Bud Shrake - Mad Dogs Inc.

Mad Dogs Inc.

During the 60s and 70s, Shrake, Jenkins, Cartwright, who would go on to write for Texas Monthly, novelist Billy Lee Brammer (The Gay Place), Larry L. King ("The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"), and wide receiver-turned-novelist Peter Gent (North Dallas Forty) were part of a “ragtag assemblage” of Texas writers known as Mad Dog Inc. Jenkins would describe Shrake as "an easy writer, a fast writer, a creative writer." "We were into smoking and drinking and hanging out, like most writers in the old days," Jenkins said. "I think journalism was a stopover for him. But he was awfully good at it." Cartwright would later say that "e were fairly wild, untamed, uncontrolled boys.” Shrake and Cartwright eventually incorporated a company named Mad Dog Productions. According to Shrake’s archives, the company’s motto was “doing indefinable services for mankind,” and its only documented service was giving $1,000 to the Armadillo World Headquarters in 1970 to help it financially. Mad Dogs Shrake and Cartwright often subjected unsuspecting strangers to the antics of the Flying Punzars, an alleged circus act; they occasionally were joined in these antics by musician Jerry Jeff Walker.

Other Mad Dog antics included games of “naked bridge” at Dan and June Jenkins’ house in Fort Worth; a pissing contest between Shrake, Don Meredith, and George Plimpton held on the balcony of Shrake’s third-floor apartment in New York; and a multi-day bender in Austin that saw Cartwright drop out after about 27 hours, Hunter S. Thompson folding some 10–12 hours later, and Shrake and Walker being still on the town on the morning of the fourth day. Shrake’s Mad Dog adventures while on the Sports Illustrated staff include the time he hired Frank Sinatra to go to Europe to photograph a heavyweight boxing match — Sinatra received press credentials but missed his flight; the time he was saved from a mob by Mohammed Ali; the time a London soccer team elected him honorary captain after winning an important contest — Shrake led celebrating team members and supporters on a midnight parade; and the time he selected the Houston Oilers’ draft picks, choosing André Laguerre (his boss at Sports Illustrated) with the 25th pick.

Shrake wrote about the Comanche’s final battle against the United States Army in his first novel Blood Reckoning (1962) and returned to that subject in The Borderland: A Novel of Texas (2000). “Blessed McGill” (1968), set during Reconstruction, is often cited as a classic of Texas fiction, as is Strange Peaches. But Not For Love, published in 1964, looked at the post-war generation. The lead character of Strange Peaches is a TV Western star who quits his show and returns to Dallas to make a documentary. Shrake’s acidic look at his home state continued in Peter Arbiter (1973), a retelling of Petronius’ Satyricon that compares oil-boom Texas to Rome’s decadence. In 1976 Shrake and Jenkins published Limo, a satiric look at network television executives struggling to produce “Just Up The Street,” a reality show showing four families live for three hours in prime-time. Night Never Falls (1987), his favorite of his novels, featured foreign correspondent Harry Sparrow (the fantasy Shrake) trapped with the French in Dien Bien Phu and was the only one of Shrake’s novels not set in Texas. The success of Harvey Penick's Little Red Book and its sequels left him financially stable, enabling him to pursue his fiction writing. His 2001Billy Boy is a coming-of-age story set in Fort Worth that features a guardian angel, golf champ Ben Hogan, and several rounds at Colonial Country Club. Shrake’s 10th novel, Custer's Brother's Horse (2007), is set in Texas in 1865 right after the Civil War ends.

Shrake began to write celebrity as-told-to biographies in the 1980s, beginning with his friend Willie Nelson, which was followed by a biography of Barry Switzer and four books with Penick. Shrake smoked, drank and used drugs until the mid-1980s, when a doctor told him he might live a year if he didn't stop. He quit in one day and wrote Night Never Falls just to see if he could do it without cigarettes and booze.