Cagle World

Dear Reader,

Have you ever received one of those Christmas cards containing an ominously folded piece of typing paper? You know, the one where you reluctantly open it and are suddenly afflicted with an insufferable multi-paragraph essay detailing the past year’s activities of a distant relative or forgettable acquaintance.

Hopefully you’re a glutton for punishment because you are about to read another one – only this time, most of you only know me as that nut who writes about how his three daughters spend all of his cash, his wife laughs at him a lot, and his pets take turns ruining his lawn and carpet.

First, I’m pleased to say that our family is currently feeding, housing, medicating and dodging the droppings of one less semi-domesticated creature – and I don’t mean one of my daughters. 2019 saw the untimely demise of Nibbles – the hamster to end all hamsters, at least for us. Nibbles was one in a series of small rodents who have lived with us over the years – including a family of birdseed-glutted roof rats who once set up housekeeping in the walls of our laundry room (and didn’t even have the common courtesy to do an occasional load of whites).

My youngest daughter did have a hard time grappling with the harsh reality of Nibbles’ death – for about three minutes, , . But she was soon comforted by the nurturing balm of watching other people play video games on YouTube while I reverently laid Nibbles to rest in a toilet paper tube under the trampoline. In case you’re wondering, we still have two dogs, a cat, two hedgehogs, a horse, and a veterinarian who has a framed photo of me on his desk.

Our middle daughter has spent much of her spare time this year at church youth activities – when she’s not hanging out with her boyfriend, whom, incidentally, she met at church – which I’m sure God thinks is hilarious. But despite my distaste for the thought of her sharing a pew with another male figure other than the Holy Spirit Himself, I can’t really blame her – considering that I met my wife in Sunday school. I’m pretty sure the lesson that day was on whether or not Adam had a belly button, but all I could think about was how psyched I was that he gave up that rib.

On a less spiritual note, my eldest and most expensive daughter earned her driver’s license in 2019 and has been enjoying not running any useful errands for my wife and me. This is because she is constantly driving to various extracurricular practices or lessons that usually require a costly detour to Target and/or Starbucks. Speaking of costly detours, as a first-year driver, she is still learning to keep her bumpers to herself and has had a couple of fender-benders, to which I reacted by calmly assuring her that her safety is all that matters (and that I offer very reasonable interest rates on insurance deductibles and premium surcharges to be collected over the remainder of her natural life).

My wife spent 2019 in her usual kind and tolerant way – by not running away to Tonga or having me involuntarily committed. She remains the dignified, mature, even-tempered, and prudent bedrock of our family – and she’s a heck of a lot better-looking than bedrock. In addition to maintaining her impeccable character, she allowed the girls and me to accompany her on several business trips she took to fun locations this year – and she even brought us back home with her. I really don’t know what we would do without her – other than live in a Maytag box and slowly starve to death.

Overall, 2019 has been a great year for our family, and I can only hope that you, too, can look back on this past year as one with a limited number of pet burials and insurance claims.

Until next time,- happy Christmas to all, and to all a reasonable vet bill!

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Copyright 2019 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

Yes, I am one of “those” people.

About thirty minutes after Labor Day has officially ended, I feel a strange compulsion to binge on my mother’s iced sugar cookies shaped like snowmen while listening to Nat King Cole croon about chestnuts. I usually resist breaking out my collection of “international” Santa figurines – including Las Vegas Santa indulging his gambling addiction on the slots – until after Halloween. But once I’ve polished off my kids’ trick-or-treat candy, I go into full-out Christmas-prep beast mode.

I realize that my premature Yuletide activities irritate some folks, and I place the blame partly on the retail economy, which starts celebrating HallowThanksMas around the time when we East Texans are suffering from acute Eskimo envy in the sweltering month of September. And I must admit that it’s a little disconcerting to go to Walmart for a new giant unicorn pool float and walk past a tempting display of Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes. Thankfully, I can usually limit myself to five or six family-size packs.

