Blogabillies

This Blog Blows My Dress Up contest

by Belle

It's been busier'n hog-renderin' time around Blogabillies this week, but I stopped long enough tonight to indulge myself in some after-dinner blog reading. We all need our guilty pleasures, you know, and for a writer that often involves reading other people's words.

My friend Lisa over at the Scaffolding for Writers blog mentioned a humor-writing contest going on at Shelly Tucker's blog, This Eclectic Life, so I felt duty-bound to check it out. Turns out Shelly is a storyteller and a Texan, which is a grand-slam combination in my book. (See? My book. I just can't get away from words!)

I chuckled my way through a half-dozen of her stories. In fact, I got so sidetracked scrolling through Shelly's blog that I almost forgot about the contest. Almost. Really, how could you forgot a contest that's called This Blog Blows My Dress Up? There's a story right there in the contest title.

I decided I'd submit an entry from the Blogabillies archives, the one where I describe suffering from a bad bout with allergies and having to rely on My Mama's Recipe for a cure. Click the link and read that one if you missed it before. And be sure and check out Shelly's blog. You've still got time to enter the contest if you hurry.

You know, I feel a cough comin' on. Better go find me an empty vanilla extract bottle . . .

The Belching Buick from Hell

  by T-Bone

Kaboom!

The preschool teachers escorting small children from  cars crouched like trained detectives in the line of fire as the echo bored through the drop-off lane and ricocheted off the bricks of the brightly painted building. The Volvo-driving and minivan-maneuvering moms who were dropping off their milk-and-cereal-stained munchkins jerked around to see what was causing the racket. One woman dropped to both white panty-hosed knees on the sidewalk, clutching her little girl to her chest.

It was that loud.

For me, though, it was an everyday occurrence. It happened whenever the brakes were applied on The Bomb, my dreadfully dented 1979 Buick Regal.

The Meanest Horse in Texas

by T-Bone

I once worked on several Western wear accounts, Justin Boots and Panhandle Slim PRCA Rodeo apparel among them. We'd shoot for weeks on Texas ranches with real, working cowboys or in rodeo arenas with rodeo cowboys. They are a tough bunch. I found out I wasn't.

One morning before the sun came up, we were on a huge ranch north of Fort Worth, shooting cowboys rounding up longhorns. Just as we got set up and ready to shoot, the entire herd got upset stomachs - a polite term for what actually happened. Hundreds of bovinae suddenly unloaded everywhere - on cue, as if their colons were on a synchronized timer. The aroma hung in the air for miles.