The Big House on the Prairie.

[Soapy]

Keiyana gotta chill throwing lamps off rip is crazy

she just passionate bruh

[Soapy]

The Big House on the Prairie
Chapter Two :: The Mayor, Part One

I never had the illusion of grandeur — or perhaps more softly put the ambition — that my father and to a lesser extent that my grandfather possessed. Both of those men had not only tremendous self confidence but an unwavering belief that bordered on manifest destiny that they were meant to accomplish great things in life and achieve things that most don’t even dream of.

I never had that belief, not to my core, not to the way that they did. I was good at football, I liked being good at football but beyond that, I didn’t think much of it. I’d be lying if I said I was naive to the things that came with being a talented athlete: the lingering looks from the fairer sex, the praise from my peers, and the preferential treatment that came with it. But beyond all those things, I loved Friday nights.

Not when the stadium was full and the cheers were loud and the lights shone the brightest. No, that was fine, that was okay. What I enjoyed the most was that quiet storm during on-field warm-ups, the methodical way I would go through my routine, meticulously curated over the years. I loved the anticipation during stretching, the subtle rise in heartrate as the game would near. The quiet chatter among teammates as coaches huddled up together. I’d occasionally glance into the stands where a few parents had arrived early, my mom bundled up in the top row with Keiyana by her side but a healthy distance away for both of their sake. I’d try to stifle my smile, focusing on the task at hand and the opponent ahead. I loved the feeling of the soft grass or turf underneath my cleats as I walked the field, picking up the pace to a slow job as I circled the field, working up a bit of a sweat.

Those were the things that I enjoyed the most. The success, the failures, the accomplishment, all of that was to come and be decided between those white lines over the course of the game. Whatever my future held, whatever it didn’t, it didn’t matter. Not during those moments.

By the time my father graduated from the University of Texas, he didn’t know what he would make of himself but he knew it’d be something. After all, he had promised my mother when he snatched her from her previous boyfriend that she’d be gracing an NFL sideline. He had a few tryouts in the NFL, spending training camp with the Carolina Panthers and then the Chicago Bears following his release but after a season of bouncing around practice squads and living in extended stays, my father found himself too important to be a mere practice dummy. It was around the same time that my grandfather had been elected as a judge in Prairie View’s Municipal Court so naturally, my father leaned on his grandfather in the same way as my grandfather had leaned on Bossman Hussey. He wanted my grandfather to pass onto him his law firm despite the fact that my father wasn’t a lawyer, had never been to law school, read a law book or knew anything about the law except for his own run-ins with the law, usually for being intoxicated behind the wheel.

My grandfather sold the law firm to his protege, Johnny Wilks, who had worked with him for more than a decade as a paralegal, then a junior associate before making partner in their final years together. Papa Book didn’t leave Little Book high and dry, though, as he got him a job as a clerk in the court system, a job that anyone at Prairie View A&M would have killed for. It was a decent enough job until my mother, who had returned to that same health administrator job she left years before with her hat in hand, got pregnant.

My father’s plan — if you could call it that — of simply being around the court long enough for his dad to eventually have Wilks cut him into the firm would take too long. He had a baby boy on the way and for Little Book, being a clerk just didn’t feel like a job that a man should have and certainly not a father.

Next release: 6/16/2025

[Captain Canada]

I can't tell if you copied the text from the beginning to the end on purpose but it really threw me off.

[Soapy]

I can't tell if you copied the text from the beginning to the end on purpose but it really threw me off.

my fault, copied it twice

[redsox907]

Keiyana gonna catch a DV case throwing lamps then he really gonna be smashing them white girls.

interested to see where you're going with this one

[Soapy]

Keiyana gonna catch a DV case throwing lamps then he really gonna be smashing them white girls.

interested to see where you're going with this one

Glad to have you along, brother.

[Soapy]

The Big House on the Prairie
Chapter Two :: The Mayor, Part Two

Before I came along, my father was probably the best athlete to ever come out of Prairie View. When you couple that with the Gurley last name, he was the sort of guy that people wanted to be around. Folks around the town would invite him to their barbecue or their baby shower, even if the extent of their relationship was the occasional wave at the chicken pit. Naturally, Little Book got into the business world even though, just like with ambitions to run my grandfather’s law firm, he had no experience whatsoever in the field.

While his position at the time as a clerk was too low for his britches, it did make him privy to sensitive information listed in court documents and aware of ongoing court proceedings, both in criminal cases and more importantly civil ones. If a permit was being filed or zoning was being contested, Little Book would be one of the first people to know about it and with that information, he was able to leverage himself and the information he had to get in on the ground floor of many new developments around town.

Prairie View was a college town through and through with nothing but fellow rural towns around it. While it served as a boring playground as a teenager, often drunkenly returning from Houston where his more primal craving would be tended to more adequately, it was the perfect breeding ground for new opportunities for an ambitious Little Book. Similar to his father, my grandfather — Papa Book — Little Book had started to get a reputation around town as someone that got things done and who you wanted to be around your business ventures in order to increase their chances of success. He had his father’s connections around town along with his University of Texas ties where many businessmen that happened to be Longhorns fans would happily humor one of their own with a meeting. Now, most of these meetings were just that; a photo op for those businessmen to shake hands with a former Longhorn, always donning his championship ring. But every once in a while, something came from those meetings and ‘every once in a while’ happened just frequently enough that if you wanted to make money in Prairie View, you went to Little Book.

It was this sort of middle management, backroom dealing that got Little Book the nickname “The Mayor”. It originally derived from a joke as town residents would often say that if you wanted to get something done: "You go ahead and sit down with Little Book, fuck the mayor.”

