Ruth’s Remembrances-With
The Film Adaptation Of Larry McMurtry’s “The Last Picture Show” In Mind
By Josh Breslin
Ruth Snyder had all the
prejudices of any West Texas girl growing up in the hard-scrabble Great
Depression of the 1930s when money had been scarcer, maybe more so, than hen’s
teeth. Had all the so-called secrets of such girls as well. She had been Anchor
City born and raised out in the places where the oilfields out-numbered the
number of residents. As part of that Anchor City (silly nautical name for a
town out in the middle of Blue Norther country but there you have it. Legend
had it that some restless Yankee sea captain who had had enough of the sea had founded
the place and in a fit of nostalgia named the town that rather than after
himself like half the foolish towns in the state). Prejudice number one, aside
from not allowing the “colored” to get a toehold in the town but that was usual
all over the South and not Anchor City-bound, was drilled into her by her
hard-shell Pentecostal parents who had gotten religion when West Texas was
burned over in the Third Awakening, third Texas Awakening and that was marriage
was forever. Forever meaning until one or the other of the two contracted
parties kick-off. Not before.
So Ruth Snyder, not the
prettiest girl in town, not by a long shot, in fact rather plain like some
Grant Wood painting, pure prairie plain which was in man-short West Texas
(marrying man-short West Texas the other kind as everywhere were plentiful
enough) good enough with proper household training to get a man. But get this
Ruth Snyder, Plain Jane Ruth Snyder snagged herself a football player, Tom
Snyder, who starred for the Anchor City Hawks before heading to Texas A&M
and a short career made shorter by a crippling knee injury. Who would have
figured that Tom in those brave football days would court Ruth Snyder. Ruth
would come to try to figure that one out herself. Tried to figure out that all
Tom wanted from a woman, no, a wife, was to just keep his house clean, his
socks darned and his rifles well-oiled. While Tom in very West Texas good old
boys fashion would head out with his fellow good old boys and proceed to get
well-oiled in another way or too.
Married at just short of
twenty years of age Ruth was now reaching that funny quirky time, forty. Things
had only gotten worse as time went by and after several serious campaigns by
alumni Tom had cornered himself into being both the football and basketball
coach at old Anchor City High. Thus not only did Ruth suffer the pangs of
loneliness during his weekly hunting and fishing trips but for well over half
the year he would be too busy with his coaching to pay even minimal attention
to Ruth. Not a good thing, not a good thing at all for somebody who was
entering funny quirky time.
One of the things that
was required of a coach’s wife in those days, those early 1950s days when all
the way from kid sandlot football to University of Texas University all Texas
was aflutter in football was to attend the Friday night games. Ruth unlike
other mothers and wives rather enjoyed watching the game which had been part of
the reason that she had grabbed onto Tom with both hands when he first asked
her out those many years before. Of late, this season, this season of her
reaching forty she found herself looking rather longingly at the young men on
the field and thinking of those days when her own heart had been all aflutter
when she spied Tom Snyder doing his pre-game warm-ups. In particular this year,
this 1951 year when the team was pretty poor even by Anchor City standards she
was drawn to two players, Duane, Duane Wilson, and Sonny, Sonny Burgess. Not
because they were any great shakes as football players, they seemed to be in
way over their heads when matched up against any decent teams but because they
had similar physiques to her Tom’s when he was a star (the years of good old
boy-dom had not been kind to Tom and he was now a certified member of the
pot-bellied, sloughing forty something guys who could not have gotten out of
their own ways if something had come up to startle them). Here’ the point
though our Ruth started to have certain “improper” fantasies about those two
young men. Yeah, that funny quirky forty thing.
Ruth also knew that
Duane had this thing, this crush on Jackie, Jackie Germaine, the head cheer
leader who in that day, in her day when she was younger, and to her now even was
nothing but a cock-teaser, a femme or whatever they called such “come hither”
to be sliced and diced girls. She would lead him a merry chase, make him cry
“Uncle,” literally since in the end he volunteered like a good West Texas young
man back then to join the Army to get the taste of Jackie out of his system (as
he told Sonny in one of his more candid and reflective moments was that he
would never totally short of the grave get her out of his system and years
later would say the same thing even when by that time she had been married
three times, had a parcel of kids and even at the high side of forty was making
guys make sophomoric fools out of themselves). As he also told Sonny he would
rather just then face the red hordes in Korea than to see her with another man.
That “another man” in the space of a few short months between the end of high
school and going off to college entail screwing Duane, screwing rich boy Randy,
his friend Tom, who wanted to marry her, Adonis one of her father’s wild-call
oil riggers, hell, even Sonny which is where Duane and Sonny’s friendship since
elementary school was sorely tested. Yeah, thought Ruth who would get her
information about the younger set, older set, every set from Jennie who ran the
Last Chance Café one of the few reasons to stop in the pass through town.
So Ruth almost by
default kept her eye of Sonny Burgess, looking for a way to get to him in a
proper manner, at least for public consumption. As it turned out Tom, her no
bullshit husband who was the vehicle for bringing Ruth and Sonny together. Out
of pure laziness or cussedness, take your pick. One day Tom asked Sonny to take
Ruth to the nearest hospital in Waverly some fifty miles away in order for her
to check up on some “female” problem she was having. Tom’s reason for not
taking her himself was that he was too busy with basketball practice to do so.
The lure for Sonny was that Coach would get him out of classes for the
remainder of the day. The trip started out uneventfully enough with Sonny doing
chauffer duty-and acting that way. After getting Ruth home safe and sound
though she asked him if he would like something to eat. Sure, like any growing
kid, and teenage kid. Noting happened that day but between whatever mother
hunger mother-less Sonny had and whatever real man hunger Ruth had a few weeks
later they would met at the annual town Christmas Party (the same party where
the perfidious Jackie blew Duane off for some party with Randy) and gave each
other such looks that when Ruth asked Sonny if he would take her to her
doctor’s appointment the next time he answered with yes without hesitation. And
so Ruth and Sonny would start an affair, an affair of the heart which would
last on and off again for several years. That open secret would keep the
customers at the Last Chance Café going for many months once Jennie retailed
the story. Funny nobody took umbrage that Ruth was bedding a young man half her
age. But here is where we get into Ruth’s knowledge of the West Texas
girl-woman prejudices. The reason that the Ruth-Sonny affair was the hot topic
for only a few months was that Ellie, Jackie’s mother had started an affair
with a young oil well driller employed by her husband. So Ruth was just
following West Texas girl prejudice. What do think about that.
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