Mrs. Alda Daniell, Mrs. Lucille R. Duke. Mrs. Merle Holdrige and Miss Roger Mae Smith pushed proper english during my sentence in De Leon High School, and did their best to make gold out of sawdust.  They won some, lost some and forfeited a game or two.  Intelligence ain’t very effective if there’s no receiver, and I fell into that category.  I’m ashamed to admit ir, but it the gospel truth.

I suffered a terminal disregard for rigid rules when I applied my pencil to paper and loosed my creative urges, and that malady only strengthens as time elapses and water passes under the bridge.

Bruce McGinnis, of Amarillo, has similar tendencies, and I’ve read his books with shock and awe, and yes—he was an unfinished product when he migrated to the Wind and Sand Trap of Texas.  His old daddy Gayle was a coffee shop orator and a drinking buddy of mine.  Frequent translations of his oral soliloquies graced my articles over the years, and he never once responded to one of my questions with an “I don’t know.”  My kind of man.

I read a heap of books, and I dare you to find a clone for Cormac McCarthy when it comes down to authoring a book.  His “No Country for Old Men” won big at the recent Academy Awards.  I have not seen the movie but I did read the book, and it is an impressing creation, but an earlier work from 1973 was the bare knuckle champ of his parade of nonconforming array.  He has no more use for rules that I do, and he’s not hesitant at crossing the dotted line.  Alda, Lucille, Merle and Roger Mae would have blowed a head gasket if they had partook of his “Child of God.”  Those ladies would have swooned.

His arsenal of punctuation marks is devoid of quote markings, apostrophes and commas.  But he does drop in a colon from time to time and oft times a sentence will just peter out and fade away with a three dot trail.

The punctuation is not the only transgression that might be shocking to some, but if you can peruse the works of Kinky Friedman and Larry McMurtry you’ll be able to make the trip without blushing at what was once only available in the bus stop restrooms of our fair land.

And—just in case you’ve got the impression that I disapprove of McCarthy’s work—you got it all wrong.  The old order changeth and the evolution of grist to entertain, educate and titillate the reading public is either improving or deteriorating, but it is definitely achangin’.

¿Quien Sabe?

It’s your call.

Let me hear from you.

My phone number is 254-893-5063.

My postal address is 333 W. Ayers, De Leon TX 76444.

You can e-mail me at chupp@charleschupp.com.

By Charles Chupp, Copyright ©2008 Charles Chupp