Monthly Archives: April 2016


Forth Worth Five

The problem with being a slippery sort is that it’s so easy to slip up.  Kid Curry–the most wanted outlaw of his time and cohort of Butch and Sundance–probably changed his alias more often than his underwear.  He and those he ran with were so careful to ride under the radar that even when they made the mistake of having their picture taken, lawmen spent years looking for someone who could identify them. It was the already widowed bride from the wedding the fellas dressed up for, who finally provided aliases. Even she didn’t know their actual names. I learned the iconic tale […]


Cement Sinker? 2

Concrete seemed not to be the best choice for shipbuilding. Who would have thought? The U.S. government tried using it during World War I because steel was in short supply. One of those ships, the SS Selma wasn’t completed until the war was over, so she was used as an  oil tanker for 11 months.  It wasn’t her fault that a reckless steersman put a hole in her, or that no one knew how to fix it.  She’s still toughing it out in the shallows off Galveston almost 100 years after she was abandoned there. As a shipwreck she’s a grabber. I wish I […]