Top Shelf Ink

Photography by Karen Mitchell Smith

I saw his bike as soon as I pulled up to the convenience store. It was dusk, and having spent the day in my hometown, I was ready to make the hour-long drive to my home. Planning for a quick dash into the store to pick up a Coke, I suddenly was confronted with a ramshackle bicycle piled high with a bedroll and other odds and ends and a big sign on the back: Hungry.

He stood at the counter, a bag of Doritos and a cup of coffee beside a crumpled dollar bill and a pile of change. He looked at the corn dogs baking under the heat lamps and, although I couldn’t hear what he said, I assume he asked how much they cost because when the cashier answered, the man just shook his head and let his shoulders drop a little lower. I felt a little stunned. Not at the sight of a homeless man. I’ve lived in big cities and dealt with the homeless one-on-one in ministry on many occasions. No, the shock came from the fact that he was there, in Breckenridge, Texas, population just over 5,000. The Mayberry of my childhood. The place that I could always go home to for safety and security, for familiar faces, for love and acceptance. Not a perfect place by any means, but a place, for me at least, removed from some of the harshest realities life holds. And there he was. The symbol of despair, hopelessness, and worst of all, helplessness — all the things you might find in the big city, but not in your hometown.

He headed to a booth in the back of the store as I walked to the soda fountain. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as he tore into the little bag of chips and devoured them like the starving man he most likely was. I caught his eye and he nodded a greeting. His unkempt, long white beard brushed his chest and the knitted stocking cap on his hair spoke of hard use. He wore a thin army-green coat with the collar turned up. Not much protection against the sharp wind blowing outside. I nodded back to him and smiled.

At the counter, I told the cashier I’d take his last two corn dogs. When I handed them to the surprised homeless man, I mumbled the cursory “God bless you,” wishing I had more to give him. Wishing I could change something for him, but knowing I could not. His surprised eyes met mine again. His were brown. Big and sad and devoid of hope. I prayed for him as I drove away from Mayberry and toward my warm, comfortable custom-built home, where I would soon curl up on my leather sofa with a good movie and a cozy blanket. I prayed for the man who would lie somewhere in a ditch tonight, with a shabby sleeping bag between him and the cold, hard ground. I asked God to give him hope, to give him mercy. To lead him to where someone could help him and show him the love of a Savior who was also a wanderer with no place to lay his head. And the thought that we, as a society, completely miss the point of life plagued me all the way home. We get and get and buy and buy. Consume and pile up things that have to be maintained and dusted and cleaned and organized, then we sell them in our garage sales and donate them to the Goodwill, so we can make room for more.

Change has been the buzz word since the November 2008 elections, and it is the engine that drove the Obama campaign to Pennsylvania Avenue. But corporate change begins with individual transformation. Change cannot be legislated. It can’t be mandated and it can’t be demanded. We each must find our place and do what we know to be the right thing.

I don’t know whether I made a difference in that homeless man’s life beyond this day. Maybe tonight he crawled into his bedroll without an empty gnawing in his stomach, but will he tomorrow night? What about the next? It’s nearly overwhelming to think about the enormity of this issue. Yet,  I’m reminded of the story about the man who found hundreds of living starfish washed onto the shore. He patiently threw them back one at a time and when someone asked what kind of difference he could possibly make, he answered, “I can’t save them all, but it matters to this one. And this one. And this one.”

My actions did matter to that man tonight, of that I’m sure. The real question is, can I matter to someone tomorrow?

Google the words “cutting horse capital” and the first eight pages that come up on the search engine revolve around Weatherford or Parker County, Texas. And as the old timers would say, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.” Translate that to: Where there are horses, there is a plethora of support/servicing industries. Veterinarian Sonny Seale of Garner Equine is the perfect example.

Lured to Parker County by the burgeoning performance-horse industry in 1995, Seale came to the “Cutting Horse Capital of the World” just one year after graduating from Texas A & M. Thirteen years later, he’s on the cutting-edge of equine medicine, employing advanced medical diagnostics and treatments to his patients. [More…]

‘You just passed gate three, looking for gate four!” yells the navigator as the vehicle careens action-movie style — two wheels on the ground, two in the air — around the tight curve. The navigator hangs on precariously, leaning to the high side to balance the rig.

Sounds like a scene from a high-speed chase on the big screen, but it’s not. It’s Competitive Carriage Driving, and it’s the fastest growing equine sport in the world — a sport that requires coordination, driving skill, equine sense, athletic ability and guts.

