conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a description for a book titled That Old Ace in the Hole about Bob, Panhandle, Dollar with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Bob Dollar is a reluctant land swindler. When the 25-year-old protagonist in the author's <I>That Old Ace in the Hole</I> signs on as a location scout for Global Pork Rind, an industrial hog farming corporation, he has no idea what kind of moral quandaries he's in for. Well, maybe he does. His assignment, after all, is to infiltrate a tiny town in the Texas Panhandle and find a tract of land his employer can turn into an industrial hog farm. Bob tells the locals he's scouting for luxury home developers ("They feel there is potential here"), but as a cover story it's less than clever. Only a fool would build mansions in the godforsaken Panhandle country, a place of light soil, bad wind, killing drought, and end-of-world thunder. "To live here," one Panhandler tells Bob, "it sure helps if you are half cow and half mesquite and all crazy." The narrative follows Bob's hapless quest to ink a deal, but the author's mission is bigger than that. She's out to tell the story of the Panhandle itself, to write an entirely new literary territory into existence. With the help of a menagerie of eccentric characters set down in "the most complicated part of North America," the author succeeds admirably. <I>--Claire Dederer</I>
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: That Old Ace in the Hole
  I thought the adventures of Lt. Abert might interest you as he was the first to systematically explore the region you are now in and at approximately your age. I hope you will take as much interest in what you see as he did. The broadly engaged mind is the source of a happy life. Good luck.
  He went down the street for supper, ate two scorched corn dogs and aged coleslaw at the Bandwagon diner and then called home collect from a pay phone.
  There was no television set in the room and he read a few pages from Lieutenant James William Abert's Expedition, learning, before sleep descended, that the lieutenant was the son of Colonel John James Abert, who headed the U.S. Corps of Topographical Engineers, the agency charged with exploring and mapping the west. At West Point the son collected an astonishing number of demerits and stood near the bottom of his class in all but drawing, where he ranked first. His fellow West Pointers included Ulysses S. Grant, James Longstreet, William Tecumseh Sherman, Henry W. Halleck and others who became Civil War luminaries. Bob Dollar's heart went out to Lieutenant Abert, surrounded by military bullies, sissy drawing his only skill. The lieutenant was Bob Dollar's age when he and his friend and second-in-command, the mathematically inclined Lieutenant William Guy Peck, and a small company were ordered by the idiosyncratic and haughty John Charles Frémont to separate from the larger expedition and form the "South Expedition" to explore the territory of the Comanche, and chart the course of the Canadian River while Frémont himself pushed on to sunny California. Bob found the journal interesting, for Abert had an inquiring eye, a good nature, and he was early in the country.
  The bed was heaped with puffy quilts and featherbeds, so infernally hot that he ended by kicking them all on the floor and directing the fan's stream of air at the bed. When he woke at dawn the sheets were twisted into frightful points and kinked spirals like aging telephone cords. He couldn't get away from the place fast enough. The white van was gone.
  The fat boy spoke to the woman on the chair. "They had me in a wrestle hold in Kansas City. It was one of the most dangerous holds. They almost killed me. I don't know how I escaped, but I'm standing here, ain't I, waiting in line like anybody else? And that was last year. They couldn't do it now, because I'd kill them. I'd break their backs. And one of them was my best friend. But he is not my best friend now. He's my ex–best friend. We did some things together. One time when we were little we borrowed his mother's crème brûlée torch and melted the gumball machine, and the gumballs all came out on the floor, and they were rolling around and we picked them up and man, they were hot. Worse than hot, they were boiling, they stuck to our hands and burned them. See, I got gumball scars right here." He held out his palm for inspection, displaying puckered circles.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about T-shirt, pulled.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: That Old Ace in the Hole
  I thought the adventures of Lt. Abert might interest you as he was the first to systematically explore the region you are now in and at approximately your age. I hope you will take as much interest in what you see as he did. The broadly engaged mind is the source of a happy life. Good luck. 
  He went down the street for supper, ate two scorched corn dogs and aged coleslaw at the Bandwagon diner and then called home collect from a pay phone. 
