Arts Rescue Mission -Aid For Aging Artists
Vol. 2 No. 14, 09-27-2026\
p. 1
P u b l i s h e d W e e k l y, N e w s, A r t s, & S t o r i e s F r o m T e x a s .... U s u a l l y
A salesman, A tourist, and Nancy Reddin Kienholz Walk into a Bar .....In Ft. Worth
d. m. allsion, 09-27-2026, (word count 2,158) Campfire Stories Series #2
"No mother! Not a hurricane. I'm not in Houston, I'm in Dallas it’s a A tornado!" Holding up her vodka martini glass catching hail balls in front of the White Elephant.
Nancy Reddin Kienholz uttered these words in front of the White Elephant Saloon in the Fort Worth Stockyards. She might be forgiven for getting her location wrong. She had had a few, and after all it was an emergency.
I had run out after her to try and encourage more sensible thinking, looking East down the street the sky was black as night, gave up, grabbed her around the waist, spilling what was left of her newly iced vodka martini. She wasn’t happy about that at all. What she was focused on was catching little hail balls in her glass, pretty much unconscious of the impending danger. What led us to this moment in Time?
As previously noted, we had started working on lenticular lens graphics and needed to find a place that could print them Nancy Reddin from Hollywood size. Her father had been chief of police when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated but that’s another story, her grandfather a weight lifter in the circus.
In the 20 years that I knew her she mentioned more than once that she had been born under a lucky star. Well, this moment kind of proved it as we both made it to safety and down into the storm cellar of the White Elephant, sliding into home plate under the bar.
There were only several places in the US that could print lenticular lens graphics 4 x 8 ft., and that is the largest size anyone makes by the way. One printer that accommodates this size is in Fort Worth. Texas Graphic and Printing was a thriving business. Their main customers were race car drivers at Texas Motor Speedway printing lenticular lens graphics for the semi-trailers the race car teams hauled all of their souvenir bling in along with their cars.
The idea was when you drove by them on the highway or walked by their parked semi-trailers around the track you would get these giant moving graphics. The trailers would be emblazoned with familiar NASCAR racing sponsors STP, Pennzoil, UPS, Tide, Lowe’s, and Home Depot, and my favorites Budweiser, Miller Lite, Busch, and Coors Light. Not necessarily condoning a little drinking and driving to the tailgating crowd around the track, but the whole thing probably wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without drinking beer and wearing some celebrity Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart ball cap tee-shirt bling. You want to choose up sides a little and letting everybody know who you were rooting for. Yeehaw.
Source: https://www.jayski.com/race-results/2000-nascar-winston-cup-series/
Nancy always made everything an adventure, a story to be experienced, and so after 2 years of working with these computer cowboys in Fort Worth she decided we needed to go pay them a visit.
This was 2002, before smartphones could tell us where to go, so Nancy navigated with a paper map. Trailblazer that she was, she knew how to read one, and she never had any trouble telling me what to do or which way to go. We arrived about 11:00 a.m. and drove into a giant office park outside of Fort Worth. Several acres of concrete, almost unmarked single-story warehouses with loading docks, on a gray day, and pulled up to Texas Graphic & Printing.
Nancy said, "I bet you that that’s Dale’s truck." We always liked to bet on things. Dale was our computer guy, and this truck of the three cars in front was obviously his. After hours and hours on the phone over the last 2 years you get to know people. A green Chevy pickup about 1985 in immaculate condition, nothing special about it except that it looked almost showroom new.
And I said, “and that would be Kenny’s car, the bullshitter.” We were looking at a Miata ragtop sports car about 5 years old with whiskey dings all the way around. For 2 years he kept trying to sell us the job we were already buying.
We knew we had pegged it, looked at each other and the third car, and in unison, “that’s the Old Man’s car.” We had only talked to him on the phone briefly a couple of times, but enough to know that he was a Vietnam vet and a sweetheart. What was he driving? What was the last guess by process of elimination? An older VW bug in good condition. We were proved right about all three guesses.
We walked up the concrete stairs on the loading dock and into their warehouse where Kenny was more than glad to meet us. Dale came over and introduced himself as the Old Man came out of his office. He was healthy but had a pretty severe limp, I suppose, maybe something left over from Vietnam. We would find out that he was the one that ran all the printers in the room and there were an amazing assortment of Hewlett-Packard, Epson, and maybe some Canon printers all hooked up like patients in an ER ward, to clusters of colored ink bottles around the perimeter of the room, most of them spitting out some sort of graphics on paper, canvas, and lenticular lens graphics. Around the room, an assortment of NASCAR graphics, in a disarray of souvenirs, examples, misprints, and rejected jobs, from a wide variety of clients including bits and pieces of Coca-Cola 7-Eleven, and Walmart.
Standing in the center of all this Nancy and I were a little amazed at how much was going on and how much they were doing. The old man had hired crews of mostly Vietnam veterans, all working at a number of tables adjacent to the machines, all working away to get the graphics off the machines and packed up for shipping. What a great operation. We loved it.
We walked the perimeter of the room with the Old Man, which was about 3,000 sq. ft. I took a closer look at all the machines and how they were hooked up for commercial use with at least a half dozen bottles on wheeled metal IV poles complete with hooks, and hanging bags of ink at each of several dozen stations around the room. I’ve done a lot of digital printing. I’ve had both Hewlett-Packard and Epson printers, but I’d never seen anything like this. This was ingenious and had to save like Heck on the cost of inks which is the real killer in the business I can tell you from experience.
