REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS. June 2007

I was interviewed several times by Alex Burton on radio, Featured on Channel 13 for our donations of Art Work, collectibles, and fire arms for their auctions. TV, radio and newspaper articles about my chairmanship of The Dallas Bonehead Awards, several weddings in our home such as artist Dmitri Vail and Patricia Liechty, and because one of my major companies made sub-miniature electronic surveillance and communication equipment for the Federal Government and law enforcement agencies as well as private investigators (some equipment used in the Watergate break-in). I was featured in many newspaper articles as well as many TV and radio interviews.  I tell you this because of all the media personalities I came into contact with, none left a more lasting memory than Paul Crume. Paul was the “Front Page” writer of note with his “Big D” column.  A few times we broke bread at the old Blue Front Cafe near the paper.  We always had some laughs and he was always available for a tip idea or a good laugh for his column. Paul ran several articles having to do with me or my wife in the ‘70’s.  Several I I kept and put in our family scrapbook. Every time my wife or I get the scrapbook out all the great memories of our years in Dallas return.  This is why I want to share some of his home spun, down to earth style that made him such a rich and enjoyable person. I have selected a few of my favorites and have included them in this PowerPoint presentation. 

Bradford J. Angers

Feb. 24, 1912 / Nov. 16, 1975

Shortly after my wife and I were married, we moved to Dallas and over the years I developed and owned several businesses.  It was our home for forty plus years until we retired to Florida. Being a ”Type A” personality I came into contact with a book full of great people during those years. There were articles published and news interviews about my involvement in the making of “ag” helicopters, sales of commercial printing equipment and photographic supplies, new home sales for Fox & Jacobs Construction and the partnership printing of the “Jesse Curry JFK Assassination Report”, donation of mopeds for park police, and major donations to the Dallas Police “Officer of The Year” awards over several years. 

Remembering Paul Crume

JAN ANGERS decided awhile back that she wanted a banana tree in the den, so her husband, Brad Angers, bought one. It was two feet tall. “You know, of course, that it won’t live,” the nurseryman told Angers. Mrs. Angers tended the banana tree carefully, and it did live, a fact which Angers reported to his landscape man. “Well, you know, of course, that they won’t ever bear,” said the nurseryman. The Angers banana tree is now about 25 feet tall and is pushing at the roof of the den, about to bear some bananas. It all goes to prove that love and affection can conquer almost anything.

“Siamese-twin’bananas grownBy EDITH HANBY McROBERTSGarden Editor

One of the highlights of living in our part of the country is the fruit that can be grown in one’s own back yard. Mrs. Jan Angers of Dallas has enjoyed fresh fruit from her back yard for several years now. Included in the yearly harvest are delicious bananas that developed and ripened in the two-story garden room built by her husband at their home near White Rock. More than half of the bananas produced by Mrs. Angers this season were “Siamese-twin” bananas and measured as much a 9-11 inches around as compared with the single fruits that measured 5 to 6 inches in circumference. These bananas have been in the garden and green house of the Angers for almost 8 years now; at first, they grew the trees out-of-doors, but with the completion of the greenhouse-solarium, they were moved inside and planted in the indoor soil where they have continued to grow and become fruit-producing for the past two years. The Angers’ banana tree flowers were also a welcome addition to their indoor garden area. It was with regret that they had to cut back the trees to the ground following their harvest.

WHAT’S IN A NAME? Maybe Shakespeare didn’t know but Brad Angers thinks he does. His sister, Bernice, is married to B. Harley Human, a name which causes some comment in itself. Mr. Human runs a company called the Human Oil Co. If you don’t know the number and telephone Southwestern Bell information for it, you get a certain built-in rebellion for awhile. Mrs. Human’s personal license plate reads “B HUMAN.” And Mr. Human is running this year for the Legislature: His motto: “Put a Human in the Legislature.”

Human Seeks Reform

Bill Human, an independent businessman, is seeking the Democratic nomination for the District 33-M seat in the State House of Representatives. President and manager of Human Oil and Supply Co., Human lives at 4047 Dalgreen. He has been a resident of the Lakewood-East White Rock area which is now District 33-M, for 26 years. Human feels the most important issue in the campaign is reform of the rules under which the Legislature operates. He also has promised to work for law enforcement with justice, a better system of welfare, fair taxation and a firm ethics bill, compelling elected officials to give complete financial disclosure. Human is married and has three sons. He attended St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, is a member of St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, and is a veteran of World War II.

