WT BOOK FESTIVAL AUTHORS

Fall didn't come until 4:18 today, but the cold weather got here this morning. I got 0.20" of rain this morning. I drove to the Abilene Public Library to hear three great local authors tell about their books and I now have 3 books I haven't read. There was a good crowd but a lot of Abilineans are involved in the Festival. Lead off speaker was my friend from the Cross Plains FUMC who lives near Pioneer on a ranch. You can envision local characters in her book set in the mythical town of Brangus, TX. She took off on the UFO sightings around Stephenville for inspiration and the stories are have a lot of local characters.

The next two authors grew up a barbed wire apart on ranches at Clyde. Edward Murray, A&M '73, writes fascinating short stories and when he reads them they are like the actress reading LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE RED SHOES. He is a real performer and you feel like you are in the conversations.

The other speaker from Clyde, Bob Favor, has a bunch of stories that he didn't make up, although he may have embellished them since noone was there to contradict him. He was a Highway Patrolman who became a Texas Ranger where he went to the Mexico and Canada borders and even to Florida on assignments. His book is a bunch of his exploits, but he told the crowd about an incident that wasn't in the book when he offered to help the Brady Sheriff, who had no deputies. He drove during the gas rationing days in a gas guzzler car that broke down on him in Fort Hancock, got help getting to Las Cruses and picked up a LSD crazed prisoner. They would give him some kind of pills to calm him down and that got to be a problem when he was alone with him in Iraan. But he got back to Brady and reported "no problem".

Janis Trish, doing publicity for the Library took photos of me talking to the authors. I got the tape on my bandage on a little crooked this morning and it looks like it in the photos.