Pinto Beene

[Lightning Rod]

I think I was in the seventh grade when I met Pinto Beene. The Beenes lived two houses down the street from us. I forget what Pinto's real name was. Something like Eugene or Marvin. But everybody called him Pinto.

Pinto was older than me by a couple of years. I was the same age as his younger sister Phala, who I had a terrible crush on. Phala's nick-name in the neighborhood was Pork Ann, but she was so beautiful and svelt that the name never stuck.

But Pinto's did because it fit him so well. He was like a proud pony. Pinto was the hero of every kid on the block. He did everything with grace and excellence. He had the best dogs and he was the fastest runner and extremely agile in all sports and even though he could beat you at anything, he didn't make you feel bad about it. He was smart and enterprising and he was always up to something that was mischievous and fun.

We became friends because I was hanging around the Beene house trying to make time with Phala. This was the time in early adolescence when the girls are taller than the boys. Phala was about a half a head taller than me. I think that is what doomed our relationship. That, and the fact that we both had the attention span of thirteen-year-olds.

But I fell in love with Pinto. It was not a sexual or a romantic love, but extreme admiration. I guess you would call it filial love. I thought Pinto could do anything. He turned me on to Mad Magazine. He built marvelous clubhouses and we would sit in them and smoke cedar bark stripped from fence posts and rolled in giant spliffs using pages from Mad.

Pinto taught me how to raise small rodents. He had hamsters and rats. He was a rancher of sorts and soon I became one of his ranch hands. He taught me that the gestation period for a hamster was 16 days and for a rat it was 21. By the time I was fourteen I had begun my first commercial enterprise. I raised rats and mice and hamsters and guinea pigs and sold them to a local vet who resold them to pet stores and laboratories.

By this time Pinto had built a pole vaulting pit in his back yard. He was a junior in high school and also the Texas State champion high school pole vaulter. For all the things that Pinto taught me, I never was able to master the pole vaulting thing. I could get over a five foot bar if I had a ten foot pole but the little twist at the end where you release the pole forever confounded me. I would always crash the bar with the pole.

So, I spotted bar for Pinto. He would tell me to set it at thirteen feel for his warm-ups. Pinto used a bamboo pole. His record vault was just under fifteen feet. This was back before the days of the fiberglass pole that flexes and springs the vaulter over the bar. It was poetry in motion to watch Pinto glide over the bar. He belonged on the Wheaties Box.

One crisp Autumn day we were playing touch football in Pinto's front yard. Even touch football can be rough and tumble. Pinto and I were on opposite teams. The quarterback threw the pass and we were both jumping for it. I forget who caught the pass but when we hit the ground Pinto's front teeth landed on top of my head. I reached up and raked his three front teeth out of the gash.

Pinto had to have a bridge installed in his mouth and to this day I can feel the little dent in my scull where his teeth sunk in. We have a lasting influence on those we encounter in life.

My family moved from the neighborhood shortly after that. I haven't seen Pinto in more than forty years. I think about him sometimes when I'm scratching my head and my finger hits that little dent. I wonder if he thinks of me when he takes his bridge out at night?

[jimboloco]

take a bite outa crime
you also took a dent outa denton

in my whitewashed youth in Texas i only knew two mexicans in school

they were both in my 7th grade class in Useless
the girl was Jessee, she winked at me once
the guy was her brother, i think

to have a sense about you as a youth, you were blessed

growing up absurd is another matter, but one can grow in a vaccuum and emerge into the stream, viola!

makes me hungry for pinto beans.
i worked withy a young woman melissa pinto
no other associations come to mind, oh yeah, my mean rightwinger grandpa was cooking pinto beans the morning he croaked.

[green.beene]

Well I've never had the pleasure of meeting pinto but I grew up hearing a couple of stories from my dad. See, he's Danny Beene... do you remember him? I think he's Pinto's cousin. Betty and Billy (I think) Beene were his parents. We're in Arkansas now, but I think Pinto lives somewhere in west Texas.

[Lightning Rod]

welcome to the studio, green
how in the world did you find this piece?
the events that I described above happened in Abilene
my guess is that's still where he is
I would love to have an address for Pinto.

[green.beene]

I couldn't sleep last night and just stumbled on this article from a google search. I'll see if my folks have an addy for him and get back to ya!