April 20, 1972

Bill Human

BRAD ANGERS and his secretary were trying to find out how to spell "cocktail" the other day. They couldn't find the word in any of the office dictionaries and had to look it up in the yellow pages. While Southwestern Bell may be the only telephone company in town, it is not, b'gad the only person who can spell "cocktail." Our office Webster duly lists it with the comment that it is probably a combination of "cock" and "tail," a singularly cautions guess when you come to think about it. The authority on "cocktail," naturally was H. L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore, who was reputed to have been able to recognize one the minute he saw it. Mencken noted that the cocktail "to multitudes of foreigners seems to be the greatest of all the contributions of the American way of life to the salvation of humanity." In some ways Mr. Mencken seems to have shared that opinion. In a lifetime of word hunting, he unearthed almost a dozen derivation for "cocktail." None seems entirely hold water, much less the potent cocktail juices. 

Vol. 121---No. 125

Paul Crume’s

ONE STORY is that the cocktail was invented by Antoine Peychaud, a convivial apothecary who moved from Santo Domingo to New Orleans in the 1790's. He liked to entertain his friends with toddies mixed in his own exotic way, and he served them in a double-ended egg cup called a coquetier, thus giving the drink its name. This sounds like the romantic stuff spun by a New Orleans publicity man after too long a session at the Sazerac Bar, but it could be true. Peychaud seems to have been a benefactor of mankind. He invented Peychaud bitters and is said to have invented the Sazerac cocktail, an undoubted boon to mankind if taken in quantities of one or less. One authority on cock fighting has contended that the word came from a mixture of flour bread and various alcoholic leavings and beneficial plants fed to fighting cocks. It was called "cock ale" and is supposed to have' picked up a "t" as a result of American corruption. Still another authority said the word came from the practice at the end of a fight of toasting the cock with the most feathers left in his tail. The number of ingredients was supposed to match the number of feathers. ANOTHER AUTHORITY has argued that the term came from "cock-tailing," the practice of throwing the tailings of various liquors into a common container and selling them cheaply as a high octane slop. Probably, it is 'best just to say that "cocktail" seems to be a mixed metaphor. Anyhow, Americans have been busily mixing them for the better part of 200 years. They have created some truly remarkable ones, the horse's neck, the bull-shot, the French 75 and the damn the weather cocktail, in addition, to the classic ones. Mr. Mencken himself created a number. As I remember it, he and a friend once sat down and figured out how many kinds of cocktails could be made out of the ingredients at a good bar, and the figure came out, something like 17 billion, some better than others. 

BRAD ANGERS came in with this gleam in his eye, which usually means that you would be better off if you hid in another part of the building. He said that he had acquired this replica of a 1901 Ford horseless carriage and would be glad to take me for a ride. I said that I regarded it as dangerous to ride in a carriage without a horse, but he said this was nonsense. Be forward looking, he said. Believe in progress. We went downstairs and looked at the horseless carriage. It looked like a four-wheeled bicycle with some stuff built in between the wheels. I said there wasn't room for two men on the seat, and he conceded that the seat was probably built for an overly amorous man and his girl. I said the wheels wouldn't hold up the two of us, and he asked me whether I was chickening out. He told me to make up my mind whether I was game for a ride. I wasn't, but I said I was. The guard at the parking lot held up three large trucks and two cars while he tried to get us out of his sight. Then this Angers sped away like the wind at 20 miles an hour. I noticed that he was steering with a tiller rather than a wheel, and this made me nervous. A tiller can go haywire with the wrong kind of wind. Attached to the tiller was one of those bulb-type horns which you squirt. Angers was squirting this frequently, attracting the attention of everybody. This was very distasteful to me. I have not paid my income tax yet, and I had just as soon that nobody noticed me when I walk by with my hat pulled over my eyes. 

I DISCOVERED very quickly that auto safety has progressed beyond belief since 1901. In a horseless carriage, you sail along out there in front of the machine so that you will take the impact in case of a collision. The valuable machine will not be damaged.  Also, there is no place to hang on in the horseless carriage. The top doesn't have any substantial stays' and the flooring is so light that it would probably tear away in a crash. You just have to sit up there and believe God is with you, and my recent behavior has been such that I am not confident of that. Angers kept telling me how he was getting 70 miles to the gallon of gasoline.  I remember figuring out that a gallon of gasoline would be all that a man needed in a lifetime at the rate we were going.  MOSTLY, DURING the ride, I sat rigid and repeated the Coue formula to myself. There was this stupid policeman who could have stopped the whole caper. By any standards, Angers was driving recklessly, wheeling around corners at 10 miles an hour and so on. The policeman could have stopped him but just stood there with his jaw hanging down. The next time I place myself in harm's way I will not depend on any police officer to help if I am in a horseless carriage. We finally got back to the office, and I bade Angers godspeed at 70 miles to the gallon and borrowed a Kleenex to wipe my forehead. The guard asked whether I was going to buy one of the little cars. "I hadn't even thought about it," I said. And I still haven't. 