Sixty-five-year-old Jean Stuard of Burleson should know; she’s been doing it for more than 20 years. [More…]

With gas prices topping more than four dollars a gallon and predicted to hit five bucks before summer’s end, people are looking for ways to alleviate the pump pain. Sure, you could get on the six-month waiting list for a Prius or Civic Hybrid and drop 25,000 dollars to get 50 miles to the gallon, but if you think about it, that 25,000 dollars could buy a lot of gas. On Monday, both the Today Show and Good Morning America had spots about the real cost of hybrids with the general consensus being that it would take about two-to-five years or more (depending on whether you’re buying a small hybrid or the SUV variety) to break even. In the meantime, hopefully, gas prices will settle down.

So, what if you don’t have a cool 25-grand to drop on a new, eco-friendly ride? Don’t despair; saving money on gas isn’t a science, it’s a discipline. If you’re willing to exercise a little self-discipline and make a few sacrifices, these five simple tips will beef up your bottom line and take some of the sting out of the summer price hike.

• Carpool  In 2005, the US Census Bureau found that 9 out of 10 workers drove cars to work and 77-percent of those drove alone. A little basic math will tell you that if you drive 10 miles to work and 10 miles back, and your car gets 20 miles to the gallon, at 4.00 per gallon, you’re spending 20.00 a week in gas alone. That’s 1,040 dollars per year, not including the extra costs involved in maintaining your car, like oil changes, tire maintenance, fuel filters, etc. Websites like rideshare.com and erideshare.com can help you find people to carpool with, or check the bulletin board in the breakroom at work. The more people you carpool with, the more you save. As a bonus, carpooling reduces carbon gas emissions, reducing the amount of greenhouse gas in the air. Besides, those 30-minute traffic jams don’t seem so long when you have people to talk to!

• Streamline Your Errand Days  Look for ways to organize your trips so that you aren’t running out to the store several times a day, or even several times a week. Plan a week’s menu, make a shopping list, and get all your groceries in one place. I knew a woman who went to three or four different grocery stores on her shopping day to get the best buys. In today’s economy, you’ll spend your grocery savings on the gas it takes to go to three different stores. Plan your errands and shopping trips so that you take a logical route that doesn’t have you backtracking across town, and try to take care of everything you need to do that week all on the same day.

• Smooth and Steady  Sudden starts and stops waste fuel and cause your engine to work harder than necessary. Discipline yourself to accelerate smoothly and come to a coasting stop when you see a stoplight or stop sign ahead. Also, some drivers have a tendency to constantly change their foot pressure on the gas pedal. Not only are you likely to make your passengers car sick, you’ll burn extra fuel. Keep a steady pressure on the accelerator and don’t rest your left foot on the brake pedal. This causes drag that makes your engine use extra gas to compensate.

• Check Your Air Pressure  Under-inflating your tires may provide a smoother ride, but it actually wears out your tread faster and causes your car to burn more gasoline. Inflate your tires by about 10 pounds over what your owner’s manual prescribes to save on gas and give your tires a longer lifespan.

• Use Your Cruise Control Driving 65 miles per hour, instead of 70, will save about 10-percent on fuel usage. Set your cruise control and avoid getting behind slow moving cars, so you aren’t speeding up and slowing down continually. Keep a steady pace with your windows rolled up and air conditioner on. Having your windows down on the highway causes a strong wind drag that demands more fuel.

On Thursday, May 15th, the Texas senate passed Bill 1031, which may very well put an end to what has become an exercise in fear and stress for tens of thousands of students across the state — the TAKS test as we know it. While in theory, the TAKS, spawned by The No Child Left Behind Act, was a brilliant concept, in practice, well….let’s just say it didn’t quite meet benchmarks. (more…)

Like the commercial says, “Life comes at you fast.” Take tonight for example. My seventeen-year-old daughter comes in my bedroom and very casually says, “Hey, did you see on the national news this week that a kid at my high school was arrested Tuesday for bringing a gun to school? No, actually, I hadn’t seen that. And why was I just now hearing it from her? Well, because she’s seventeen, and she tells me things when she thinks about them. They usually come in the order of importance to her:  Boyfriend News, Dance Team News, Shopping Adventure News, Grades and Teacher News and, oh yeah, The Kid that Sits Next To Me in Economics Was Arrested for Having a Gun Shoved in His Pants News. Literally. This boy sits beside her in their economics class and on the day he was arrested for having a 9mm shoved into his waistband, there he was, sitting beside my daughter.  Gossiping, flirting. Doing the things teenage boys do at school, all the while with the cold steel of a gun pressed against his belly.

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