  There was no television set in the room and he read a few pages from Lieutenant James William Abert's Expedition, learning, before sleep descended, that the lieutenant was the son of Colonel John James Abert, who headed the U. S. Corps of Topographical Engineers, the agency charged with exploring and mapping the west. At West Point the son collected an astonishing number of demerits and stood near the bottom of his class in all but drawing, where he ranked first. His fellow West Pointers included Ulysses S. Grant, James Longstreet, William Tecumseh Sherman, Henry W. Halleck and others who became Civil War luminaries. Bob Dollar's heart went out to Lieutenant Abert, surrounded by military bullies, sissy drawing his only skill. The lieutenant was Bob Dollar's age when he and his friend and second-in-command, the mathematically inclined Lieutenant William Guy Peck, and a small company were ordered by the idiosyncratic and haughty John Charles Frémont to separate from the larger expedition and form the "South Expedition" to explore the territory of the Comanche, and chart the course of the Canadian River while Frémont himself pushed on to sunny California. Bob found the journal interesting, for Abert had an inquiring eye, a good nature, and he was early in the country. 
  The bed was heaped with puffy quilts and featherbeds, so infernally hot that he ended by kicking them all on the floor and directing the fan's stream of air at the bed. When he woke at dawn the sheets were twisted into frightful points and kinked spirals like aging telephone cords. He showered, pulled on his jeans and T-shirt. He couldn't get away from the place fast enough. The white van was gone. 
  The fat boy spoke to the woman on the chair. "They had me in a wrestle hold in Kansas City. It was one of the most dangerous holds. They almost killed me. I don't know how I escaped, but I'm standing here, ain't I, waiting in line like anybody else? And that was last year. They couldn't do it now, because I'd kill them. I'd break their backs. And one of them was my best friend. But he is not my best friend now. He's my ex–best friend. We did some things together. One time when we were little we borrowed his mother's crème brûlée torch and melted the gumball machine, and the gumballs all came out on the floor, and they were rolling around and we picked them up and man, they were hot. Worse than hot, they were boiling, they stuck to our hands and burned them. See, I got gumball scars right here. " He held out his palm for inspection, displaying puckered circles.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: five more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: LaVon returned, shaking a wooden box. "Then the second quilt Doll McJunkin won, he's the one delivers mail, and he sold it for a thousand dollars to the Texas Christian Museum in Wichita Falls. I believe it was Jonah and the Whale. I remember the whale's little bitty eye like a watermelon seed. It was some old jet button Freda Beautyrooms found in her sewing box. They used a make really beautiful buttons in the old days. I can see why people collect them. The whale was divin and it filled up the whole quilt. All you could see a Jonah was his legs stickin out of the leviathan's mouth. And there was his empty boat at the top a the water. There's been other church groups, especially the Missionary Babtists, started up tryin a make quilts like these, but they haven't got the know-how. They haven't got the feel. You wouldn't walk on one a their quilts compared a ours."
  At one o'clock sharp the first truck, an elderly grey Ford from the late 1940s, arrived. Two white-haired women headed for the front door, carrying cross-stitched sewing bags with wooden handles. The driver took a long time to descend from the truck and helped herself along with a cane. They all wore flowery, shin-length dresses, and when the wind swept the skirts forward they seemed Botticelli's Three Graces (panhandle-style) grown old.
  They had just finished exclaiming over LaVon's new cobalt blue fleur-de-lys trivet when two more trucks pulled in, each disgorging several women. The male drivers moved the trucks near a corral and got out to stand together and lean on the rails. One lighted a cigarette. Within fifteen minutes the house was full of women, almost all of them elderly or middle-aged, though there was one beautiful girl with black hair who looked to be barely twenty. She was heavily pregnant, so swollen and clumsy Bob feared an obstetric emergency. LaVon introduced her as Dawn Crouch, the granddaughter of Ace Crouch, the windmill man, and said that she had made her grandparents Ace and Vollie a fine quilt in the windmill blades pattern.