The saying and sentiment was initially amusing to Little Book as it filled his ego and his pockets, as he had quit his job as a clerk and opened a consulting firm with an office on the same lot as his father’s old law office, now ran by Wilks. He, of course, soon purchased the neighboring office space just so it would be bigger than Wilks’ office.

As time went on, the more people called him “The Mayor”, the more he felt like one and decided to drop the moniker and run for the actual office. If everyone treated him like he was the mayor, he might as well be the mayor. Little Book’s campaign wasn’t without controversy, nearly coming to a halt before it got off the ground.

The sitting mayor, a former reverend by the name of Roland Withrow was a friend of the family. Withrow had helped grow Papa Book’s law firm with constant referrals over the years and was instrumental in Papa Book’s appointment as a judge. If that didn’t muddy the water enough, another potential candidate was Wilks, who prior to taking over Papa Book’s law firm, had been considering running for office. If Withrow was to step down and step aside, it’d be Wilks that would be next in line with Withrow’s endorsement and Papa Book’s.

Things weren’t better at home, either. Little Book had launched his campaign and the announcement without discussing it with my mother, yet another moment in their relationship when my father acted on his own without much care or thought on how it would affect the family. It led to few tense months in the house as I don’t think my mom spoke to my father for what felt like forever.

Next release: 6/23/2025

[Soapy]

The Big House on the Prairie
Chapter Two :: The Mayor, Part Three

My father’s tendencies to make life altering decisions often on a whim, without much foresight and definitely without consulting or notifying others weren’t passed down to me. It’s what made my college decision — and indecision — that much more difficult. My commitment to the University of Texas was flimsy at best, purely cosmetic as I just didn’t want to decommit from them only to wind up back in the boat again once it was said and done as they were still my top choice, just not the only choice I was considering.

I had wanted to wrap up my recruitment by that summer heading into my senior year and be able to focus entirely on leading Waller High School to their first state title, something even my father hadn’t accomplished. Those plans came to a screeching halt with my mother’s worsening health. By that summer, heading into the fall, the writing was on the wall. Things were only going to get worse before they got better…if they got better. It threw a whole new set of circumstances and variables into my decision making process.

My sister Marianne was fourteen at the time and Evan had just turned eleven. I felt that they would need me to be there if and when things took a turn for the worst. They were too young to fully grasp the horrors that were her first battle with the disease. I wasn’t. I remembered the shaky nights at the hospital when it wasn’t clear if she’d still be with us by morning. The days when death seemed the better option of her going through another arduous round of chemotherapy. The up-and-down nature of the prognosis’, when good days would turn bad and bad days would end optimistically following a screening. Even when her cancer went into remission, a day that we celebrated and was one of my best memories, the doctor was sure to remind us that it could always returned. It did.

The University of Houston was a viable option due to the close proximity. I could practically live at home and make the hour long commute for classes and practice. The Cougars were one of the first schools to offer me and I had a good relationship with Coach Belk, their defensive coordinator, but he had been fired, along with the rest of the coaching staff following another dissapointing season. I didn’t know the new coaching staff that well and quite frankly, it felt like bit of a shotgun wedding born out of convenience. My high school coach, who was also my best friend Jeremiah’s dad, coach Sam Thomas, had warned me that with the proximity would come distractions. I’d constantly be traveling home, not focusing on what I needed to focus on. Coach Thomas preferred Oregon.

"That white man got a blank check,” Coach Thomas often told me of Phil Knight, the founder of Nike and Oregon’s top booster, "A white man with a blank check is a nigga’s dream.”

A blank check is what got my father in office. Early in his campaign, his wealth, which was acquired in a relatively short amount of time, was often pointed out as a criticism of his rivals and why he wasn’t fit to run for office. They never flat out accused my father of any wrongdoings or corruption but it was certainly implied, raising the question as to why the owner of such a successful business would want to run for office in the first place.

At the beginning, my father tried to counter this, offering to provide tax returns to show that he was just a hard working businessman that had good months and bad months, good years and bad ones, just like everyone else. The messaging fell flat as he had spent the better part of the previous decade telling folks the opposite, leveraging his reputation as a money-making advisor that every business needed to have on their board and every upstart needed his involvement if they were going to get anything done in the city. He had left his job as a clerk at the town’s courthouse withing a year, starting his own business to help link small businesses with potential investors, many of which with ties to Austin. None of it smelled like Small Town USA and he certainly wasn’t just like everyone else.

With this counter attack not working, my father — which was more within his nature anyway — started to lean into the narrative. He purchased a new home that rivaled some of Prairie View A&M’s dorms in square footage. He propositioned that no other candidate had more skin in the game than he did since he had invested in the town with his money and other’s people, pointing to owning or having interest in the town’s biggest properties, both commercial and residential.

When his primary opponent and long time rival Johnny Wilks pointed out that Little Book wasn’t even a Prairie View A&M graduate, my father made a big show of him registering for classes at Prairie View, recording the whole affair and posting it on Facebook. When the sitting mayor Roland Withrow challenged Little Book during a town hall debate, questioning Little Book on why he was even running for office and what his stances on issues that a small town like Prairie View was facing, my father would turn to the crowd and ask them what they wanted his stance to be. For a crowd of mostly opinionated college graduates or rural folks whose opinions were often overlooked and ignored, they were more than willing to provide Little Book with the answers.

Shortly after that townhall, Withrow withdrew from re-election and within days, my grandfather began making phone calls on behalf of my father, campaigning on his behalf. To this day, it’s still not known by how much my father won the 2012 mayoral election. At some point, folks just stopped counting.
Next release: 6/30/2025

[djp73]

STOP THE COUNT

[redsox907]

"That white man got a blank check,” Coach Thomas often told me of Phil Knight, the founder of Nike and Oregon’s top booster, "A white man with a blank check is a nigga’s dream.”

Just set the culture back 50 years with that statement