Vail-LiechtyVows Read

Mrs. Patricia Ann Liechy became the bride of well-known painter Dmitri Vail in a ceremony Sept. 12 in the home of Mr. And Mrs. Brad Angers, 7770 Goforth Circle. The Rev. Dr. Patrick Henry officiated. The couple will live at his address, 4245 Armstrong. The new Mrs. Vail has been residing at 6738 Northport. Mr. and Mrs. Angers were honor attendants. The bride is a board member of the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce.

DMITRI VAIL and Mrs. Pat Liechty were married, the other day in a private ceremony at the home of Brad Angers. The minister of the Northway Christian Church read the ceremony. “What did you say the name of the minister was?” Vail asked Angers later. “Patrick Henry:” Said Vail: Wasn’t he famous for saying something besides the marriage service.”

The Dallas Morning News Friday, September 17, 1971

Dmitri paints Brad and Jan

MR. AND MRS. Brad Angers came here from Michigan. During the recent Shrine convention, they kind of adopted the members of the Moslem Temple who came from Michigan. Angers and his wife spent a lot of time driving the Michigan Shriners around town and threw swim party and steak barbecue for them, after the convention was over. The other day Mrs. Angers got a box of candy and a note of thanks from the Shriners. “And here’s something for you,” she said to Angers, producing a note. “They’ve made you a member of the Moslem Temple Legion of Honor.” Angers said that was quite an honor since he wasn’t even a Mason. “Don't let it go to your head,” she retorted. “They’ve already give it to two people --- Harry Truman and John Wayne.

A WHILE BACK Janet Angers got interested in building miniature terrariums, and one was a desert terrarium. She and her husband, Brad, started shopping around for miniature succulents and other tiny plants which could be used. One nurseryman produced a dwarf cactus, which he said would never grow to be more than an inch or two tall, "I guarantee it," he said. They took the little cactus home, and sure enough, it grew almost none at all for a long time. Then Mrs. Angers wondered what would happen if she fertilized the terrariums, and she tried it, One day, while they weren't watching, the dwarf cactus had grown to three inches. Then suddenly, with no warning at all, it was six inches tall. The Angers’ are also amateur greenhouse people. Angers yanked the cactus out of the terrarium before something terrible happened, put it in a pot and set it in the greenhouse.

The plant seemed almost malevolent in its growth. While nobody was looking, it grew to three feet. Brad put it in a large pot, and suddenly it was six feet tall. At that point, he took his problem to Dr. Prem Chand and John J. Hill at the Dallas Garden Center, and they told him he had been sold a bill of cactus. They said, the plant was a Peruvianus Glaucus, a giant variety of cactus which might reach any size. ”I was lucky to get it out of the house before it ruined the roof," says Angers. The plant is now at the Dallas Garden Center, and no telling how big it will be when you see it. If it shrinks any, however, it will ruin a good story.

SEVERAL MONTHS AGO, says Brad Angers, this column ran a flat statement that the cheetah is the fastest thing alive. This seems hardly likely as I always leave an escape hatch. Anyhow, Angers is one of us people who cannot bear to have anybody be flatly right. He went to work, and after all these months of work, he has discovered a piece in the Encyclopedia Britannica by the C.H.T. Townsend says he clocked one a 81.5 miles an hour. A man ought to be wary of these country stopwatches. Most of those old West Texas boys who ran the 100 yards in 9.8 actually couldn’t beat 10.1. Anyhow, if this beast was going that fast, how could Townsend tell it was botfly?