Another reason for my pre-season holly-jolly spaz attack is the sheer magnitude of our Christmas swag. I spend most of the year expecting our ceiling to collapse under the mass of nativity sets, Christmas villages, and countless other seasonal dust magnets stockpiled in our attic. In fact, I’m resigned to the probability that I’ll eventually be taken out by a Rubbermaid tub full of decorative nutcrackers. Seriously, though, I figure if I don’t start dragging out the décor soon enough, I’ll still be stringing up lights when it’s time to overdose on Velveeta dip and chicken wings during the Super Bowl.

As an example of our fanatical festooning, we don’t allow Santa to squeeze out of our gas-log fireplace until we’ve erected not one, but two Christmas trees in our living room. One serves as our “fashionable” tree, adorned with ornaments accumulated from several trips my wife and I took overseas – before we had our three daughters and started hemorrhaging wads of cash on dance lessons, cell phones, and salted-caramel iced mochas.

The other tree features mostly homemade ornaments, many of which include photos of our daughters at various ages. This tree is a favorite of my wife and me, and when the girls aren’t vociferously expressing their unmitigated disgust at the pictures of themselves with toddler bangs or missing baby teeth, they secretly compete to see who can maneuver their own photo ornaments to the highest and most visible branches.

Eventually the tree develops a distinct top-heavy list, threatening to topple over and impale our full-figured Siamese cat, who spends most of the holiday lounging at the tree’s base and wistfully gazing upwards, wondering what it might be like to muster the energy to climb it – or even paw at a low-hanging baby Jesus made of Styrofoam and pipe cleaners.

The pinnacle of our home decorating frenzy involves the death defying installation of exterior lighting. Each year, I entertain the neighbors and risk permanent paralysis by hanging several strings of C-9 bulbs from the unnecessarily steep eves of our house. This process inevitably requires that I actually climb onto our roof for a public performance of uncoordinated acrophobia.

Taking the advice of my dad – a veritable Rembrandt of domestic holiday displays – I stay as low as possible while I’m scuttling around up there and trying to avoid hurling on the housetop. And I’m usually able to pick all of the shingle grit out of my ears and teeth by the new year.

Once all of the decorating is done and I’m in my easy chair nursing a pulled groin and a mug of hot cocoa with extra mini marshmallows, I look around at the twinkling lights, the radiant poinsettias, and the stockings hung by the chimney-insert with care, and I realize that it’s worth all of the trouble.

And if I start packing all of this away shortly, I can re-decorate the house in time for Valentine’s Day.

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Copyright 2019 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

War has come to my yard!  But this battle doesn’t involve modern conventional weapons with individual rounds of ammunition that cost almost as much as my eldest and most expensive daughter’s wardrobe. Instead, this is a battle against one of the most annoying forces of nature known to man – the scourge of autumn leaves.

At some point in mid-fall, all of the delinquent trees in my neighborhood get together in the middle of the night to vape and prank the middle-aged neat freak with the tidy lawn compulsion. The next morning I awaken to find my lawn adorned with what some people might consider a charming, colorful mosaic, but I view it as a cruel conspiracy involving the great outdoors and the Hefty Corporation to coerce me into doing yard work long after my grass has finally quit growing and turned an exquisite lifeless-beige. 

Of course, I realize that during autumn and early winter, falling leaves – along with Walmart running out of canned chili with no beans – is one of the unavoidable laws of nature and a by-product of living in densely forested East Texas.

What seems especially unfair, though, is that most of the leaves that seek asylum on my property are from other people’s trees.  It’s as if Mother Nature is trying to stand out in a crowded presidential primary by adopting a radical scheme of reverse leaf-litter socialism.  I’ve seriously considered building a great and beautiful wall – and having the neighbors pay for it.  I’m also currently trying to decide whether it would be rude to ask them to retrieve their own fugitive leaves from my yard.  After all, I occasionally clean up after my daughters’ scruffy doglets when they attempt to sabotage the lawns and sneakers of the folks next door with their homemade puppy truffles.

