Texas Reads>> archiveGlenn Dromgoole
4.10.16 Doctor relates coming-of-age love story
Dallas ophthalmologist Dr. Rob Tenery has written Chasing the Ponytail ($15.95 paperback), a very readable story about his coming of age in the 1950s and early ’60s in Waxahachie as he pursued the love of his life, Janet Forrest, through high school and college.
Rob was almost sixteen when he laid eyes on Janet, just fourteen, at the country club swimming pool and was instantly smitten. He was about to be a high school junior, she a freshman. Their on-again, off-again courtship would eventually lead them to the altar six years later, but Rob found he had a lot of growing-up to do along the way.
The book is listed as non-fiction, though Tenery admits up front that “some of my recollections may be subject to interpretation and even embellishment.” So perhaps Chasing the Ponytail falls into that nebulous category of “creative non-fiction,” in which the writer — while sticking to the larger “truth” — might take a few liberties with the facts. And one would assume that he may have changed a few names to protect the guilty and keep from being sued.
In any case, Tenery doesn’t pull any punches as he relates mischievous episodes about growing up in what was then small-town Waxahachie. Fortunately, the statute of limitations has long since expired on his various juvenile shenanigans, which landed him in jail on at least one occasion and could easily have derailed his plans to become a doctor.
In fact, during his sophomore year in college, his grades and behavior were such that the dean put him on strict academic and social probation. Rob’s dad — the town’s beloved Dr. Mayo Tenery — finally ran out of patience and issued him an ultimatum. Fortunately, Rob got his priorities in order, earned his degree (barely), was accepted into medical school, won the girl (they’ve been married fifty-two years), and has enjoyed a fruitful career in medicine, as his father and grandfather did before him.
Tenery wrote about the three generations of doctors in his family — and the changes in the medical profession — in another book, Dr. Mayo’s Boy: A Century of American Medicine, published in 2009. That same year the Texas Medical Association honored him with its Distinguished Service Award.
Second in series: Austin architect and author Minerva Koenig has followed up her debut novel Nine Days with a second murder mystery, South of Nowhere (MinotaurBooks, $24.99 hardcover). Both novels are set in Texas and feature Julia Kalas, a reformed criminal put in witness protection in a small town known as the Middle of Nowhere.
In South of Nowhere, Kalas has been forced to relocate and takes on a missing persons case on the Texas-Mexico border that promises a huge payday, but soon she is tangling with Mexican drug lords and is a suspect in a murder case.
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Glenn Dromgoole is co-author, with Carlton Stowers, of 101 Essential Texas Books Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.
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