Deer botflyFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The name deer botfly is used to refer to any species in the genus Cephenemyia, within the family Oestridae. They are large flies, often very accurate mimics of bumblebees, and are internal parasites of deer. It was reported for many years that Cephenemyia was the fastest of all flying insects, cited by the New York Times and Guinness Book of World Records as traveling at speeds of over 800 miles per hour. The source of this remarkable claim was an article by entomologist Charles H. T. Townsend in the 1927 Journal of the New York Entomological Society, wherein Townsend claimed to have estimated a speed of 400 yards per second while observing botflies at 12,000 feet in New Mexico. In 1938 Irving Langmuir, recipient of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, examined the claim in detail and refuted the estimate. Among his specific criticisms were:• To maintain a velocity of 800 miles per hour, the 0.3-gram fly would have had to consume more than 150% of its body weight in food every second;• The fly would have produced an audible sonic boom;• The supersonic fly would have been invisible to the naked eye; and• The impact trauma of such a fly colliding with a human body would resemble that of a gunshot wound. Using the original report as a basis, Langmuir estimated the deer botfly's true speed at 25 miles per hour. (Note that the gunshot wound would only resemble that from a small bullet.)

….Do I owe Paul Crume an apology?

DOLORES BROWN runs a consignment shop called the Back Porch in the Knox Street neighborhood. An assignment shop is a place where people consign rare, unusual and sometimes worthless objects for sale. She mostly has a collection of antiques and rare glass, but Brad Angers, a friend, visited her place the other day and found that one item was four rusty horseshoe nails bound together by a rubber band. “You’re pulling my leg,” he protested. “Who would buy this?” “Oh, there’s a buyer for everything,” she told him. About that time a sedate looking gentleman walked up with his wife, looked at the horseshoe nails asked the price and bought them. “I’m going to buy these,” he explained a little abashedly to people at large, “to show the people at the office what all people will buy.”

BRAD ANGERS dropped into a small downtown restaurant the other day and ordered a double coke. As you may have noticed, they normally come in a glass filled with shaved ice. As it happens, Angers doesn’t much like ice. “Give me a large coke,” he said, “and easy on the ice.” The proprietor was standing nearby. “That’ll cost you a nickel extra,” he said. “Isn’t that unusual?” asked the surprised Angers. The proprietor turned out to be a friendly and genial man. “It’s the price-cost squeeze,” he explained. “If I sold you that big coke without all the ice, I’d be losing a nickel on it. So it costs an extra nickel, though I don’t like it either” This seemed reasonable to Angers. “How much, “ he asked, “are those dime candy bars that used to be a nickel?” “They're 12 cents,” said the grinning cafe man. “Give me two quick,” Angers ordered, “before they go up.”

THEY SAY that women’s hats haven’t sold so well since these beehive hairdos came in. Brad Angers happened into a hat shop the other day and found the woman proprietor at work carefully flicking the dust off her stock with a feather duster. “My those are beautiful hats,” said Angers. “Thank you” replied the shop keeper. “The flowers on them are so fresh that they look as if you watered them” “I do”, said the shopkeeper, solemnly. “How’s that? What do you mean?” “I weep over them,” said the unsmiling saleswoman.

BRAD ANGERS and his wife got tired of watching the slaughter during the first half of the Cowboy game Sunday. They flipped off the TV set. “Let’s go to a show.” he suggested. They drove to a theater in a shopping center on the north side of town but found they would have a 45-minute wait before the movie started. Mrs. Angers needed a few groceries and suggested that they pick them up at a nearby grocery while they were waiting. While they were shopping, a bit of commotion broke out in the back corner of the store. It was like the opening minutes at a fire sale. It turned out that the store had just put out a supply of sugar, and dozens of women were grabbing up the bags. On the way out, the Angers stopped at the checking counter behind a woman who had bought 10 10-pound sacks of sugar. “Do you think you have enough sugar to last you,” he asked, joshingly. She said seriously: “I decided I had better stock up before the hoarders get to it.”

Paul Crume’s

“Washington advises the public that there may be a sugar shortage as a result of the Cuban embargo.”

BRAD ANGERS straightened up rather suddenly while driving down Central the other day. The white Cadillac in front of him bore the U.S. presidential seal. He later discovered that it was merely a decal. Then he got to wondering whether it was legal even to display a decal of the seal. He telephoned the Dallas FBI offices and got hold of the agent in charge of such matters. Angers described what he had seen. “Is it legal to use the presidential seal like this?” he asked. There was a long silence at the FBI end. “You know, I don’t know whether it’s legal or not,” the agent finally confessed. “I’ll have to look it up, But I'll tell you one thing. It’s illegal to display Smokey the Bear. We’ve got a law on that.”

HAROLD EBERHARDT of Austin was among a bunch of people watching some builders try to hoist some bricks on a stage at a building going up in the Northlake Shopping Center. It wasn’t going very well when a man in the crowd yelled over and asked the man in charge why he didn’t try a single line. They tried it, and it worked. The foreman came over to shake the man’s hand. “You ought to be in the construction game,” he said. The man grinned and handed over a card. He was Brad Angers of Fox & Jacobs.