We fell in love with this group, and of course Kenny being the salesman thought it would be a good idea to meet us for drinks at the White Elephant at the end of the day. Nancy was always up for her “drinks.”
As we walked back to the car and on our way to the hotel Nancy turned to me and said, “Kenny is going to keep trying to sell us.” “Yep” “He’s going to try to ply us with liquor and seal a deal he already has.” “Yep” “He likes drinking” and as we got in the car I replied, “yeah but he doesn’t know what he’s in for.” Nancy gave a chuckle.
We got unpacked and got to the White Elephant before Dale and Kenny and sat down next to a very nice Japanese couple, who were talking with a Frenchman and his wife a few seats down. It was about 5:00 and the place wasn’t crowded yet. That was kind of nice, it was quiet enough for conversation. Nancy was sitting between me and a couple from Japan.
“So, where are you from?” Nancy looked back at me with a sly grin. They couldn’t have been more from Japan if we’d been standing in the middle of Shibuya Tokyo. They definitely had time to do a little shopping around the Stockyards. I’m sorry but it’s funny, the husband did have on a cowboy hat and in character, black rim glasses, a Nikon camera around his neck, a dress shirt, neatly pressed dress slacks, and brand new cowboy boots. He was ready for a Saturday Night Live skit in the 70s.
He and his wife were enjoying the heck out of their vacation in Cowtown and were eager to converse with some of the natives. His name was Kenta and he was well aware he was a little funny. We knew he was really funny. We were enjoying our first drinks when Kenny walked in with tall Daryl close behind, and the real drinking started. It was unspoken, but it was going to be shot for shot, Nancy and Kenny, and Nancy was going to put little Kenny under the table.
(By the way The Stockyards Championship Rodeo runs every Friday and Saturday night at 7:30 p.m., year-round, inside Cowtown Coliseum.
(5 images Click On Image To Expand To Full Screen)
I had run out after her to try and encourage more sensible thinking, looking East down the street the sky was black as night, gave up, grabbed her around the waist, spilling what was left of her newly iced vodka martini. She wasn’t happy about that at all. What she was focused on was catching little hail balls in her glass, pretty much unconscious of the impending danger. What led us to this moment in Time?
Our new friends Kenta and Yuko his wife, like good tourists, were in for the full Texas experience drinking margaritas, I don’t think Yuko ever finished hers and the third one for Kenta had him turning red-faced. Nancy was knocking down the vodka martinis like they were water. Daryl was nursing a Coors light standing at the bar protectively behind Kenny who was trying to keep up with Nancy drinking shots of Jack Daniels and might fall off his bar stool. Daryl had been in this story before. The Frenchman and his wife were drinking wine and starting to take interest in the conversation as were several other locals when Nancy went into storytelling mode.
It was a while back, and I am paraphrasing, but she was launching into a story about the opening of the Pompidou Center in ’77, and attending a dinner in some great hall surrounded by Rembrandts, Titian, and the great classics when Jean Tinguely, who she thought looked a lot like Johnny Depp
“You know in that movie when Depp was Charlie Chaplin playing with rolls and forks at a dinner.” Nancy mused,
“You know, Jean was very playful. They had these dessert pastries stuffed with cheese and whatnot, and he just reached over and slapped one. And the game was on. Food fight under the masters hanging above us near the ceiling of this great hall. There were about 50 of us.” Nancy was casting her spell over our little group.
She probably mentioned some of the museum dignitaries, French President Va d’Estaing, Renzo Piano, and artists like Ed Moses and celebrities like Dennis Hopper, and others from the Cool School. Dennis Hopper got EVERYONE’S attention.
By stander, “Oh yeah, I know him. Wasn’t he in Easy Rider? Do you know Jack Nicolson too?” Nancy seemed entertained and was being patient, which was not always her way. We had a signal when she’d had enough. She’d put one hand over one eye. A reference to our favorite movie A Christmas Story starring Darren McGavin, and the kid gets a BB gun for Christmas. As in, “This conversation, this situation, is about to put my eye out, come get me.”
I wasn’t drinking much when I was Nancy’s designated driver, and I know that Daryl didn’t seem the type to drink much on a regular basis. He was going to be Kenny’s designated driver before the evening was over. Nancy was putting on a show, not just name dropping, but she always knew how to fill in a little information about the characters she was talking about so she could take her audience along with her. She was well aware just as most famous visual artists will attest to, that you’re never really rock and roll movie star famous in the visual art world except in certain circles, and if you want to tell stories you’re going to have to fill in a few details.
About an hour and a half into this, and about the time Nancy was name dropping and explaining Billy Al Bengston we heard what sounded like air raid sirens going off in an old WW2 movie. Kenny and Daryl knew what those were but none of the rest of our little group of French, Japanese, and two Houstonians had a clue.
The bar was about half full at that point but everyone there knew what to do and started rushing somewhere. We were clueless. Most of the White Elephant regulars had jumped up and started heading for some particular destination in the back of the bar. Our French couple, Kenta, Yuko, Kenny and Daryl did the same. I stood solid and Nancy ran out through the swinging Western style barroom doors, on to the porch, down a couple of quick steps, and by the time I got out to her she was making a game of actively catching little hail balls in her martini glass, already on the phone to her mom in Hollywood California.
“No mother! Not a hurricane. I’m not in Houston, I’m in Dallas with Dan. A tornado!”