Speaking of dogs, when my three girls were younger, we owned two loveable and chronically smelly Chinese pugs who spent a good deal of time transforming our yard into a Lincoln-Log minefield. One fine autumn day, I decided to gather up a pile of leaves for the girls to jump in – since one of the greatest delights of children is to wallow in a mound of filthy yard rakings and emerge with a pantload of pine straw.  Although I thought I had been diligent in picking up after the pugs, my middle daughter soon found the needle in the haystack – or in this case, the doodie in the leaf pile – and was wearing it like a therapeutic body mask.  Luckily, the smell went away after a couple of weeks.

Probably the most exasperating leaf crisis I experience each year results from our rain gutters emitting tractor beams that exclusively attract dead foliage – and the occasional lizard corpse.  Sure, I could pay to have those fancy gutter guards installed for around the price of a double hip replacement, but that would rob me of the pleasure of balancing myself on a rickety ladder in gale force winds while I reach into the downspouts to drag out what looks like the aftermath of an alien C-section.

And that’s to say nothing of the full-blown toga party of unbridled leafage hosted by our swimming pool when the cold weather of the holiday season arrives.  On any given night, I can often be found freezing my sugarplums off in the back tundra as I scoop a metric ton of soggy and heavily chlorinated flora from the arctic waters of the old prune tank.

On a positive note, falling leaves do announce the arrival of some of the most special times of the year, when families gather around warm fireplaces, enjoy uplifting fellowship and engage in protracted overeating.  Which reminds me – if I ever get all these leaves picked up, I can make it to Walmart before they run out of chili.

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Copyright 2019 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

Now that America is deep into the bowels of college football season, I’m experiencing my yearly gastrointestinal angst about my Texas A&M Aggies.

I call them “my” Texas A&M Aggies because I spent an untold amount of my parents’ cash in College Station on textbooks, apartment rent, and DoubleDave’s Pepperoni Rolls in my pursuit of a Bachelor of Arts in English (yes, English) from Texas A&M University.

But despite my claims of ownership, many loyal Aggie football fans would probably label me a two-percenter. And I can’t really blame them. You see, I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch a complete Aggie football game from kickoff to post-game men’s room marathon in over twenty years. Oh, I always catch the first few series on TV, and then I simply have to escape to some less stressful activity – like giving one of my three daughters driving lessons in heavy traffic or taking all of them shopping for bras.

It hasn’t always been this way, though. My passion for Texas Aggie football began in 1987 on Thanksgiving break of my senior year in high school­­ – when I was still reveling over the fact that I occasionally needed to shave. My big brother was in his first year at Texas A&M and invited me to stay with him for the weekend and attend my first Aggie football game – the once-annual Thanksgiving Day contest between the Aggies and their arch-rivals, the Texas Longhorns. This was, of course, before the celebrated Southwest Conference devolved into the Big XII minus II and the Aggies left for greener, and bloodier, pastures in the SEC.

Thanksgiving Day began with an attempt to prepare our own home-style lunch. But our altercation with a massive skillet of hot Crisco and some raw chicken leg quarters resulted in a pile of abused poultry with a crisply charred exterior enclosing meat that probably still had a pulse. After we had choked down a tepid bite or two of the foul fowl and a few servings of undercooked Stove Top stuffing, our concerns quickly turned from salmonella to the battle about to ensue at legendary Kyle Field.

Once we were in the student section and the game had begun, I was awestruck by the size of the crowd, the electric atmosphere, and the vast number of beautiful college girls jumping and gyrating within mere inches of my unbridled seventeen-year-old pubosity. It was an unforgettable experience. And the Aggies won the game-I think.

Speaking of beautiful college girls, the Aggie football game that solidified my devotion to the team took place two years later when my future wife and I were dating. We were on hand to witness the Texas Aggies defeat the SMU Mustangs 63-14. Of course, I fully embraced the Aggie tradition that anytime the football team scores, so do you­­­­­­­ – by kissing your date on the lips. (We got engaged shortly after that game.)

