Celebrating 100 Years of the Texas Folklore Society, 1909-2009 Page: 334

                                
334 MEETINGS, MEMORIES, AND MORE

telling our new "mates" Down Under about the ways of Texans
and learning about barbees, boomerangs, and how to say "G'daiy,
mate." We did twenty-four shows in twenty-one days-not bad
when you consider some days were travel only. Our busiest was in
Wyalla, where we visited three elementary schools, a Rotary Club,
and did a TV interview on the same day. Our most memorable day
was in American River on Kangaroo Island, where an insensitive
hostess had scheduled us to tell the crew of the USS Joseph
Kennedy, on shore leave, all about Texas. By show time that crew
had sampled too much Australian beer to be interested in anything
except more beer and girls. Ab talked the hostess into allowing us
to entertain the American ambassador and his bored staff, one of
whom, Colonel Walt Ford, USMC, I had taught at SFA.
The trip was grand with only minor hitches. Australia is cold in
June, about thirty degrees cold, and Ab absolutely refused to take
off the one pair of longjohns he had brought along. Equally bad,
he acquired a turtleneck sweater, one like you see New England
seafarers wear in the movies, and stubbornly refused to shed either.
He demanded the co-pilot seat when we flew to Kangaroo Island,
then went to sleep flying over the spectacular rocky coast of Aus-
tralia as it faces Antarctica. And he almost got us into a fight by
ordering us beer from New South Wales, which offended a South
Australian patron of the bar in a hotel dining room. But it worked
out well in the end, and we both learned that two bulls can occupy
the same pen.
Some may not know that before Shakespeare and folklore, Ab's
first aspiration was to become a biologist, or really a herpetologist.
He loves snakes. One day after we had worked on that trail Ab
made me build for him, we walked back over an area where we had
been clearing privet and tie-vine impedimenta, me in front, when
suddenly Ab commanded "Stop!" I did, and remained as motion-
less as possible. After an eternity of thirty seconds, he said, "Okay.
That was a moccasin and I didn't want you to step on it and hurt
it." "Thanks a lot," said I, with a mixture of equal parts gratitude
for saving my life and irritation for being regarded as second in the
Pecking Order of Life.