  The women arranged the sections of the Cain and Abel quilt on the table. The ground was a great tawny pasture dotted with mesquite and Spanish bayonet. In the distance there was a corral and a figure bending over a branding fire. In the foreground, a burly farmer, his face contorted with rage, stood over a recumbent shepherd, preparing to smash his face (which resembled that of James Dean) with a huge rock. Three blue-eyed sheep looked on. Blows had already been struck and copious blood stained the ground. The killer's blue overalls were spattered with red satin gore.
  LaVon explained to Bob. "We had quite a discussion about whether a put Cain and Abel in those stripy robes and sandals you always see in Bible pictures, but in the end we voted a go with the way people around here dress. To make it more real-like."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: ". "Then the second quilt Doll McJunkin won, he's the one delivers mail, and he sold it for a thousand dollars to the Texas Christian Museum in Wichita Falls. I believe it was Jonah and the Whale. I remember the whale's little bitty eye like a watermelon seed. It was some old jet button Freda Beautyrooms found in her sewing box. They used a make really beautiful buttons in the old days. I can see why people collect them. The whale was divin and it filled up the whole quilt. All you could see a Jonah was his legs stickin out of the leviathan's mouth. And there was his empty boat at the top a the water. There's been other church groups, especially the Missionary Babtists, started up tryin a make quilts like these, but they haven't got the know-how. They haven't got the feel. You wouldn't walk on one a their quilts compared a ours."
  At one o'clock sharp the first truck, an elderly grey Ford from the late 1940s, arrived. Two white-haired women headed for the front door, carrying cross-stitched sewing bags with wooden handles. The driver took a long time to descend from the truck and helped herself along with a cane. They all wore flowery, shin-length dresses, and when the wind swept the skirts forward they seemed Botticelli's Three Graces (panhandle-style) grown old.
  They had just finished exclaiming over LaVon's new cobalt blue fleur-de-lys trivet when two more trucks pulled in, each disgorging several women. The male drivers moved the trucks near a corral and got out to stand together and lean on the rails. One lighted a cigarette. Within fifteen minutes the house was full of women, almost all of them elderly or middle-aged, though there was one beautiful girl with black hair who looked to be barely twenty. She was heavily pregnant, so swollen and clumsy Bob feared an obstetric emergency. LaVon introduced her as Dawn Crouch, the granddaughter of Ace Crouch, the windmill man, and said that she had made her grandparents Ace and Vollie a fine quilt in the windmill blades pattern.
  The women arranged the sections of the Cain and Abel quilt on the table. The ground was a great tawny pasture dotted with mesquite and Spanish bayonet. In the distance there was a corral and a figure bending over a branding fire. In the foreground, a burly farmer, his face contorted with rage, stood over a recumbent shepherd, preparing to smash his face (which resembled that of James Dean) with a huge rock. Three blue-eyed sheep looked on. Blows had already been struck and copious blood stained the ground. The killer's blue overalls were spattered with red satin gore.
  LaVon explained to Bob. "We had quite a discussion about whether a put Cain and Abel in those stripy robes and sandals you always see in Bible pictures, but in the end we voted a go with the way people around here dress. To make it more real-like.LaVon returned, shaking a wooden box.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last four paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: There are no counties named Woolybucket or Slickfork in the panhandle country. The towns of Teemu, Cowboy Rose, Struggle, Woolybucket and Twospot are invented. The characters are not based on real people except in a remote way, as composites of human behavior, with some physical descriptions based on old photographs. Some anecdotes and incidents have been extrapolated from historical records and regional histories.
  The costume notes of the 1884 leap-year party on pages 103–4 are taken from William Curry Holden's A Ranching Saga, the Lives of Williams Electious Halsell and Ewing Halsell (San Antonio, Texas: Trinity University Press, 1976), vol. I, pp. 172–74.
  Uncle Tam's comment on page 25 on humankind's inadvertent selection of rattleless rattlesnakes comes from Barry Lopez.
  I know of no real Global Pork Rind Corporation nor any Barbwire Festival nor any monastic bison ranch. On the other hand, Bent's Fort is real, the names of many real panhandle towns are used here and the real James Abert spent many years in the service of the Topographical Corps.