So what happened? Why can I no longer watch an Aggie football game without my guts boiling like they did right after that gastronomic Chernobyl of a Thanksgiving meal in 1987? I can explain it in one word – love. I have grown to love the Aggies so much that I can’t bear to watch them suffer on the field when they fumble in the red zone, or when the defense stands around adjusting their straps while the opposing team runs unencumbered for a touchdown.

Yes, I realize that the Aggies often win – sometimes in spectacular fashion when playing against non-conference foes like Slippery Rock College for the Chronically Un-athletic. But even when they play against those so-called “cupcakes,” I find myself looking for the TUMS and an excuse to go do yard work.

So call me a two-percenter if you must. I can take it. Because I can rest in the satisfaction that all of my daughters will know how to make a U-turn safely, and they’ll never be in short supply of bras.

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Copyright 2019 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

Fall has always been my favorite time of year, not due to the splendor of the colorful foliage, the crisp breezes heralding a new season, or the savory scents of autumn that inspire us to get our pumpkin-spice freak on. Instead, what I love most about the fall is that it kicks off a series of beloved holidays in quick succession, giving me an excuse to ingest my own body weight in pie.

These indulgent celebrations begin with glorious Halloween, an event illuminated by jack-o-lanterns and awash in corn syrup.

My parents always went out of their way to make holidays like Halloween memorable for me and my big brother. On Halloween night, Dad would take us trick-or-treating throughout the greater East Texas area as we happily sweated like feral piglets and risked asphyxiation in those 1970’s plastic sensory deprivation Halloween masks with the rubber band. To this day, Mom and Dad still cap off Halloween night with a special feast of chili dogs and Frito pie – because nothing complements a gutful of candy corn and Snickers bars like a hearty serving of processed meats.

As my brother and I grew older, overdosing on nougat was no longer enough of a thrill for our pubescent systems on Halloween, so our thoughts naturally turned to toilet paper. Yes, the greatest achievement for any teenaged male was to “roll” the trees in someone’s front yard with bathroom tissue, especially if that someone distracted us in math class with her freshly glossed lips and Gloria Vanderbilt perfume.

I vividly remember the first time several of my fellow dweebs and I rolled a pretty neighborhood girl’s house on Halloween night. We could barely contain our hormones as we flailed around trying to get a good TP streamer over even the lowest pine tree branches.

I thought my dad was the coolest dude on the planet for hauling us there in the middle of the night and even serving as our getaway driver – that is until I discovered that he had made arrangements with the girl’s father in advance to ensure that we wouldn’t all wind up stuffed and mounted over their family’s fireplace. Even so, it was a thrilling experience that forever changed the way I look at Quilted Northern.

Now that I have my own children, I feel it’s my duty to carry on the Halloween traditions that are now a permanent part of my psyche and blood sugar levels. When our three daughters were little, it was so fun letting them dress up as ballerinas, fairy princesses, and various cartoon characters with expensive costume licensing contracts. I still treasure the memory of taking them trick-or-treating, helping them sort through their candy, and reminding them that Almond Joy bars are really only safe for adults.

These days, my youngest daughter is the only one of my three children who still likes to go trick-or-treating. Her older sisters are now solidly in their jaded teen years – when their reaction to just about everything I do is “SMH” (“Shaking My Head” for those of you who still use actual words) unless it involves my handing out cash.

Last year on Halloween night, we were having an epic late-October East Texas toad strangler, complete with an unnecessary display of thunder and lightning. But my youngest daughter and I wouldn’t be deterred. I know I only have a year or two left before she, too, will only look at me if I’m adorned with removable $20 bills, so I was determined to take her trick-or-treating, even if I wound up drowning in someone’s flower bed. Despite the weather, we had a great time, and my daughter finally learned to swim without holding her nose.

