Untitled America Nendujan Ratnarajah

"People who were involved in my upbringing, in my philosophy of life and whatever. Well, of course my mother and father and my older sister who was eight years older than me, she took care of me a lot, and then probably the primary one was my Aunt Altie."

"Myself and three other guys went down to Laredo, Texas where we hunted. Saturday night came and we decided that we would go across the border into Mexico because there was a cafe over there. This cafe specialized in all kind of exotic animals. The guy we were with paid just happened to be a salesman and he paid for the meal and hunt with $100 bills. And so, we left. We got about a block and the federales pulled us over."

"I had a cousin named Marion Thurman. He went by Sonny Thurman and he worked for Haliburton and he had this bird dog. He got transferred so he gave it to me when I was in high school because I used to hunt a lot. And when I went off to college, I gave it to an old black man named John."

“When I was in high school, there was an old man who moved into Pledger. His name was Andrew M. Langford and he was in his 80s and had been a part of the US Army in the Spanish-American War. He wasn’t with Teddy Roosevelt’s volunteers but they were fighting there alongside of Teddy Roosevelt and he was a very interesting old man.”

Marion Matthew “Mack” Malone Jr grew up in rural Texas in the 1950s and 1960s working cattle and riding in rodeos. He studied Sociology at Texas A&M and became a social studies teacher. He later became a purchasing manager for an oil field company and then the City of Houston. Mack’s influence consists of the many children he’s raised, the missionaries he’s fed, the single mothers he’s supported, and the lives he touches for good in his sometimes gruff and impolitic way.

Mack is known for his sometimes outlandish stories, consisting of his personal experiences growing up in Matagorda County and tales of people otherwise forgotten by time. For years, his family has anticipated collecting these stories in his own words and sharing them- Mack’s “Big Fish moment.” Consider this project an archive of sorts. It is a glimpse of life in rural Texas, a reminder of small-town America as it once was.