Mike's story...

The family I come from is large and interesting. You already know about my uncle Frog and aunt Crickett. You probably think I'm exaggerating when I tell about them...and I am, but all the stories are based on my memory of things that really happened. Here's a chance for you to read about the past from the eyes of another family member. Mike is my cousin. His memory is better than mine and he is constantly pointing out errors in my stories to which I am not the least bit interested. He's a great storyteller. Here's one of his memories he sent to me yesterday.

I am cleaning files off my work computer because they say I am going to get a new one and I guess they have a narrow minded view of personal files. I found this childhood story I wrote for someone, I can't remember who. It is true:


We were visiting our Uncle Bill and Aunt Adelaide once. Uncle Bill had made some Souse, which I believe is hog's head lunch meat. At my mother's urging, I atypically ate some.

That evening I went to the movies with my cousin, Roy Lynn. He was a few years older than I and had a car. He took me to the Lantex Theater on the town square of Llano in his 1960 Ford Falcon.

I had traveled with Roy and his sister Lynda Ray (Sissy) before in this car. He would drive it as fast as he could down hill so it would have enough momentum to crest the next hill.

The feature at the Lantex Theater was a Hammer Production zombie movie. Remember Hammer Productions? They were British horror movies of the late fifties through the early seventies designed to scare the bejeebers out of you. They typically starred Peter Cushing and/or Christopher Lee.

We settle down in the theater and some girls come by and Roy leaves me to sit with them. He was cursed with teenaged hormones, while I wasn't. So I was watching the movie alone.

The opening scene was a 19th century English village evening foggy funeral. A bunch of men were carrying a coffin from the church to the cemetery and they managed to drop it. The coffin broke open and there was this terrible looking green tinted guy in it. The gathered him all up and closed him back into the coffin and continued the procession and burial.

Later in the movie, there was a scene where a beautiful peasant girl was walking home and decided to take a short cut through the cemetery because it was getting late. She became terrified because she felt someone was following her. She is running faster and faster through the cemetery until suddenly the same dead green guy jumps out from behind a tombstone.

I feel my hair go straight up in the air and then I start feeling hot and sick. I wander out into the lobby and start drinking from the water fountain. The next thing I know I'm passed out on the floor and Roy is trying to wake me so he can take me back to his house. We make it out to his Falcon and he drives me back to his house, but during the trip I throw up all over the inside of his car.

This was the last time Roy and I went to the movies.

And.........I never ate Souse again.