This year, I encourage you to experience the fun of a traditional Halloween. Purchase your children a costume that costs too much, take them trick-or-treating even if it rains, and if you don’t have young kids, you can always have a lot of fun with a jumbo package of Quilted Northern.

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Copyright 2019 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at susanjase@sbcglobal.net.

Garage sales are a little ridiculous if you think about it. As a society we spend untold millions trying to protect the sanctity of our homes from intrusion, and then we hold garage sales, where the entire point is to lure nosy strangers onto our property to rummage through our personal belongings.

I spend most of my time at garage sales fighting off my three daughters from hauling merchandise back into the house. And let’s face it – the stuff we put up for sale at these events is one “Thanks for coming” away from the city dump. I mean, who really wants to purchase a Target sack full of used My Little Pony underwear? (Oh, never mind, I actually got a dollar for those. )

One thing I’ve noticed is that there are certain types of folks who attend my garage sales, and what better way to show how “woke” I am than to categorize people.

The Early Bird

In this case, The Early Bird is a vulture, or, as we call them in East Texas, a “buzzard. ” They’re the shoppers who can’t wait for you to open your garage door at 7 a. m. and have apparently been sleeping on the lawn. On the first day of my most recent sale, they actually began opening boxes that I hadn’t put out yet, helping me arrange them. It was as if they felt sorry for my having to get up so early. And they should!As the old saying goes, “The early bird gets the slightly-stained Justin Bieber bedroom set. ”

The Lingerer

This is the shopper who apparently enjoys my company (or the aroma of my garage) because he or she won’t leave. Recently, a Lingerer spent at least a full hour carefully examining every one of the 700,000 articles of tween girls’ clothing I had for sale, and she eventually purchased a single pair of socks for a dime. She was there so long I’ll probably be able to claim her as a dependent on my next tax return.

The Childcare Deflector

Warning! If you include even a single toy in your garage sale, weary mothers with at least sixteen children each will use you for babysitting. While The Childcare Deflector leisurely browses through a massive box of mismatched Tupperware, her army of children will violate every known Hasbro safety guideline. The Childcare Deflector is oblivious to the chaos visited upon my inventory by her progeny (or at least pretends to be), and she buys nothing, not even a single warped Tupperware lid.

The Haggler

Hagglers are seasoned garage sale shoppers who imagine they’re trading in the bazaars of Istanbul. They can bring down the price on a gently-used toilet seat from a dollar to a nickel, and they’re fully aware that you might actually pay them to haul away this junk.

The Announcer

The Announcer is almost always a middle-aged man, usually wearing a white t-shirt he outgrew in the 1980’s, suspenders and camouflaged cargo shorts. About halfway up the driveway, he bellows, “I’m lookin’ for guns and tools!”I then have to admit that the only two guns I own were sympathy gifts from my dad (and I’m not exactly sure where they are), and most of my tools are still in their original packages. The Announcer does buy a box of doorknobs.

The Last-Minute

The Last-Minute catches you by surprise as you’re sweeping the garage and packing up what’s left. You haven’t had a shopper for an hour, and you’re contemplating your next trip to Walmart where you’ll blow everything you earned at the sale on ham and deodorant. The Last-Minute always morphs into The Lingerer, so you sweat for another hour and earn a whole quarter on a NASCAR coffee cup.

Once the Last-Minute finally tears himself away, I sprint to put down the garage door. I still have some work ahead packing and cleaning, but I always feel a strong sense of satisfaction at what I’ve accomplished. In fact, I usually start planning my next sale.

I have to hurry, though. The buzzards are already setting up tents on the lawn.

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Copyright 2019 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at susanjase@sbcglobal. net.

For the past dozen summers, my family has made the drive of nine or more hours (depending on the number of putrid gas station restrooms we visit) from East Texas to Orange Beach, Alabama. This year, in addition to my wife and three daughters, I was accompanied by my mother, my in-laws and two of our nieces, so the drive basically took the entire month of July.

