McClendon Studios Presents: Snuffy's Army

Snuffy’s Army

Disclaimer: Many of the stories are completely fictional.  Other stories are fictional accounts of true stories.  Other stories are completely true.  Sometimes the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

First a very special shout out to Mr. SpazBubbles.  He is a fellow YouTuber and is a subscriber to this channel.  Stop over at his place and tell him we said hello.

I had been away at college for nearly four years.  While in college, I was sometimes home on the weekends, but most of my weekends were taken up visiting with friends.  I did work at the store on Saturdays, but some people had not seen me in years.

Suzanne and I had just gotten married.  We had a break-in at the store soon after Suzanne and I got married and we were trying to find a way to stop them.  We had a new, ultra high-tech alarm installed at the store.  I had a C. B. radio in the Galaxy and I also had a C. B. walkie-talkie that I left at the house with Suzanne.

The Western Auto was just outside of the city limits of Iva.  This meant that the Iva Police Department had no jurisdiction to respond.  We had to rely on the Anderson County Sheriff’s Department, which was not much more than useless. 

There was an old joke that was more truth than joke that a Sheriff’s Department investigation ended when the deputy taking the report said, “Call us if you hear anything.” 

In their defense, the sheriff’s deputies were spread very thin.  We had a county that was approximately 1,000 square miles with only a small handful of deputies to cover it all.  We knew that if anyone was going to catch anyone breaking into the store, we would have to be the ones to do it.

My father and I had decided that when the alarm company called us, I would go around the back of the store (a road ran behind the store) and he would go around front of the store.  This way maybe we would catch them in between.  Or, so we hoped.

One night the alarm went off and I went to the back of the store and started looking with the flashlight to see if I saw any obvious points of entry.  I did not, so I started to go around front.  To do this, I had to cross an old railroad right-of-way, which still had some ballast and ties.  There were steep hills on either side of this right-of-way.

There is a bar across the street from the Western Auto called Snuffy’s Tavern.  Now, this is about as rough a bar as you can imagine. If you read my story about the pool cue, you will get a little glimpse at what I am talking about.

One of the bar patrons yelled to my father “You ain’t going in there by yourself, are you, Bruce?”  It appears that the good old boy patrol was going to provide back up for my father.  Weapons of all kinds, from nunchucks to AK-47s, were quickly produced.  The Secret Service assault wagon had nothing on these guys.  In fact, if there was a standoff between a highly armed and trained SWAT team and these guys, the SWAT team better just go home.

About that time, I rounded the corner of the store and I heard the unmistakable sound of shotgun slides being racked.  The sound was deafening.  I heard what seemed like a hundred or so pump shotguns each racking a shell.

Then, it happened.  Rusty was a Vietnam veteran and had been attached to the 82^nd Airborne and, I think, was also a Green Beret.  Rusty had about a million and five jumps to his credit.

I don’t know where he came from or how he managed to do it but, I was Rusty’s one million and sixth jump.

As I laid there with Rusty’s knee in my back and a face full of gravel, I yelled, “I am David. I am Junior.  I am Bird. I am supposed to be here.”

My father yelled to the crowd, “That is David!”  We had a posse go in the store and walk with my father around the back of the store.

While Doc, a former army medic, tended to my wounds, the posse searched the building from top to bottom and found nothing. They were all hoping to find someone they could beat up.  Each one said, “He better hope I ain’t the one to find him”.

When Doc was done with me, I resembled someone who was an extra for Michael Jackson's Thriller video.

The alarm company automatically called the sheriff’s office so, once they were called, someone had to be there to fill out a report.  I called Suzanne, and Papa and I waited for over an hour before the deputy arrived to take the report.

By the time the deputy arrived, all the guns were out of sight but very close by.

The deputy looked at me and noticed my wounds.  Doc had bandaged me up pretty good, but I still had some blood on me.  He asked if I had anything further to add to the report.  I said, “No.”

The deputy asked how I got the injuries I had. Rusty looked at me with anticipation.  He was wondering if I was going to rat him out or not.  I told the deputy I fell into the railroad right-of-way.  This seemed logical and he accepted it.

As the deputy left, he said, “Call us if you hear anything.”

Visit My Child-Bride Suzanne’s Page

Watch This On YouTube

Help us reach 1,000 YouTube subscribers. Please watch some of our videos. If you like them, please subscribe. Also, please share our YouTube information with your friends. We thank you so much for all your help.

McClendon Studios Presents: Carl the Friendly Ghost

McClendon Studios Presents: Carl The Ghost

Disclaimer: Many of the stories are completely fictional.  Other stories are fictional accounts of true stories.  Other stories are completely true.  Sometimes the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

My Grandmother Ruby (A.K.A. Granny-For-Short) told us a story of back when my father was a young man.  Evidently, my father was late coming home from a Boy Scout meeting and Grandma decided to play a little trick on him.

According to my Aunt Gloria, my father had an old truck that you could hear coming for a long way.  The road he had to travel required that he drive past an old, closed down funeral home.  To him, this was very scary.

