JACOB CLYDE

"The sky seemed to be made of mother of pearl; gloriously pink, yet containing a fish-scale effect which reflected all the colors of the rainbow. Never had I seen such a beautiful sky." -real estate agent Buford T. Morris, who happened to look out his bedroom window at first morning light in Galveston on September 8, 1900- the day before the hurricane turned the city into an "Atlantis," leaving over 6,000 dead. "Informal estimates placed the toll at 8,000, even 10,000, not including the several thousand…

I love this story. This is a Texas story about back when Greg and Linda had horses. Greg said he woke up one morning and couldn't believe his eyes; there was a horse drinking out of the kitchen sink! Then he had to carefully lead the horse outside so as not to ruin the floor. Hey, what can you do when you are a thirsty horse When I was in Corsicana Texas back around 2008 I talked to a woman who ran a thrift store and who also had horses. She said one of the horses could unlatch the gate, open the front…

Back about 2008 the Caravan broke down near Marietta, Oklahoma, just north of the Texas State line. A State Trooper stopped to assist and after about an hour of great conversation a wrecker came and pulled my van into Marietta. The trooper put me up in a motel and told me someone would come by and look at my van in the morning. When I woke up I unlocked the van, opened up the hood and went back to get a cup of coffee. A little bit later I heard a knock on the door and a young kid said, “Your van’s fixed…

I've learned to appreciate the seeming little things in life. I may have mentioned this before but in the back of the stage at a club in Detroit (left by the band that was to play the weekend after the Thursday we played) was a vintage Fender amp. I don't remember if it was a super reverb, a twin reverb or what but what really tickled me was the old worn paisley print amp cover. It brought me back to a point in time, when I was a kid, when everything was paisley print or polka dot or something similar. I…

I want to tell you about a brief therapeutic trip I took to the Gulf Coast a few years back. It was at a time when I really needed some diversion therapy. In telling you this story I want to tell you that this trip was kind of like my favorite Twilight Zone episode about a guy on a train ride home and a town called Willoughby. In this episode the main character would always look out at a small friendly almost magical town called Willoughby (actually he would fall asleep on the train ride home from work…

When I think about slide (or bottleneck) guitar I always think back Charlie Patton's "High Sheriff Blues" but there are some later main slide guitar guys that stand out in my mind. This is for some of you guys that are starting out digging or playing slide guitar.Here's a few of the slide guitar boys 1.) Roy (chops not chaps) Rogers.(check out his "That's Right," as an example) 2.) Sonny Landreth ("Congo Square," "True Blue" and "Creole Angel") 3.) Elvin Bishop would surprise you ("She Puts Me in the…

Here’s another weird story about a trip back to Michigan from Kansas. We were wondering if we were going to come back via Memphis or Minneapolis. I had never seen either city but chose Memphis this time around. When we got in state and in Kent City we decided to stop in at the post office. It was then that we had heard that the bridge went down on 35 near Minneapolis. If we would have chosen to come back via Minnesota we may have been caught on or near that bridge.

I feel compelled to tell you again about the time I couldn’t find Ponca City. I was driving on 35 and really wanted to see the flea market that everybody had talked about in Ponca City. I had been up almost all night but I assumed I was doing okay; I felt pretty good. I just kept right on driving even though I wasn’t pressed for time. When I got to the vicinity of Ponca City I couldn’t find it! I said to myself, “I know it’s right here. I always go by it here!” I drove quite a few more exits south and…

Some of you might remember when I used to write about how negative things actually worked out for good. Well, one time I was going back down to Kansas but when I got to the Mississippi River the bridge was out and there was a detour. This was definitely an inconvenience, even though I wasn’t really pressed for time. I did the only thing I could do- I followed the detour, which proved to be a real delight I got to get a close look at the Riverwalk in Davenport and got to see the big statue of Bix…

Talking with friends about travel and the adventures of the road I decided to bring back a story I told you about a few years back. It was around Christmas time that I was down in east Texas, west of Beaumont and South of Vidor. I found myself on a back road in the bayou country near Port Arthur. It was getting late in the day and as I was driving south I saw something in the distance that at first looking like a lone skyscraper out in the middle of nowhere. I was charmed by this and figured I would drive…