Our reasons for repeatedly traveling to Orange beach are simple: it’s a relatively inexpensive vacation that keeps our children happily occupied for several days and allows us to avoid going to Disney World. Although I enjoy being with my family away from the hustle and bustle of work, school and boyfriend drama, one needs to accept the reality of the beach. People are always touting the beautiful sugar-white sand of The Emerald Coast. What they seem to have forgotten is that sand is really just dirt that’s had a bath. In fact, the bath water is teeming with millions of organisms, and none of them are housebroken. Why do you think it’s salty?

And then there’s the dreaded sunscreen ritual. Before we ever get the pleasure of frolicking around in the water and lodging enough sand in our crevices to accommodate a family of meerkats, we subject ourselves to enhanced sunscreen interrogation techniques, primarily performed by my wife. If sunscreen were paint, my wife would be Jackson Pollock. She applies it with such gusto and in such vast quantities that I’m pretty sure it’s contributing to climate change. Despite all of the whining, wailing and whimpering (mostly from the girls), she always manages to get us fully protected from the natural rays of the sun by coating us in a thick layer of synthetic chemicals.

My consolation for putting up with the sunscreen and sand is that all of these activities are interrupted periodically by patronizing some of my favorite restaurants on the planet. Since I only visit these places once a year, I feel like I have to eat enough to make it last – and embarrass everyone at the table. Whether we dine at The Original Oyster House, Lartigue’s Seafood Market, or Lillian’s Pizza, it’s always a beautiful reunion memorialized with the maximum recommended dose of Pepto.

After dinner, we usually visit one of about a thousand delightfully tacky souvenir shops lining the main drag along the beach – because no trip to the ocean would be complete without trying to decide between a shellacked puffer fish or a shark tooth necklace, all lovingly made in Taiwan. Actually, my daughters usually choose a memento that has nothing to do with the beach. One time we came home with a pig puppet that made an oinking noise, and this year’s purchases included a t-shirt emblazoned with a smiling llama. Ah, treasures from the ocean!

As night falls on the beach, we like to spend an hour or two tormenting the local wildlife, namely the native ghost crabs skittering along the shoreline. Equipped with flashlights and overpriced plastic critter nets, we flail around like spastic badminton players trying to capture as many crabs as possible. My main goal in this endeavor is to avoid getting wet or spraining an important appendage. Inevitably, though, I’m called upon to run into the surf to get “that big one” with the massive claws that can’t wait to test my resistance to cursing when I pick it up through the net. Once we have a bucket full of these weaponized cockroaches, we stand in a circle and perform the release ceremony, which results in lots of high-pitched squeals (mostly from the girls).

The yearly trip to Orange Beach has become a special tradition for our family. In fact, I’m already feeling the longing to head back east and make more precious memories with my wife, daughters and steamed shrimp. Until then, I can always get out my pig puppet and wear my llama t-shirt to remind me of the ocean.

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Copyright 2019 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

To visitors from all over the world, the city of San Antonio is a salsa-infused melting pot of Texas history, art, and culture. To the delight of my three daughters, however, it is so much more. In fact, they could do without the history, art and culture altogether as long as they’re within walking distance of a Starbucks, a fashion retail center, and an appropriate backdrop for a cute selfie.

Luckily for them, San Antonio has it all, and all of it accepts my credit cards.

On past trips, my family toured famous sites like the River Walk and the Alamo, where we supported the industry responsible for those fake coonskin caps that wind up in yard sales throughout the country. So this summer, we wanted to get off the beaten path and find new ways to deepen our debt.

We arrived in The Alamo City just in time to check in to our hotel, overwhelm the porter with the magnitude of our luggage, and make it to our first attraction – an outdoor light show called “The Saga. “This captivating presentation displays an animated history of San Antonio, projected onto the towering facade of the San Fernando Cathedral while you view it from the crowded plaza, seated in a puddle of (mostly) your own sweat. As with any event of educational or cultural value, my youngest daughter’s enthusiastic reaction consisted of her repeatedly asking either, “Is it almost over?” or “How much longer?”Although the show was beautiful, the summer heat and the unforgiving paving stones in the plaza made sitting there a truly punishing experience for those of us who lack sufficient junk in the trunk.

