Our Good Friend, DRBJ

In the big City of Houston

Used to be that there was an ex-sheriff deputy guy here in town who put on lots of years and lost lots of hair. He was that well-known character who hassled the "Chicken Ranch" to the point where it went out of business over in LaGrange, Texas, and made it to the bigtime on Broadway in New York - "The Biggest Little Whorehouse in Texas." That brought him both fame and fortune as a TV personality.

His name was Marvin Zindler.

Big wig of curly white hair and a very loud voice he had. You could not miss him on the nightly TV news program. It may be that you had your own television set turned off, but the man's voice was so loud that you could hear him hollering through the neighbor's TV - even if all of your windows were tightly shut.

Marvin was repetitious.

One of his favorite hollerings was "It's hell to be old"

Marvin was famous for knocking off a whorehouse. He was not known for being overly brainy.

In the big website of HubPages

Marvin had obviously never met up with our good buddy, Doctor Barbara J. Rakow. Had he known "drbj," as we came to know her, Marvin would have thought, "Being old is hell, but you'd never believe that if you knew our drbj." He would quit his hollering on TV night after night, and would have spent his time reading the huge pile of funny writings that our buddy produced, year after year and put onto these pages.

How many writings are there in that "drbj" pile of HubPages?

Let me just say that as you click down the pages of those writings, laughing out loud as you go, your clicking finger is going to get mighty tired.

There are "impossible" interviews, compilations of crazy laws and regulations, visits to places that will have you scratching your head in wonder, and cartoons and more - all of which will take you hours to make your way from one end of the list to the other end. It is not possible for you to go straight on through with a counting of the things. It is next to impossible to get past the funny titles without your making a detour each time so as to read each piece along the way.

I never did finish my own count.

So, where did that leave me today?

I really don't appreciate my own self saying it, but, being of an age myself, I should be getting used to losing contemporaries and good buddies among them. Many of my friends are veterans of the military services - all of us old enough to know better than to die and do other things nonsensical like dying. But, the fact is that you never really get used to it. We old folks seem never to learn.

So I went out back on the carport that I use as my patio place from which to view the quiet world out there, It is a place where the grass grows, the weeds flourish, and the fig tree and orange trees do their things. Lately, the old neighborhood rooster - the one that wakes me up a 4:30 every morning - comes around when the bright sun hits of an afternoon.

He's an old rooster - much of an age or so like I am and like "drbj" was.

My bride has been after me to make a picture of that old rooster guy. So today I carried my old camera out back with me. About the time I sat down on the creaky old plastic chair, here came that neighborhood rooster. He may be old, but he still knows how to flap his wings and make it over the back fence all right.

Me - I'm too old to be nimble, and that rooster is plenty nimble for such a big bird. He made it on up atop the big bird bath before I could fumble my way through whatever needed doing to make some photos of the critter - so I missed the bird bath deal.

Then he wandered over by the back fence and hung around there long enough for me to capture his image in the old Sony camera thing. I pushed on the clicker button. The camera innards made some noises. I knew then that the rooster was safely inside the Sony and my bride would be content that I was as obedient today as I was more than 60 years ago. (Not very obedient, come to consider it).

Where did that lead my thoughts about our pal, "drbj" ?

I hope that I am going to say this correctly.

I thought, "If our 'Good Doctor BJ' were sitting here right now, she would likely write something really funny about that old rooster.

She would have him figured out from his silly bright red head all the way back to his feathery tail. There'd be a story in there that you would not want to put down too fast, either.

That's what I thought.

Now, every time I see that old rooster guy, he will make me think, "What would Good Doctor BJ write about him?"

After a time, that rooster is going to fly over his final fence. By then, I will have found a replacement for him, but there is no replacement for our buddy and my special friend, Barbara J. Rakow - "drbj" to all of us here on HubPages.