The first weird F.M.T. thing happened this morning, right after Tony and I had come inside the trailer to cool off, after he had fed the dogs and I had cleaned their pens. I was drinking some cold water when T. came into the big room and says, "Nance, Steve Fromholz has shot and killed someone! I just caught the tail end of it on Channel 35 and I don't know anymore." So, I immediately called Kinky's cell phone, because I knew that he was in Kerrville.
"Hello?"
"Kinky, Tony just heard on the news that Steven Fromholz shot someone and killed them, but we don't know all of the facts."
"Oh no. Not Steven. I can't believe that."
"Me neither. I'm going to check it out on the Internet and I will get back to you as soon as I know what all happened. Bye." Then I sat down at my laptop and Googled it and found it immediately. The headline read: Texas Man Charged In Fatal Shooting At Tavern, then I read the article and discovered that it was not our musician friend Steven Fromholz, but a man age 40 from San Antonio, so I punched in Kinky's cell phone number again.
"Kinky, it's not Steven, but it is a 40 year old man from San Antone, named Stephen Paul Fromholz."
Kinky chuckled. "Thanks, Nance. I knew it couldn't have been Steven. I'll call you when I get back to the ranch. Bye."
This afternoon I called "Stan The Man" who owns Kerrville's oldest music store, to ask him a couple of questions about my mandolin and guitar and then T. grabbed my guitar and mandolin and we jumped into Trigger and took off for "The Melody Corner" on the Junction Highway.
When we arrived at Stan's music store I took this picture, before we went inside the store and before another F.M.T. thing happened to us inside his store.
Stan greeted us from the counter as we walked into his store, filled with many musicians. When it was our turn to be waited on, Stan restrung the mandolin and while he was connecting a pickup to it, this big plastic jar in front of me, filled with plastic guitar picks fell off of the counter and the pretty picks scattered all over the floor. "I'm sorry, Stan," I said, even though I knew that neither he or I had touched the jar and it was just another one of those F.M.T. deals. As he and Tony laughed about it I said, "I'll pick them up."
Then T. says, "No, Nance. I'll get them," before bending down and gathering up the guitar picks and putting them back into the jar for me. Because Stan needed to make a few unexpected adjustments on the mandolin he left the room to go work on it, so Tony and I walked around the store admiring the many different musical instruments and that's when we discovered Stan's big, beautiful cat, napping on top of an amp.
"Stan!" I half-hollered, so he could hear me. "We love your cat! He's so beautiful!"
"Thank you," Stan said, as he walked out of his workroom. "I rescued her a few years ago and she is the best cat that I have ever had." Then he went back into his workroom to work.
When Tony started to reach up to grab a guitar off of the wall—it scared me, because I was afraid that it would drop and T. would be blamed for it. "Tony, please don't!" I said. "We're under Full Moon Time and that's why those guitar picks fell on the floor. Trust me." Tony smiled and walked away to go look at some harmonicas, in a glass enclosed case, that he could not touch.
When Stan was done working on the mandolin he came out of the office and I said, "Stan, we also need to get an amp cable for it," so after discussing what length it should be he grabbed a fifteen foot cable off of the wall and handed it to me. Then he plugged the mandolin into a nearby amp, to make sure the pickup connection was working properly and it sounded fantastic.
After Stan had checked the strings on my guitar he tallied up my bill and then he gave me a big discount. "Stan, you don't have to give me a discount."
"Cousin Nancy, I know I don't have to, but I want to and the amount is...." After writing him a check and thanking him for all of his work and the big discount, Tony picked up my guitar and mandolin and we left his store and headed home.
When we were turning off of Highway 16, with only two and a half more miles to go before getting home, I looked at the packaged black cable and smiled when I read the words "HANDMADE IN THE U.S.A." And I was so happy about having purchased something that was actually Made In The U.S.A. so I talked about it non-stop the rest of the way home.
And that is about it for today. T. and I are fixin' to pick and grin again.
Y'all have a great evening!
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