On day two of the trip, my wife had a business meeting, so my daughters sweet-talked me into renting electric scooters to ride from our hotel to the Pearl District, a trendy shopping area on the grounds of the former Pearl brewery complex. While the girls thoroughly enjoyed navigating the city streets and several dangerous construction zones on their scooters, I felt like an inebriated walrus on a balance beam.

Fortunately, the Pearl District is a scooter-free zone, so I could try to regain my dignity once we were on the property and my daughters had turned their attention to spending. Their primary object was an upscale bakery/cafe full of hipsters wearing skinny jeans and excessively groomed facial hair. Although I enjoyed the air conditioning, I suddenly found myself bankrolling a rather extravagant snack of Parisian macarons and designer waters in glass bottles that my daughters assured me were “really cool. ”

Our final day in San Antonio culminated in a nocturnal tour aboard the one and only “Ghost Bus,” a tricked-out passenger shuttle promising to take us on a fascinating jaunt through some of the most haunted parts of the city,- for about the price of a new set of tires for the Ghost Bus. The tour was led by a vivacious young lady in Victorian dress who handed us all a mini flashlight and a battery-powered “ghost meter” that looked suspiciously like something sold in the electrical department at Home Depot. Along with the interesting narration aboard the Ghost Bus, we were encouraged to disembark and explore a few sites with our ghost meters while the bus driver laughed at us. We didn’t see any ghosts, but we did enjoy ourselves and learned some interesting facts about the city, like how to make a killing by taking a party bus full of vacationers on a ghost tour.

Regardless of how often we travel to San Antonio, the city never disappoints. We always manage to have fun, learn something new, and visit at least two shopping malls. And we still can’t resist taking a few photos out in front of the Alamo, where legendary heroes of Texas fought for our right to live in the Lone Star State and max out our plastic on Parisian macarons, ghost meters and coonskin caps.

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Copyright 2019 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at susanjase@sbcglobal. net.

My family is currently experiencing an outbreak of a condition most parents dread. No, I don’t mean the 24-hour stomach bug – although it sometimes lasts about as long and has similarly repulsive symptoms. Instead, my two older daughters have come down with a serious case of the boyfriends.

I knew it would happen eventually, but I was hoping it would be closer to when I reach the latter stages of decomposition. It seems like yesterday when I was the only male of any species that my three daughters were interested in, and all other boys were still “icky.” (They still are icky, by the way, but as girls age, they develop a resistance to boy cooties.)

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this disturbing turn of events based on my own history of dating. Ever since I “married” my girlfriend during kindergarten recess in a beautiful but brief ceremony involving rings made of Play-Doh and a minister wearing a Big Bird t-shirt, I’ve had a keen romantic interest. I won’t even get into the amorous exploits of my teen years, except to say that they were an acid-washed denim blur of Polo cologne fumes and Richard Marx ballads. But these experiences don’t make it any easier to accept that my little girls are growing up, and I’m that much closer to wearing black dress socks with shorts and suspenders.

Nowadays, when a hairy-legged interloper first comes to the house in hopes of taking one of my daughters out on a date, I always give him my famous “dad talk.” This conversation includes a reminder that when my daughter is in his hormone-enflamed presence, he is responsible for all aspects of her welfare. The young dude-person is only allowed to respond in the affirmative, followed by “Sir,” “Your Excellence,” “Your Eminence,” “O Captain! My Captain!” or some other appropriate honorific. I then offer to show him my collection of frozen cadavers. Ha! No, really, I just assure him that I know all of the good places to hide a body.

