere, like a confetti bomb had exploded in Mom’s chair, straight from Santa’s chest and head.

Dad was pissed but Mom couldn’t stop laughing. When Officer Belton came running up to the house, Dad just quipped, Santa’s dead, and Carole can explain.

The next morning, Mom stitched up her chair and Dad worked to pull the .38 slugs from the bookcases that sat behind it. The stuffed Santa looked like a one-eyed Cyclops, thanks to Dad’s face shot, but the three rounds to his chest had oddly blended in with