James 'JP' Smock

I suspect that it had something to do with his Polish roots, but there’s no denying the fact that Dad liked his beer. At some points in his life, he drank a lot of beer; some would say too much, but I never saw it as much of a problem. Dad always acted respectfully and very seldom got noticeably drunk since he usually drank slowly and he had a pretty high tolerance for beer.

A short time before we were married, Cherry and I drove out to the farm to see Dad. It was early summer and Dad and the younger boys had gone to sheer the sheep. Sheering sheep in the Texas heat is a hot, sweaty job so I think Dad had doubled up on the Budweiser that day. I noticed right away that he might have had just a little too much beer, but it didn’t seem to be affecting his sheep sheering.
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No Wonder That Ewe Didn’t Have Any Babies!Read More »

If you drive down the fairly uninhabited stretch of beach between San Luis Pass and Surfside, especially in the early fall, you will usually see a few people fishing from the shore with big stiff surf rods. The last time I drove that stretch of beach, I stopped and watched a couple of guys cutting the waves in a small kayak looking boat. I didn’t stay and watch too long, but the best I could figure was that they were anchoring their rods on the beach and then hand carrying the hook and bait out past the third sandbar. Since not even the strongest guy can cast that far, it seemed to me like a pretty good idea if you know how to maneuver the kayak.
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Fishing On The Third Sand BarRead More »

This is a short story that Dad told me many times over the years.

During the late 20’s and early 30’s, Dad used to stay at one of his cousins farm in Kenefick Bottoms, just north of Dayton, Texas. The farm was in the Trinity River bottom, deep in the East Texas woods. Dad always said that this place was in the middle of some of the wildest country he had ever been in, and that’s saying a lot, coming from Dad. The place was full of wild critters, which Dad and his cousins, both the Maduzia and Polka boys, loved to hunt. As I remember the story, Joe Maduzia and his wife Mary owned the farm. Joe’s son, Robert Lee, was fairly close to Dad’s age. Dad’s cousin, Joe D Polka, who was the younger brother of Joe Maduzia’s wife Mary was living there with them at the time. Joe D was a few years older than Dad and Robert Lee.
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Who Shot The Hole In the Roof?Read More »

Whenever the news media starts their unending hurricane coverage, my thoughts always turn to memories of my Dad. I automatically think of my dad whenever I hear of a bad hurricane hitting the gulf coast. After all, how many people do you know who weathered the dirty side of one of the largest gulf coast hurricanes while staying right on the Galveston seawall.

It was early September in 1961, just before my 9th birthday when Dad and a convoy of other Southwestern Bell employees headed for Galveston. Since heavy flooding from the storm was likely, the telephone repair crews were moved into Galveston before the storm so they could begin work immediately after the storm went through. Carla was a slow moving storm and the phone crew was in the hotel for at least two days before they could begin work.
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Rita…..And A Flood Of MemoriesRead More »

Although Dad never made a big deal out of it, I know he was disappointed that his oldest son didn’t go to work for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. I know that he really wanted me to, but it just didn’t suit me. I might as well have worked for them though, since most of my childhood memories and many of my adult memories involve the phone company one way or the other. It really is kind of amazing how the phone company influenced my life.
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Growing Up With Ma BellRead More »

Marion Polka was not only Dad’s favorite uncle and his surrogate father/big brother, but he’s the one who gave Dad his nickname. Dad’s mom and most of his relatives called him Sonny, but almost everyone else called him Rip. Marion named him after Rip Van Winkle because Dad always liked to sleep and in his younger days, he was hard to get out of bed.

As conscientious and hard working as Dad was, he was hard to wake up, at least on work days. On Saturdays or holidays, he had no problem getting up early to go fishing or hunting or to kill a lamb before it got too hot. But on days that he had to go to work, it was another story. Mom would get all of us kids up and dressed for school, start breakfast and then try to wake up Dad. After a while, she got smart and began to take advantage of her load mouthed kids. She would send us in there to wake him up. We started out saying “Time to wake up Dad. It’s getting late”, but that quickly evolved into our favorite, which was “Time to wake up Dad. You better hurry up or you’re gonna get fired”. That usually worked. Two or three times of hearing that screamed in your ear by a bunch of load mouthed kids and you’d get up too.

The sun had gone down and the last of the day”s light was slipping away. The white Ford pickup truck left the creek bed and headed up the small hill toward the deer camp. Standing on the top of the hill, about 50 yards to the right of the truck, were two big doe’s, quietly grazing on what little green grass there was. The deer glanced our way, but paid little attention to us, even though the radio was tuned to KTRH and Dad and I were talking about the day”s events. Dad stopped the truck, looked at me and said, “Shoot one of them”. I grabbed my rifle and started to open the truck door. “No, don”t get out, shoot him through the window”, Dad said. No way, I have to draw the line somewhere; I”m just not going to shoot a high-powered, semi-automatic deer rifle while setting in the front seat of a pickup truck. But Dad was adamant and said, “Shoot her quick, before it gets too dark to see”.

As I set there trying to decide what to do, I thought about the events that led up to this predicament. One Friday morning in early January, my dad called me on the phone and said that we still had two doe permits left and with the deer season just about over, he didn”t want to waste them. I agreed to go to the deer lease with him and he said he would come by my house in Hockley to pick me up. At that time, Dad and I were hunting on a lease just north of Madisonville and east of Normangee.
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Pickup Truck HuntingRead More »