White Settlement

White Settlement was published by Desperado Press, Raton, New Mexico, in 1996. It is the love story of my two friends from Tolar, Texas, who grew up on the hard streets of Northeast 28^th, yet found love in friendship and family. Paperback, 22 pages.

Click the Play button to view Kendall reading an excerpt from the story.

White Settlement – By Kendall McCook

(excerpt)

Tina was born on the North Side in the late 1950s when the pachucos and the chain gangs roamed the streets of Fort Worth, and the term “juvenile delinquent” was being splashed all over the newspapers to occupy the minds of prim White Suburban Southern Baptist Ozzie and Harriet types who were watching on their television screens. All those Ricky and David Nelson success stories. Those Hollywood, California make-believe tales, where all the neighbors laughed and joked and mowed their lawns and dressed up in their Sunday finest just to show each other what nice, Christian people they really were.

By the time Tina Shannon got to be twelve years old, she was already on the verge of turning into a real good-looking woman, but she wasn’t spending much time in her parents’ living room, making sad teenage romance eyes at any black-and-white T.V. teen idols. For by that 1970 year, there was some heavy shit goin’ down in the old North Side neighborhood. She didn’t know much about Viet Nam personally, but she knew there was a war overseas, and there was a whole lot happening on the streets where she lived. People smokin’ dope and drinkin’ whiskey and hangin’ out over at Fat Albert’s shootin’ pool and playin’ foosball. Older kids mostly, like that smart-aleck Randy Beall who kept smilin’ that good lookin’ smile and flashin’ that little boy grin.

She finally just about quit going to school at all, and before she was thirteen, she landed herself over at the Lena Pope Children’s Home where she finally had a chance to start sorting out her life. She decided to move back home and act right, but she never could stop being so restless, and by the time she was fourteen, she was wearing beads and struttin’ around in hip-hugger bell-bottoms flashin’ the peace sign and coppin’ a hit of acid or smokin’ a joint or maybe just ridin’ around in Randy’s ’65 Nova with its bright yellow Paint job and one blue door. Pullin’ up to the Clover Drive-In on Northeast Twenty-eighth and drinkin’ beer on those hot summer nights. Tastin’ that cold sweet Schlitz and laughin’ like there was no tomorrow. Sayin’ to each other, “We got a Schlitz and we got it made.”

It sometimes seemed like all hell was breaking loose on the North Side. The Jacksboro Highway was jumpin’ and alt the honky tonks seemed to be full of her, kinfolk. She had a good honest mother who came from the farm down in Comanche County, but Tina also had a step-father or two who kept telling her what to do all the time. She never even let her own mama make her do a damn thing. Everybody always said Tina Shannon never took no shit from nobody — not those dressed-up female school teachers — and for damn sore not those prick coaches slapping their thin-Qak paddles against the desks like they thought they was God’s gift to the ladies. God’s gift to shit is what she decided when she saw them lookin’ up her dress and smackin’ their chewin’ gum. She’d had enough of hot men sniffin’ around and grabbin’ at her sweet young ass.

It got to where in 1972 even raising hell all the time was losing its appeal. By the age of 14, Tina was growing tired of being hauled off to jail and throwing up sick and nasty out the window of somebody’s broken-down old car. She was tired of all the fighting, too — weary of the screaming young girls snatching drunken fistfuls of black hair from out of her busted head. She didn’t like waking up in the mornings not knowing where in the fuck she’d been, or who in the hell she’d been doin’ it with. Of course, she’d remained mostly faithful to Randy. So far as Tina could tell, he seemed to be the best thing that was happening on the North Side.

Since she came back hungover and still hungry from that hitchhike to Galveston with Para, Tina Shannon had been working to make some sense out of her life. Randy had been real nice to her when she got back — he didn’t ask all those mean questions other guys always asked when she’d been out somewhere else. He was just really glad to see her, and then he stopped by the Quick-Mart to get a cold sixpack of Schlitz. He laughed that happy “yip” of his and peeled out — burning rubber on the blacktop. He threw his arms around her and gave her a little hug around the shoulders and asked if she wouldn’t like a bacon cheeseburger and a large order of French fries.

It was Friday afternoon after that two-day hitch-hike, catching rides through Texas with all kinds of strung-out hippies who were on the way or coming back from somewhere. None of ‘em seemed to have jobs, but it was June, and she guessed everybody.was out of college or something. Tina had already quit school, but she felt like she had every bit as good sense as those wild college kids. Hell, most of the hippies she met were already in their twenties and still didn’t have nothin’ to show for it. She got to where she just about wouldn’t take another ride in a beat up, white Volkswagen bus.

It was too much like being back on the North Side — everyone she tried to talk to was so {tone-acid freaked-out that they couldn’t carry on a conversation with a toad. Saying crap about communism and Watergate and police states and shit like that. Maybe it wasn’t all about dicks and pussies and gettin’ drunk, fightin’ or gettin’ laid, but what both crowds said seemed much the same to Tina. People talkin’ just to hear themselves rattle on. Braggin’ about what they’d just done or “was just fixin’ to,” or what they’d just stolen. The hippies with their good dope and far-out tapes — the North Side gang with their new old cars and their gallon jugs of Gallo wine.

Click here to purchase the book and read the rest of the story.