The Big House on the Prairie.

[djp73]

Shorter is working, maybe same length more frequently?

[Chillcavern]

Family, would y'all prefer this current format of short, bite-sized updates or the entire chapter at once?

Personally, I think you’re really cooking with this so far, so I’m liking the shorter updates. But you’re also, ya know, the one writing it so my vote would be whichever you’d prefer to write.

It's the same amount of work on my side, I'm just splitting the updates up when I post them. I know a wall of text can sometimes be off putting but I also don't want to give you guys blue balls.

You’ve been picking some good break points then
Impressive stuff.

Anyways, to also comment on this current little “arc” of Baby Book’s background: Baby Book here was like actually a baby when he started. 5 years old and playing football what the fuck

[Caesar]

Family, would y'all prefer this current format of short, bite-sized updates or the entire chapter at once?

I’d prefer longer chapters. This format is fine, I’d just rather get the full chapter all at once so the updates don’t feel the same because an update today is about the same thing as an update tomorrow since they’re essentially part of the same chapter if that makes sense

[djp73]

Family, would y'all prefer this current format of short, bite-sized updates or the entire chapter at once?

I’d prefer longer chapters. This format is fine, I’d just rather get the full chapter all at once so the updates don’t feel the same because an update today is about the same thing as an update tomorrow since they’re essentially part of the same chapter if that makes sense

thats a good point too, as long as you have the content to fill the time to keep it flowing nicely

[The JZA]

Prefer it short or medium. If anything, recalibrate on some some story bulletins if you're not satisfied with it or something come to. Saves on re-doing the whole chap

but I also don't want to give you guys blue balls.

[Soapy]

Shorter is working, maybe same length more frequently?

With the game out, the updates will now come out three times a week instead of once a week.

Personally, I think you’re really cooking with this so far, so I’m liking the shorter updates. But you’re also, ya know, the one writing it so my vote would be whichever you’d prefer to write.

It's the same amount of work on my side, I'm just splitting the updates up when I post them. I know a wall of text can sometimes be off putting but I also don't want to give you guys blue balls.

You’ve been picking some good break points then
Impressive stuff.

Anyways, to also comment on this current little “arc” of Baby Book’s background: Baby Book here was like actually a baby when he started. 5 years old and playing football what the fuck

Thank you, brudda.

As far as a Baby Book, that's the age my nephews started playing football

In the league they play at, you 'technically' can start at 5 on 6U, your parents just need to sign a waiver/disclaimer in case...you know

Family, would y'all prefer this current format of short, bite-sized updates or the entire chapter at once?

I’d prefer longer chapters. This format is fine, I’d just rather get the full chapter all at once so the updates don’t feel the same because an update today is about the same thing as an update tomorrow since they’re essentially part of the same chapter if that makes sense

I tried to break off the parts in a way that it's a new advancement of the same 'era' or theme but I see both sides.

[Soapy]

Prefer it short or medium. If anything, recalibrate on some some story bulletins if you're not satisfied with it or something come to. Saves on re-doing the whole chap

but I also don't want to give you guys blue balls.

AYO!

appreciate the feedback y'all. I'm going to post the next update as the entire next chapter just to see how it goes and go from there.

[redsox907]

Family, would y'all prefer this current format of short, bite-sized updates or the entire chapter at once?

Personally, I think you’re really cooking with this so far, so I’m liking the shorter updates. But you’re also, ya know, the one writing it so my vote would be whichever you’d prefer to write.

I think the short ones are easier to follow. I know for instance with American Sun, I wait until I know I can sit down and read a whole update at once which sometimes lends me to falling a few updates behind - thus necessitating more time to catch up. Whereas with the ones you've been doing even if I'm behind a few updates, they're easy to stack and get up quickly.

Just my .02 brodie

[Soapy]

Family, would y'all prefer this current format of short, bite-sized updates or the entire chapter at once?

Personally, I think you’re really cooking with this so far, so I’m liking the shorter updates. But you’re also, ya know, the one writing it so my vote would be whichever you’d prefer to write.

I think the short ones are easier to follow. I know for instance with American Sun, I wait until I know I can sit down and read a whole update at once which sometimes lends me to falling a few updates behind - thus necessitating more time to catch up. Whereas with the ones you've been doing even if I'm behind a few updates, they're easy to stack and get up quickly.

Just my .02 brodie

True, I might just split the chapters (which I've split into four pieces) into just two now so it should still be under 1500 words give or take

[Soapy]

The Big House on the Prairie
Chapter Three :: The Baby, Part Three and Four

My father’s re-election campaign in 2024 had taken a backseat to the upcoming Waller High School football season and my upcoming decision. I was the first five-star recruit in the area’s history and with it came a lot of expectations and chatter along with a general feeling that no matter where I went, it would ultimately be a win for not just myself, my family, but for the entire town. It was also viewed that the election was just pageantry and that my father, as always, would be re-elected. If you were to walk into any establishment in Prairie View early that fall, you were more likely to hear folks debating if I should go to Texas or Georgia or Alabama than discussing the upcoming election. All of that changed when the Houston Forward Times released that article.

