All Hat and No Cattle
The Ride of Our Lives - Episode Six
Upon leaving San Antonio, we continued eastward with the intention of making it to Beaumont, Texas, not far from the Louisiana border. During my time at NBC News, I had traveled to Texas on many occasions, always on the lookout for tiny towns with names begging for explanation. Muleshoe. Krum. Fate. Idalou. Fred. Wink. Poteet. Plum. Turkey. New Deal. Happy.
Along the way, I had many encounters with Texans bearing two first names. Jim Bob. Donna Belle. Lou Anne. John David. The “double first name” tradition (or triple or quadruple) is strong all over the south as noted in that great send-up of a country song “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother” - and it’s classic first line.
“He was born in Oklahoma,
His wife’s name is Betty Lou Thelma Liz.”
(check out the song on YouTube or Spotify - it’s great)
Of course, it should be noted that the song was penned by Ray Wylie Hubbard and made famous by singer Jerry Jeff Walker - talented double namers, only one of which was legit from birth. Ray Wylie was born in Oklahoma and reared in Texas but Jerry Jeff started out life as Ronald Crosby in Oneanta, New York before hitting the road, eventually settling in Austin, Texas. His first two stage names were Jerry Ferris and Jeff Walker before mixing them together legally into Jerry Jeff Walker, sometime in the late 60’s.
(Jerry Jeff Walker)
Perhaps it was Jerry Jeff’s music, piped through our RV stereo system, that inspired my east coast, city-reared, 87 year old Irish father to think that leaving Texas without purchasing a cowboy hat would diminish his manhood. So the alert went out to find an authentic western-wear shop before crossing the border into Louisiana. We found such a place, The Bar B Western Store, just northeast of Beaumont in a little town called Vidor.
The proprietor had another interesting name which got me thinking about my 1997 Today story on an east Texas man whose odd moniker made him stand out as a symbolic nobody. The story was inspired by a casual conversation at home when a family member muttered something like, “Oh, any Joe Blow can figure that out.”
I had heard that expression hundreds of times, but oddly on that occasion, a dim lightbulb flickered in some dark region of my poorly wired brain, triggering this thought:
There must be a real Joe Blow out there!
It was the pre-internet, no Siri era, so to find Mr. Blow, my only option was to dial 411 (AKA directory assistance) and talk to an actual, living-breathing human being, almost always female, called a telephone operator. They are now extinct.
The conversation went as follows:
Operator: “Information, may I help you?”
Mike: “Yes, I am looking for a man named Joe or Joseph Blow. B-L-O-W.”
Operator: “What city and state, please?”
Mike: “Anywhere USA.”
Operator: (pause) “Is this a joke?”
Mike: “No.”
Somehow, in less than a minute, she found a Joe Blow in the town of Van, Texas and gave me his telephone number which I immediately called.
And this is how that conversation went.
Joe Blow: (heavy Texan drawl) “Hello.”
Mike: “Is this Mr. Joe Blow?”
Joe Blow: “It is. Can I help you?”
Mike: “I hope so. My name is Mike Leonard. I’m a reporter for NBC News and I would like to come down to Van and do a story on you for the Today show.”
Joe: “Now why would you want to do that? I’m just an average guy.”
Mike: “I know. You’re Joe Blow.”
For reasons unfathomable in today’s mistrusting era, he agreed to accommodate me, and a portion of that NBC Today story is included in the following video - Episode Six of The Ride of Our Lives…which includes another mention of a theme I call, the factor of one, highlighting the significance of every human being encountered in life.
(The Ride of Our Lives - Episode Six - runs 7:44)
For paying subscribers, I will soon start adding outtakes of humorous/touching scenes from our journey, as well as other video content, including home movies. To go with today’s fixation regarding the cultural highjacking of people’s given names, posted below is my 2005 Today story on a humorous, elderly man whose life suddenly changed about eight years earlier with the publication of a certain series of extremely popular books and then movies. His name…Harry Potter.
