The Hardcore Texas Ranch House

Took this pic during one of the parties out at the Hardcore Texas ranch house in Aledo, Texas. It's called "hardcore" because the Texans who attend these get-togethers are hard to the core Texan sumbitches, fellas and gals who like to have a good time, good eats and good company.

William Bryan Massey III, poet laureate of Cowtown (click on link to watch a video of him reading his poem "White Pox") and head of kitchen at Fred's Texas Cafe, is out back walking around doing God knows what while I'm aiming my Nikon D50 for a shot of the back of the ranch house with a gorgeous Texas blue sky in the background.

This place is so old that water tank, used for the laundry room next to it, doesn't work and ain't got no water in it.

I call this shot the epitome of what white trash, redneck country livin' Texas is all about. It's a simple life with no noise from the busy city and no lights from that city either. Out at the ranch you can look up into the night sky and see the stars clear as day.

It's so quiet at night all you hear are the yowls of coyotes and the buzzin' of insects.

The HCTX ranch house is Texas, brutha, and nuthin' but Texas.

At our all night and into early morning parties we take bottles of Miller High Life or Schlitz out of ice and beer filled coolers, pop the tops off of them happy puppies and drink the refreshing alcoholic beverages down while sitting out on the porch smokin' cheap ass cigarettes and talkin' bullshit and listening to some turned up all the way rock 'n roll, whether it's Nirvana or Pantera.

Sometimes we get silly and grab the pump-action BB gun and take aim at shit out in the yard. Or toss horseshoes.

OL' SOUTH PANCAKE HOUSE

This white trash soul food eating place makes the dreamiest pancakes you'll ever put into your mouth.

Buttery, sugary, greasy homemade goodness.

For more info on this long-time Fort Worth institution, located at the intersection of South University Drive and Interstate 30 in Fort Worth, visit Fort Worth Culture.

The place has changed ownership, from reading reviews online, and people now say the old staff, little old ladies who worked hard, are now all gone and the food sucks. That is too bad. It was a great place to congregate. Every class of folk went there. Reading these bad reviews of it now makes me sad but that's life, with everything changing for the worst, as always.

Fair well, Ol' South, you were an oldie but a goodie but, apparently, not anymore.

MASSEY'S RESTAURANT

To celebrate my youngest nephew's birthday me, my dad and step-mother took him to Massey's Restaurant for lunch. He had a chicken fried steak. The place has been in the same location, on 8th Avenue almost exactly between Berry and Rosedale Streets, since the '40s and it remains extremely popular with it's home cooked meals and delicious desserts. The fried catfish is excellent.

A few years ago the original owner was gonna close the place down due to his age but a couple of younger fellas talked him into leasing it to them and they contacted my dad to buy from and install new flooring. I know a lot of folks were very happy to see it re-open as the same place with the same good food. The different color of carpeting they paid no mind to.

White Trash Photo Shows

Here's two video slideshows I put together using my photos, and those of some others, of my white trash redneck friends from over the past decade or so, living the low life while drinking Miller's High Life and listening to rock 'n roll like Molly Hatchet's Flirtin' With Disaster and Gary Glitter's classic arena rock anthem Rock 'N Roll, Part 2. You can also see these videos at my YouTube page. All of us somehow surviving divorces,needy friends, fucked up friends, the ups, the downs, the all-arounds, tales from Fred's Texas Cafe, cold ass beer, cheap booze, soul crushing shit jobs, pieces of shit cars, break downs --- mental and otherwise --- shopping for threads and footwear at thrift stores & flea markets, meeting all sorts of fucked up losers, freaks, weirdos and what the fucks?, suicidal depression driving us to near insanity, meandering through headbanging mid-life crisis's, doing the SSDD (same shit different day) routine, facing SNAFUs, barely making it through FUBARs, spending nights at dive bars with fellow barflies, reading Bukowski to make sense of it all, inhaling the bud, surviving chrushing thuds and and all sorts of crud.

Fuck it. Hell, yeah.

NOTE: The Anti-HeroArt.com website is no more.

Grandma Chuggin' Down A 40

Here's a pic of a friend's mom I took back in the mid-'90s during a classic back yard white trash redneck BBQ cookout party at his place.

Yes, she's drinking a 40 of Colt 45. Pat is still kickin' too and, as always, is busily drinking beer and smoking cigs.

The photo was picked up by the website Sorry I Missed Your Party. Click the link and then scroll down to read the hilarious comments.

I took this photo of her using a cheap ass auto focus 35mm camera and, at some point, scanned the print. I was spending a bit of time going back over old, old photos and decided to look them over for ones I could restore to my satisfaction using today's amazing digital darkroom image editors.

I enlarged and improved this one's look by using two photo editors, Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 and Capture NX.

In Photoshop I finished it off by applying the 'poster edges' filter then manipulating it to where it looked good to my eye.