Fender Tucker, as regular readers of this blog know, is the founder of Ramble House, the publishing empire with the oddest array of titles currently available. Occasionally he sets pen to paper and writes a story. Sometimes the story features Tucker's alter ego, Knees Calhoun. One example is reviewed here. The stories are set in the past and based (loosely one hopes) on the adventures of Knees in his old hometown. This brings me to The Naked Trocar, one of Knees' longer adventures. Knees returns to Farmington, New Mexico, and the next thing he knows he's getting a parking ticket. That's an innocent beginning to a story that gets more bizarre as it goes along until by the end it's pretty perverse. And as a bonus, it has a chapter titled "Snakes on a Plain." As Knees says, "Everyone knows snakes make everything more fun."
The book also includes "The Best Revenge," subtitled "A Sort-Of Western." It's different, for sure, thanks to the fact that one of the characters is, well, I can't tell you. Why spoil the surprise?
After that is "The Martingale Arms," which is "A Gambling Fable." It's fun, too, and don't pass up the "Afterword" in which Knees, er, Fender talks about the stories and how he came to write them.
And if you want a real memoir and not fiction (though some it must be at least a little bit fictionalized), I highly recommend Weed, Women, and Song, in which we get a bit of the story of Tucker's well-spent youth. He could have called it Sex, Drugs, and Rock-and-Roll, which would also have been an accurate description.
While you're checking these out on the Ramble House site, just look around at the other titles. There's some wonderful stuff.
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