BRAD ANGERS IS a partner in the Detection Devices Division of Central Detective Academy. His division manufactures electronic surveillance equipment, bugs and other things if you want to get nasty. Mostly, they deal with law enforcement officials, but Angers has run into some individuals with whom he had no sympatico. He had just as soon they didn't remember who he is. He and his wife went to a steak house the other night. At a table across the way was a man and his wife. The man looker very familiar to him. Angers was a little afraid to greet him. He might be one of those men. Curiosity got the better of him. He finally said to the man across the way, "I don't mean to intrude, but you look awfully familiar." The stranger got red in the face. Then he and his wife exchanged worried looks before he said, "I'm George Patzig, justice of the peace of Precinct 2." "Oh, that's where we met," said Angers. His partner, Bill Tarpley, had tried a case in the judge's court. The judge also had reason, because of the people who had appeared before his bench, to wish that some people didn't remember who he was. After the initial dive into the cold water of doubt, says Angers, they had fine evening.

“PERSISTENCE finally pays off,“ Lee McShan, the florist, told Brad Angers the other day. “What do you mean?” Angers asked. McShan reminded him that when Angers first came to Dallas the McShan shop had delivered one rose to Mrs. Angers on their first anniversary. It began a custom that Angers has kept up. Each year he has added a rose. The Angers recently celebrated their 10th anniversary. “I am finally beginning to make a profit you,” McShan said.

BRAD ANGERS and his wife were watching the St. Louis- Miami football game night before last. They were both pulling hard for St. Louis. Then St. Louis fumbled just before the half.”Well,”remarked Mrs. Angers,“ I don’t think St. Louis is going to win this game.” “Can’t you think positive?” complained her husband. “All right,” replied Mrs. Angers, “I am positive that St. Louis is not going to win this game.” They didn’t either.

BRAD ANGERS and his wife were shopping for a new car a few years ago, traveling around in their station wagon. He became increasingly disenchanted with the cars he saw. “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t we just drive this station wagon a few years and take the money we would use on monthly payments and put it in savings.” They did, the fund filled to overflowing oftener that you would imagine and was used for a number of things. Angers has taken meticulous care of the station wagon. He dropped by his garage the other day. “You know,” said one of the mechanics there, “that is the best looking ‘67 station wagon I’ve ever seen.” “Yes, and that’s not all you’re seeing in it,” said Angers. “That also represents a $5,000.00 organ for my wife and two South American vacations.”

BRAD ANGERS recently decided to rebuild his lawn. He spent a scad of money, moving in new topsoil, put in an expensive sprinkler system and bought the best San Augustine that he could find. Despite all the care the lawn hasn’t turned out as spectacular. Recently, he was driving down Woodall Rodgers Freeway. As everybody knows by now, this is probably the largest dead end street in the world. He noticed beautiful San Augustine growing up between the cracks in the asphalt. It seems to imply that you ought to pave your lawn with asphalt if you want good grass.

RAY HALL is president of Pioneer Distributors and busies himself with selling things like fishing tackle around the country at state fairs. He is, however, a retired tugboat captain, and this explains a recent response to a question by Brad Angers. Hall had complained that the people at state fairs were just not buying the way they had in years past. Angers asked Hall what he thought of the way President Ford was handling the nation’s economy. “I feel,” said the former tugboat captain “like a shanghaied sailor in a ship with a hole in its bottom under a captain who is yelling. “Head for deep water.”

TIME WAS when no hep cat would confess to listening to longhair music, but the terms have apparently changed. Brad Angers stopped at a music store the other day to pick up something by Beethoven. He wanted to use it as background music for a recording of his own that he was making. “Where is your Beethoven?” he asked the clerk finally, after being unable to find it on his own. “Over there,” said the clerk, pointing to a corner. Angers found the Beethoven he wanted under a wall sign that, Shorthair Music.”

Definitely No Gas Gulper The unfamiliar sight of a 1901 Ford, the original “horseless carriage,” greeted Texaco station attendant Louis Williams Sunday as Brad and Janet Angers, 7770 Goforth Circle, paused in their drive around White Rock Lake to purchase 30 cents worth of regular gasoline. Angers, an antique car buff, said his vehicle gets 50 to 74 miles per gallon (4-gallon capacity).

Brad & Jan AngersJune 2007