THE CAST of regulars who gathered in the bar at Herb’s increased to become a varied assortment of citizens. I would have said they were an eclectic crowd, but I hate that word with every fiber in my body.
People who use the word eclectic think it makes them sound smart, but I say it only makes them sound silly, in an eclectic sort of way.
The well-established among the regulars starts off with Loyce Evetts, the wealthy ne’er-do-well who kept bimbos on the side.
Foster Barton was prominent. He owned and ran “a funeral home for dead people,” he called it.
There was Dr. Neil Forcheimer, the TCU professor of political science and world history, discounting Egypt’s fraudulent claims. He believed everything was a moral question, apart from football.
Hank Rainey was in there. The society carpenter. He had bedded down more well-off housewives than a tennis pro.
Doris and Lee Steadman were steady customers in their earlier years. That was when Doris collected lovers like women collect shoes. But her pace had slowed appreciably. Lee, who was still selling carpet, had remained capable of suggesting the best route to take if you were driving somewhere in town. That’s if you had a lifetime to listen.
Shorty Eckwood was a stump of a little gray-haired man who could have been anywhere from 90 to 105 years old. He was a retired railroad worker who dropped into Herb’s twice a day for a beer and a free meal of Premium crackers with ketchup and Tabasco. His calling in life was to remind people that the town had sports heroes before Sam Baugh and Davey O’Brien in football and Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson in golf.
They were the Fort Worth Panthers who won the Texas League and Dixie Series six times in the twenties. Shorty’s daddy said his son was busy getting born and missed seeing that bunch play. A lineup that included Ziggy Sears, Cecil Combs, Possum Moore, Jack and Clarence “Big Boy” Kraft, with Joe Pate, Paul Wachtel, and Lil Stoner on the mound.
But Shorty had his own heroes, the ’37 and ’39 Fort Worth Cats who also won the Texas League and Dixie Series. Ask him anything about their immortal infield of Lee Stebbins, Rabbit McDowell, Buster Chatham, and Frank Metha, or how the outfield changed from Homer Peel, Hugh Shelley, and Freddie Frink to Carl Kott, Walt Cazen, and Johnny Stoneham. Both clubs relied on the same two pitching aces, Ed (“Bear Tracks”) Greer and Jackie Reid.
Shorty would say, “Boy, hidy—that was baseball. The studs stayed here in the off season. They sold tires and used cars and men’s clothing and met their wives here. I wouldn’t trade one pot of collards for the whole major league.”
Among the new drop-ins was Hoyt Newkirk. He moved here from Ruidoso after losing his job as the manager of the Mescalero Country Club & Casino Resort. The Apaches found out he wasn’t part Indian. Hoyt did look more like a pot-bellied fiddle player than Geronimo.
“Leaving Ruidoso was a good thing,” Hoyt said. “I couldn’t beat them four-legged athletes. I couldn’t do it no more than I could beat them Apaches at keeping up with their money.” Hoyt settled here and was looking around for “opportunities.”
Chester Wooten managed Wooten’s Drugstore three blocks away but he could usually be seen in Herb’s doctoring his sorrow over the Texas Rangers throwing away the World Series in 2011 to the St. Louis Cardinals. I tried to soothe him by reminding him it was only baseball.
Donny Chance, a portrait painter, provided a test for Will Vinson and the other cooks by inventing his own dinners. His latest was the Bodobber. A hamburger pattie smothered in cheese, crispy-chewy bacon, chopped onions, chopped green peppers, and scrambled eggs poured over all of it. Hard to look at it.
Jeff Sagely was a nighttime regular. In the daytime he operated his own food wagon in Trinity Park. Cyclists and joggers stood in line for his spicy hotdogs and tacos. He made a living despite the fact that he was robbed once a week at gunpoint.
Three punks in their twenties were in and out of Herb’s often enough.
Bobby Downs, who had brought back the ducktail haircut, had spent most of his time ingratiating himself to Herb Macklin as the son Herb never had. That’s when Herb was still of this world.
Bobby’s running mates were Clarence “Dorito” Bracy and “Everywhere Red” Fuqua. The three of them were bagmen for bookmakers operating out of hotel suites downtown. I knew the bookies well—Randy “Boots” Dunlap, Max “Montana Slim” Kramer, and Alvin “Circus Face” Jordan.
Bobby worked for Montana Slim. Dorito worked for Boots, a rodeo cowboy in his youth. Dorito got his nickname by way of his favorite entrée—a can of bean dip with Doritos. Red Fuqua worked for Circus Face, a pudgy fellow with a fixed smile who answered his phone the same way every time. He’d say, “Tell me.”
Two other new regulars were the Low-Flying Ducks, as Foster Barton named them. They were women in their rapidly advancing sixties.
One was Gladys Hobbs, a humorless person who owned a dress shop down the street, drank straight-up gin martinis, and lived alone but within carry-home distance of the restaurant.
Her position on current events, wars, politics, sports, religion, or anything else was: “I couldn’t care less.”
The other one was Cora Abernathy. She never shut up, but never said anything interesting. That was unless you cared to hear that the first car she owned was a Plymouth Barracuda, or listen to the list of items she purchased at Costco the other day.
Cora, who was part owner of the Hasty Bakery, was of interest to most of us because her three husbands all drowned accidentally in their bathtubs at home. But no one had been able to muster up enough stamina to ask Cora for the details.
Cora did confess that she’d tried to interest The Guinness Book of World Records in the oddity, but she never heard back from them.
“Some people,” she said.
In case you didn’t know what a Low-Flying Duck was, Foster Barton was eager to define it for you. It was a lady into her sunset years who wouldn’t resist a charitable romp.