The article itself wasn’t new, at least the thesis wasn’t. The writer, Royce Jenkins, then a senior at Prairie View A&M, had published an article a year prior in the student newspaper positing that town’s lack of formidable mayoral candidates in the last two elections should be cause for concern. Royce was largely complimentary of my father in the first article, detailing the great works that he had done for the city but feared that due to Prairie View having a strong mayor form of government — which concentrates executive power in the hands of the mayor, who has significant authority over city administration, budget, and appointments — that such a system, if left unchallenged by other candidates, could devolve into a sort of benevolent dictatorship. The article was largely theoretical, highlighting potential areas of conflicts and hypothesizing that long term administrations with that much control and power would be a breeding ground for corruption.

It wasn’t until Royce was hired at Howard Forward Times, the same place where Sean Ellison, my mother’s college boyfriend, worked as an editor, that the article that would eventually be released began to form. It’s unclear why Sean took interest in the sloppily written, half-cooked journal entry by Royce that was mostly masturbatory grandstanding and hand-wringing, typical of your average liberal arts major. Whether it was genuine interest in a town he wasn’t even from, had lived or visited — or perhaps a decade old resentment as he would die a bachelor — he added the weight of his experience and discernment into the project, expounding on concerns that Royce had raised with testimonies and interviews from subjects that would speak on the matter, both on and off the record.

On his way to the mayor seat, for all of his handshaking and back patting, my father had quietly amassed just as many detractors as he did supporters as Prairie View was still just a small town. He often made promises he couldn’t keep and would often steal from Paul to pay Peter, promising initiatives to garner favor only to promise conflicting changes to the next set of hands that he needed to shake. In the end though, he more or less made sure that "even if he fucked you, you felt alright about it," as quoted by one of the people interviewed for the article.

A veteran writer and now editor, Sean understood that the matters of small-town politics—having grown up in one himself just a few hours west of Houston in Wimberley—would not elicit the reaction he was looking for. Even if they found corruption in Little Book’s administration, Sean (correctly) figured it would be expected and overlooked. Instead, the more Sean and Royce spoke to people who had fallen out of my father’s inner circle, the more they began to delve into his personal life. Whether guided by ethics or indifference, Sean would delicately steer them back toward the article’s initial focus—political corruption, the crux of Royce’s original piece. This would continue to be the case until a former senior advisor spoke of an “errand” that caught Royce’s attention—enough to press Sean into spending resources investigating the matter.

From the outside looking in, some might call my father an absent parent or accuse him of not being present, but that would be both unfair and inaccurate. No matter how busy he was, he made sure to attend our games, spelling bees, graduations, birthday parties, doctor’s appointments, and the like. He was a great father when he was around, and when he wasn’t, I never held it against him—I understood his importance stretched beyond the walls of our house. This was why I was never angry or disappointed when he forgot a tutoring appointment, or forgot to take me somewhere when my mother was sick, or tasked one of his assistants with getting us dinner on weeknights. He wasn’t there all the time, but that was fine with me. That also changed when the Houston Forward Times released that article.

The unnamed staffer, referred to as 'Staffer M' in the article, stated that she had been told to meet my father, then her boss, not at the mayoral office but in my father’s home office at 'the big house on the Prairie', which is what everyone in town called our home. Beginning with my mom’s first bout with cancer, my father had started to work more and more from his home office in my childhood home, turning one of the eight rooms into a private office that we as kids weren’t allowed in. This continued throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and after it so the ask itself, meeting my father at his home, wasn’t that strange. Instead, Staffer M said in the article that she took it as a sign that she was closing in on being part of the mayor’s inner circle.

She had begun working in his administration in 2019, and with the 2020 election being such a runaway, she hadn’t really had a chance to prove herself. It was now 2022, and she viewed this, according to her words, as a chance to stand out. It was at this meeting—where no one else was present—that she says she was told to meet a “constituent,” even though the address she was given was in The Woodlands. She was told to drive them to a meeting. The errand didn’t raise any red flags at the time, and she was given a city-issued credit card to rent a car, since she didn’t have one, and a per diem in cash, in an envelope.

It wasn’t until she arrived at the address that red flags began to rise. The “constituent” was a young woman who appeared to be living alone in a small home on the outskirts of The Woodlands, forty minutes east of Prairie View. The young woman quietly got in the back seat and gave her the destination.

“This can’t be right,” the staffer thought to herself as she confirmed the address again—New Mexico.

"It’s right," she told her.

They drove for two days, spending one night at a hotel—paying for two rooms with the city-issued card—before arriving at a medical clinic in New Mexico, where the young woman (who wasn’t named and refused to comment when asked) had an abortion. At the time, abortions were illegal in Texas.

In between sobs on the long drive back, the staffer alleged that the young woman told her the unborn baby was my father’s—the product of a year-long affair that began during her last semester at the University of Houston, which she claimed my father had paid for.

Next release: 7/14/2025