Once one of my daughters leaves on the date and I finish blubbering, my wife and I begin obsessively tracking her with the nifty Life360 app on our iPhones. For those of you still using a phone that requires you to extend an antenna, Life360 is a smartphone application that enables you to see the exact location of your child’s smartphone at all times. (I’m still waiting for the upgrade that allows me to deliver a mild electric charge to my daughter if she gets too close to her male counterpart’s make-out zone.)

When the date finally concludes and I see the headlights of the friend-boy’s car from between the window blinds, through which I’ve been squinting for the previous ten minutes, I usually find an excuse to go out front – like a sudden need to pull weeds, in the dark. I know it sounds overprotective, but I feel it’s my responsibility to ensure that the only physical “sharing” going on in the car involves a phone charger.

So far, I’m pleased to report that the young men my daughters have dated are well-behaved and polite. (I also know their parents – and have access to embarrassing childhood photos.) More importantly, I’m very proud of the lovely, sensible young ladies my daughters have become. And I want them to know that even when they’re all grown up and married with children of their own, I’ll still be here for them, wearing my black dress socks with shorts and suspenders while I pull weeds in the front yard.

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Copyright 2019 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

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When I was dating my wife (and still pretending to be charming), I once suggested we grab an old blanket, purchase a generous supply of processed lunchmeat and go on a picnic. In my romantic desperation, I had apparently forgotten that we live in East Texas, where being outside anytime between the months of April and December is likely to involve projectile sweating and a raging case of chiggers.

Based on this experience, you can imagine my skepticism when we were invited to an outdoor “Family Fun Night” at my daughters’ school on a recent summer evening, which is also prime hunting season for our local mosquitoes that are roughly the size of Air Force One.

I was especially concerned that the invitation encouraged us to “bring a blanket. “I’ve now come to believe that the only good reason to have a blanket outside is to cover myself in the morning so I don’t have to put on pants while waiting for the dogs to make dead spots on the front lawn.

Despite these reservations, my youngest daughter was excited about seeing her school friends after missing them for an entire month, so I was determined to make the best of it – and earn some “I love you, even though you’re really grumpy and make rude noises” dad points. My two older daughters were conveniently “busy” that evening with their own friends, scorching my credit cards and overdosing on caramel macchiatos at a local coffee shop that I should own by now.

When we arrived at the event venue (the school parking lot and adjacent playground), I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by a covered pavilion with tables and chairs accompanied by succulent clouds of grilled hamburger smoke wafting in my direction. All was not lost!We wouldn’t have to use that darned blanket and eat on the ground like campers waiting in line for tickets to a Donald Trump rally. All I needed now was some central air conditioning, a recliner, my remote control and enough privacy to scratch in peace.

Shortly after our arrival, there was an announcement that the food was ready. This was getting better and better, and I only knocked over a couple of folks (namely my wife and daughter) making my way to the front of the line. The only bad part about being first in line was that once I sat down with my food, all of those other slowpokes had to walk past me, ogling my burger and moving their mouths in time with my chewing while they waited their turn.

After the burgers, we headed over to the snow cone booth for a dessert item that always manages to run down the back of my arm and drip from my elbow. But these were no ordinary snow cones. They were the fancy designer type with names like Lemon Bloom, Sweet Sunshine and Yeti Droppings. I chose one with a delicious mix of flavors described as “Juiced Pineapple and Cream of Coconut. “I did take issue with the official name of this flavor, though, especially when the dude taking my money shouted, “Get this man a HoneyMoon!”

My youngest daughter’s favorite parts of the event were the water activities, including a dunking booth and one of those giant inflatable water slides. After every kid there had gone through them about a hundred times each, the water in both ended up looking a lot like a Yoo-hoo chocolate beverage. And since we didn’t get the memo about bringing a towel or a swimsuit, we took most of the urchin runoff home with us in the car.

Family Fun Night turned out to be a lot of fun after all, and our daughter had a blast. So let me encourage you and your family to make some sandwiches, spread out a blanket, and have your own family fun night.

Just remember to crank up the A/C and keep the remote control handy.

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Copyright 2019 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].