The Alamo and Birdbrain

Here it is March 6, Remember the Alamo Day in Texas, and I’m writing my first blog post for 2020. In 1960, the year John Wayne’s Alamo movie hit the silver screen, I was in the sixth grade. Jumping ahead a year, in Texas, seventh graders take a year of Texas history. My Texas history teacher was one of only two women I’ve ever known of whose name was ‘Lady Bird.’ Lady Bird Taylor was my Texas history teacher, and Lady Bird Johnson was the wife of Texan Lyndon Johnson, then vice-president of the USA. My conclusion was that ‘Lady Bird’ must be one of those deeply Texan names, sort of like ‘Betty Lou,’ which was my mother’s name.

I remember quite clearly that Lady Bird, my teacher, cried in class in honor of the fallen heroes the day we studied the Alamo. And she fussed about the use of profanity (damn) in the movie, angry that Hollywood dared desecrate our Texas shrine with such language. For her sake, I hope Lady Bird Taylor passed on before she went to movies in the decades to follow. Safe to say she would have been rudely jolted by the language and nudity that the films of the late 60's and 70's brought to us..

Back to the Alamo, I’m a big fan of movie poster art, so enjoy this one of the Duke as Davy Crockett.

Otherwise, on this Remember the Alamo day, I received the proof copy of Birdbrain, my newest novel. I had just come in from the gym this morning when the padded envelope arrived on our doorstep, so pardon my Luckenbach, Texas t-shirt and rumpled hair. I get excited about opening the package hiding the paperback proof of a new novel. The proof is not a baby, and I’ve already seen images of the cover and the interior formatting, but there’s nothing like holding the actual first copy in my grubby hands and gloating over the fact that I made this little blue paper rectangle. Well, me and Amazon made it. (That should be Amazon and I made it, but in my 13-year-old narrator writing voice, ‘me’ goes before ‘them.’)

I wrote about Birdbrain in my last post of 2019, so please read the post under this one. Birdbrain is short, only half the length of my adult novels. It’s written in the voice of a 13-year-old boy—me--way back in years from 1958 to 1963. No sex, no teasing about sex, few big words we writers like to toss around.  I admit it has been fun and challenging to write a story for kids, in the voice of a kid who thinks he’s not a kid at 13.

My family does visit the Alamo during a summer vacation in Birdbrain. I'd didn't have to stretch my reaction to being awe-struck, not so much by the site, but by the huge toy soldier diorama of the battle that was on display in the souvenir store.

I’ll put up another blog post when I’m done proofreading and editing Birdbrain. My circle of critiquers are still hacking at it chapter by chapter, all of them trying to read it like they are kids again themselves, but still catching the adult nuances of writing good fiction and pointing out to me what needs fixing.

Meanwhile, the trees are busting out in green all over little Lockhart. Grandson Jackson starts his second try at playing youth soccer tomorrow. His first season last spring was less than stellar, but he did pick some pretty flowers while the others were chasing the ball. 😊 We’re hoping tomorrow he’ll be less focused on nature and more focused on sport. We’ll see.  Have a great March.