A Kid His Guns And His Badge

Books about policemen are a dime a dozen. Most of the stories I've seen and read, whether they're fact or fiction, involve cops in the larger metropolitan areas like New York or Los Angeles. If you want to read about shootouts, car chases, and the things Hollywood writes into their scripts for movies or television, you can find those just about everywhere you look. This is a story about a boy who grew up in a Mayberry setting in Central California in the rather innocent era of the 1950s. During the high school years, as with most youths in that age range, I was easily influenced by adventurous people and things. Blessings from above pointed me away from potential lawlessness in the direction of law and order. The last two-thirds of the book covers a colorful career in rural law enforcement. It includes the bad, the good, and the ugly with a generous helping of humor sprinkled in along the way. This is a true story based on my experiences as I recall them. A few of the names herein have been changed to protect the privacy of those individuals. Similarly, many of the book's quoted passages may not be in verbatim dialogue. Still, these or like conversations did take place and the tone of what was said are as true as memory will allow after a lapse of many years. Paintings by Jamie Waddell-Humble

A Kid, His Guns, and His Badge by Jim Waddell __________________________________

It May Not Be Your Gun! It May Not Happen In Your Home! Would your kids know what to do? Today children are growing up in a high-tech animated world of make believe. This fun colorful book reminds kids and parents they must learn the difference between real and fake. It reminds kids to never take chances with guns. It helps teach kids what to do if a young friend or relative finds and shows them a gun. The book reads in a fun flowing and easy to understand way that could truly save a child's life. My book is not for or against guns. It is a tool to help stimulate the conversation. It may not be your gun; it may not happen in your home. Tragedy is too often the result when a child finds or shows off a gun. We are talking about guns that are kept as heirlooms, for hunting and for family protection even duty guns used to serve with military and law enforcement have been found by kids. Studies show that as many as one in every three homes may have a gun in it. Be sure your kids know what to do. Teach them it's okay to tell. A badge of courage they will earn! Read;" LET'S TALK ABOUT GUNS" WITH THE KIDS YOU LOVE TODAY!

THE RAINBOW'S END MATCHMAKERS WERE PLACING THEIR BETS! Twenty years ago Maggie Callahan was crazy in love with handsome Zachary Tate. Still, too young to tie herself down, she'd fled her small Texas town for glamorous Manhattan, secretly bereft that her beloved hadn't begged her to stay. Now, though, Maggie was back for a spell. And confronting thoroughly masculine Zach, a sweet-talkin' single dad and upright, downright desirable sheriff, made her hometown—and her hopes—sparkle anew. But would Zach propose this time—and finally make her a happy, small-town wife and mom? Or would Maggie once again leave her heart at Rainbow's End?

Texas is a place where legends are made, die, and are revived. Fort Worth, Texas, claims its own legend – Hell’s Half Acre – a wild ’n woolly accumulation of bordellos, cribs, dance houses, saloons, and gambling parlors. Tenderloin districts were a fact of life in every major town in the American West, but Hell’s Half Acre – its myth and its reality – can be said to be a microcosm of them all. The most famous and infamous westerners visited the Acre: Timothy (“Longhair Jim”) Courtright, Luke Short, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Sam Bass, Mary Porter, Etta Place, along with Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch, and many more. For civic leaders and reformers, the Acre presented a dilemma – the very establishments they sought to close down or regulate were major contributors to the local economy. Controversial in its heyday and receiving new attention by such movies as Lonesome Dove, Hell’s Half Acre remains the subject of debate among historians and researchers today. Richard Selcer successfully separates fact from fiction, myth from reality, in this vibrant study of the men and women of Cowtown’s notorious Acre.

Ron Stutzer has a girlfriend. Elizabeth has brains, beauty, money, and a powerful job. But when that job sends her to Beirut, she's taken hostage. She disappears into the rubble and waste and confusion of the Middle East. But what can Ron do? His alcoholic father has just swiped his credit card halfway through a three-week binge. The bees he keeps with his football-friend, Jim, have gone berserk. His co-workers at the Census Bureau need him. He never understood Elizabeth's intrigues at the Department of Defense anyway. And he and Elizabeth always had a policy of staying out of each other's families. Even when Elizabeth's wealthy influential father pulls all the strings he has, the government still will do nothing--either to help or to interfere. So he turns to Ron: Go to Beirut and rescue Elizabeth, his daughter, Ron's lover. Ron is on his own then, and learns what it means to be a hero.

An abandoned baby forces opposites to join forces in the USA Today–bestselling author’s romantic thriller. Kansas City Assistant District Attorney Dwight Powers hasn’t gotten close to anyone since he lost his family to a vicious killer years ago. But he can’t turn his back on the baby abandoned in his office—or the boy’s beautiful guardian, Maddie McCallister. Maddie is desperate to find Tyler’s missing mother. And Dwight is her designated hero. Now the brooding lawyer is on the trail of a black-market baby ring—and battling the demons of his past. Because protecting Maddie and Tyler means remembering the wife and child he lost . . . and opening himself up to the family he still could have.

In the war zone that is the U.S./Mexico border, DEA Special Agent Scott Greene wants justice for a murdered fellow agent, but the killers are outside of his reach, on the other side of the imaginary line that separates one country from another. So he crosses that line and inadvertently unleashes a storm so violent and so stunning that it turns Scott and his only ally, a Mexican cop named Benny Alvarez, into fugitives on both sides of the border as they fight to expose a scheme so corrupt that it could bring down both the U.S. and Mexican governments.