Back in the mid-1960’s in Pearsall, Texas, Jim Cranford was an over-worked, underpaid elementary school teacher. During one amazing fall semester Jim was offered some relief from his financial miseries. Help came in the form of a moonlighting job as a weekend cook for a corporate hunting lodge. The teacher-turned-cook faced a bizarre mix of hunters and prey on those weekends. The resulting escapades of that mix could have set the hunting industry on its ear and possibly initiated calls to have Texas removed from the Union. But catching poachers, chasing coyotes and surviving wild hog attacks are only part of the story. Jim’s baptism by fire as a part-time, rookie chef, the adventures at the hunting camp and his day-to-day interactions with Pearsall’s 3rd graders produced a remarkable series of events that forever changed his life. In fact, in some people’s estimation, those events might have come close to disrupting the smooth rotation of the earth on her precarious axis. One could charge that those claims sound like teasers, planted strategically for no other purpose than to entice book buyers. Guilty, your honor. However, since you’re here and not expected to address the United Nations General Assembly at this particular moment, take a minute and have a look. Discover in this fact-based story how Jim Cranford spent a lifetime one November many years ago. By day imparting knowledge to his students, while in his spare time protecting captains of industry from flying lead and wild animals. Even with all that, he managed to run head-on into true love.
A.P. Merillat, a Texas peace officer for over three decades, has also spent many years pursuing his passion for writing. A published author with several law enforcement-related titles to his credit, A.P. has written on subjects from prosecuting death penalty cases to bloodstain pattern interpretation. He has been a guest columnist for newspapers and periodicals and had his own column in “The Texas Prosecutor” magazine. He has appeared on a variety of television news features addressing topics on crime in Texas. Over the years, A.P. has supplemented his “serious” literary pieces with humorous works and a collection of children’s stories. Merillat lives in the Houston area and continues to work in the criminal justice field as a Senior Criminal Investigator with the state’s Special Prosecution Unit. A.P. spends much of his spare time “wrestling that demon angst that forces me to stare at a blank page, hoping for inspiration. My simple goal as a writer is torturous but challenging: put words down that will cause someone to chuckle or mourn, stand firm or cower, pursue or retreat, wish for or regret, to consider as truth or dismiss as fiction…but never forget.”
As the weekend was draining out its last hours, I made sure everything was ready for school the next morning, then I separated my whites from my colors, put the clothes in laundry bags for washday, took a shower, brushed my teeth, and before I knew it, Monday came.
It didn’t take long to wish that I was anywhere but back at work. I was in a foul mood. It felt like I hadn’t slept in a month; my feet hurt, my scorpion sting stung, my ant bites itched and festered, and I was under-nourished.
“I should have called in sick,” I said to myself as I finally drove up to the school. Of course, my car had fought me for every mile of asphalt between home and the campus. The warnings of trouble I had been given the night before had grown from simple sounds into physical symptoms alerting all five of my senses, particularly (thanks to burning rubber and boiling radiator coolant) my keen sense of smell, which put a bad taste in my mouth. All of that activated the additional sense of dread that they don=t give credit for as sense number six.
Pulling into the parking lot and grabbing the closest space to the building B which was the farthest one from the building B I saw (and heard) mobs of screaming, hyper-active, ready-to-terrorize-the-teacher elementary schoolers. There were hundreds of them. Walking through the throngs, I noticed that each child had a strange look in his eyes. I believed they somehow knew about my trip to the ranch and all the unpleasantries I had experienced. I was sure they knew I was vulnerable that day. They were reading my mind, laughing at me, plotting ways to humiliate me.
What was worse, I didn’t see Miss Elliot standing at the doorway to her classroom. She was one of the school=s new-arrivals I was pondering when Mr. Ostrich Boots came to sucker me into the cooking job the other day.
I had made it a point to pass Miss Elliot’s doorway every morning and afternoon since the day after Labor Day at 7:20 a.m. I imagined that I’d never forget that day. I passed her doorway whenever I could. But, alas, evidently something came up and she couldn’t be at the door that particular morning; I’m sure it was some kind of emergency or she would have been there. Surely she enjoyed my passings, I mean she did smile at me and sometimes said “Good morning, sir” and “Hi” and other nice things. Shoot, those door-passings were 90 per cent of my motivation for getting out of bed that year. Needless to say, I didn’t get a smile or a whiff of her perfume before beginning my teaching day, so I couldn’t imagine any redeeming factors to that Monday at all.
Maybe I lingered a bit at her door; or perhaps the kid was clairvoyant or something, but before I moved on to my classroom, I felt a tug at my trouser, and looking down to upper shin- level, I saw a little guy looking up at me with a mischievous grin.