Granny-For-Short dressed my Uncle Carl up in a sheet and waited to hear R. B. coming up the road in that loud, old truck he had.  She lowered Carl out the side window and told him to go up front and yell “Boo.” 

Carl obeyed his mother and, from the shadows of the side of the house, yelled as loud as he could “Boo!”  R. B., my father, could hear the "boo" and see the porch light faintly illuminating the figure of a ghost just off the front porch.

R. B. took off running back up the front walk to the neighbor’s house, where he beat on the door, crying and yelling and begging to be let in.  Carl chased after him the whole way yelling “Boo!”  My grandmother laughed so hard she cried as did Carl.  

R.B. was really very scared and the neighbors worried that he was going to pass out right then and there because he was so scared.

Watch This on YouTube

Please Visit My Child Bride Suzanne's Blog


Help us reach 1,000 YouTube subscribers. Please watch some of our videos. If you like them, please subscribe. Also, please share our YouTube information with your friends. We thank you so much for all your help.

McClendon Studios Presents: Football Helmets and Cleats

McClendon Studios Presents

Football Helmet and Cleats

Robert Bruce McClendon Jr. was also known as “Bones”.  He was a scrawny, skinny teenager.  He still went out for football.

When he first made the team, there weren’t enough helmets to go around. Bones went to the equipment area and found an old helmet.  It was scuffed up and beat up and very dirty.  He asked the coach if he could wear it if he cleaned it up.  The coach told him yes.

He painted it and polished it and got it looking really good.  He wore his helmet to the next game. He was extremely proud of that helmet.  

Not long into the game, one of the starters broke his helmet. The coach made Bones give his pretty helmet to the starter.

Sad and disappointed, Bones went back to the equipment room the next chance he got and found another helmet and fixed it up.  He got to keep this one. It wasn’t too long before he was a starter

Years later, Bones and his brother Carl were on the same football team. 

Johnston High School Varsity Football 1953

During one game, Carl was in and two large opponents decided to try to take Carl out.  They kept hammering at him and hammering at him.

After a few plays, Bones went to the coach and said “Put me in, coach.” He did this even though it would have him playing, “The opposite side of the ball”.

The coach got an evil grin and sent Bones in to play.

On the first down after Bones went in, he looked across to the opposing line and said to the bigger of the two offenders, “Get well soon”.

The ball was snapped and he made contact with the first of the two offenders.

He hit him so hard that the opponent could not get up.  They found his helmet on the other side of the field, split in half.  It was a very hard hit. The opponent just laid there in agony.  

Being the polite Southern boy he was, Bones decided that stomping on him with his football cleats would aid the guy in getting up.  Back in those days, football cleats had sharp, metal spikes.

Bones stomped on the first boy’s arms and legs with those cleats and did so much damage they had to load the boy in an ambulance.  No penalty was called.

Second down.  Bones crouched and looked across the line at the second boy

and said, “There is room for both of you in that ambulance”.

The ball was snapped and Bones made hard contact.  Down went the second of the two offenders.  Bones began his celebratory dance on the offender, stomping hard on his arms and legs.  The ambulance was called back.

Bones yelled across the line, “This is my brother Carl.  When you mess with him, I mess with you.”  He went back to the bench and sat down.  No one, not even his teammates, touched Carl the rest of the game.

Read My Child-Bride Suzanne’s Blog.

Watch This On You Tube.

Help us reach 1,000 YouTube subscribers. Please watch some of our videos. If you like them, please subscribe. Also, please share our YouTube information with your friends. We thank you so much for all your help.

McClendon Studios Presents: Pool Cue to the Head

APool Cue to the Head

One day I was in the yard cleaning out my car when the tones went off. That is the rescue squad radio made a noise that would open up all the Iva Rescue Squad monitors so they could hear the dispatch. There was a call that went out that we were needed at Snuffy’s Tavern. I went to the squad hut and got in the ambulance. The ambulance rolled and we pulled up to Snuffy’s.

Snuffy’s was a rather rough place that was located directly across the street from my

family’s Western Auto Store. When we arrived I saw my father standing at the corner of the parking lot pointing to the ground beside him. I thought he was telling the ambulance to park there. Since we were already parked I got out of the ambulance and went in.

When we got inside I commenced to assisting the E. M. T. to tend to the victim. It seems that there had been a fight. I don’t know what it was about but during the course of the fight our patient had a pool cue impaled through his skull. He was lying on the floor with both ends protruding from his skull. Soon after the man had been impaled by the pool cue his sons produced guns and shot several people. Several other people shot back and many were hit. All had left the bar.

I looked up and saw my father standing over me with his 357 Magnum in his hand. He had been signaling for me not to go in the bar but to come over to him and stay out of it. Since I did not comply with his wishes he was determined to protect me. And there he was.

We completed immobilizing the pool cue in the man’s skull. We transported him to the Anderson Memorial Hospital where he died on the operating table.

Read my Child-Bride, Suzanne’s Blog

Watch this on YouTube

Help us reach 1,000 YouTube subscribers. Please watch some of our videos. If you like them, please subscribe. Also, please share our YouTube information with your friends. We thank you so much for all your help.